counter-word

Word frequency counter

Ranked by how often each word appears, with the filter on by default so the and of do not crowd out anything interesting.

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Word frequency

Numbers appear here once you add text.

Reading the list

Each entry shows how many times a word appears and what share of the total it represents. The share matters more than the raw count: five uses in a 200-word paragraph is heavy repetition, while five in a 5,000-word report is nothing.

The stop-word filter removes about 120 of the most common English function words. Turn it off if you are studying style rather than subject, since function words are where authorial habits live.

What repetition tells you

Frequency lists surface three different things, and it is worth knowing which one you are looking at.

  • Subject. The top content words should be what the piece is about. If they are not, the writing has drifted.
  • Crutches. Words like really, actually, just and very cluster in first drafts and can usually be cut without loss.
  • Unintended echo. A distinctive word used twice in one paragraph is noticeable to a reader even when it is not to the writer.
Repetition is not automatically a fault. Deliberate repetition binds a paragraph together, and swapping in a synonym purely to avoid repeating yourself usually reads worse than the repetition would have.

For SEO work

If you are checking how often a target phrase appears rather than single words, the keyword density checker is the better tool. It reports percentages against the thresholds that matter for on-page optimisation.

Common questions

Are different forms of a word counted together?

No. Run, runs and running are counted separately, because collapsing them requires assumptions about meaning that are wrong often enough to be misleading.

Is the count case-sensitive?

No. The and the are the same word for counting purposes.

Which words does the filter remove?

Around 120 high-frequency function words — articles, prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs and conjunctions. Untick the box to see the unfiltered list.

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