How long will your speech take?

The arithmetic

Speaking time is words divided by pace. A 750-word script at 150 words per minute takes five minutes. The same script at 110 takes about 6 minutes 49 seconds, and at 180 about 4 minutes 10 seconds. Going the other way, minutes multiplied by pace gives the words to aim for: ten minutes at 150 is 1,500 words. This page does both, and lets you change the pace, because the pace is the part that no calculator can know for you.

words / pace = minutes        750 / 150  = 5.0 minutes
minutes x pace = words        5 x 150    = 750 words
words / minutes = pace        750 / 5    = 150 words per minute

Choosing a pace

The three presets, 110, 150 and 180 words per minute, are rules of thumb for a slow, a conversational and a fast delivery. They are not measurements of any group of speakers and you should not quote them as such. What matters more than the preset is the situation:

• Reading a prepared text aloud is usually steadier than speaking from notes, and any pauses you add for emphasis lengthen the total.
• Presenting with slides adds time for slide changes, demonstrations and questions that the word count does not include. Leave a margin.
• Technical or unfamiliar material is spoken more slowly, by the speaker and for the listener.
• Different languages have different average word lengths, so a word count converts to time differently in each. Time a sample in the language you will use.

Finding your own pace

The third section of the page works your pace out. Paste a script to count its words, read it aloud at the speed you would really use, and enter how long it took, as minutes (4.5), minutes and seconds (4:30) or hours (1:05:00). The result is your words per minute for that passage. Do it two or three times with different material and you have a far better number than any preset.

Fitting a script to a slot

If you have a fixed slot, enter it under How many words fit a time slot and use the word count as a target to write to. Aim a little under, since people rarely hit their time exactly and running over is worse than finishing early. For a rough check on a finished draft, the transcript word counter gives the words, characters and a reading-time estimate as well.

Timing a recording you already have

If the speech is already recorded, you do not need to estimate. Transcribe it, and the word count divided by the recording length is the real pace. The video to text page produces the transcript, and subtitle files carry exact times for every line; transcript file formats explained explains how those are stored. To strip a subtitle file down to its words first, use the SRT to text tool.