November 2015 - Word Counter Blog

How Many Sentences in a Paragraph?

There’s often a lot of confusion, but if you’re looking for a general answer to the question, “How many sentences in a paragraph?” the answer is there are 3 to 8 sentences in a paragraph. The important key to take away from this answer is that it’s a rule-of-thumb. If you’re looking for a hard and fast rule, you’re out of luck. A paragraph can consist of a single sentence, and since a single word can be a sentence, you can literally have a paragraph that consists of a single word. Of course, if someone asks you to write a paragraph, they won’t be altogether happy with that, so how much should you write?

What do teachers want to see in a paragraph?

If you’re a student, your teacher or tutor may ask you to write a paragraph without telling you just how long he or she expects it to be. In general, educators like to see a paragraph consisting of at least 5 sentences. Start with a sentence that expresses an idea. Use the next 3 sentences for providing information that supports that idea, and use the final sentence to draw a conclusion.

Why do teachers expect longer paragraphs? Obviously, they want to see that you have acquired knowledge and can think critically. That’s quite difficult to demonstrate with a single sentence! Teachers will sometimes set a rule that all paragraphs should be a certain length, but it’s important to remember that specific paragraph lengths aren’t a prerequisite for acceptable writing.

When do you use shorter paragraphs?

Open just about any book, and you’ll find plenty of short paragraphs. If direct speech is used, there’ll be a new paragraph every time a new speaker starts to talk. News writers also like using short paragraphs. They have to present information in a succinct way and hold the reader’s attention.

Commercial writers know that most people don’t want to read 1,000 words of closely-spaced text in order to see what they are writing about, so they also like to keep sentences and paragraphs short. They’ll even use lots of sub-headers so you can see what each paragraph is about before you read it.

How do I know when to start a new paragraph?

Every time you begin to discuss a new thought that contributes to the overarching theme of your work, you can start a new paragraph. A paragraph will usually consist of a collection of sentences that, when considered as a group, have something in common. As soon as you move on to the next idea, you can begin a new paragraph.

Luckily, you don’t have to agonise about it too much, because as I’ve pointed out, there are no specific rules.

Tips for writing strong paragraphs

It’s best to begin a paragraph with a sentence that defines the topic that will be discussed. Try to keep it fairly simple. If you include too many ideas in your opening sentence, you run the risk of getting tangled in an overly complex and incoherent paragraph. Every sentence in a paragraph should support the first, “topic sentence.” When you begin discussing a new or related topic, start a new paragraph.

The University of North Carolina helps students with paragraph construction by providing them with a 5-step process:

Express the idea that the paragraph will cover in a topic sentence.
Explain the idea.
Use an example.
Explain why the example relates to the idea.
Draw a conclusion.

Obviously, the recipe has been designed for those who want to write an informative and convincing work. And because these rules aren’t really cast in stone, you’ll find that different institutions give different recommendations.

The debate continues

If we look around, we’ll find that the idea of paragraphs with a minimum of 3-5 sentences and a maximum of 8 is pretty common. But there are some who say that two to three paragraphs per page are best and others who say that 5 to 7 lines will do the job. Meanwhile, journalism students are taught to keep sentences as short as possible, and one sentence paragraphs are considered perfectly acceptable.

There are those who say that using more than one paragraph to discuss an idea is perfectly alright, and since there are no hard and fast rules for paragraphs, I can’t really contradict them. I even found one recommendation that suggested a minimum of 7-10 sentences per paragraph and a maximum of a full page!

How long should your paragraphs be?

Unless you’re busy with academic writing, the length of your paragraphs is up to you. I like shorter paragraphs for informal writing such as this blog post. I like the idea of sticking to one idea per paragraph, and I think that paragraphs make reading and understanding a text a whole lot simpler. Single-sentence paragraphs are great for emphasis.

If you are writing to pass a school, college or university course, I recommend you ask your teacher or professor what’s expected of you. It’s always better to ask in these situations than to try to guess. This is by far the best way to make sure you tailor your writing to what your teacher expects rather than by going by a general rule.

(Photo courtesy of Laura)

Why Are the Golden State Warriors Called the Dubs?

If you’re a basketball fan but aren’t too familiar with the Golden State Warriors, you may be a bit confused by their nickname. If you look in the stands at the signs the fans display at Golden State Warrior games or listen to commentators talking about the team, you will soon realize that the team is known as “the Dubs” and the fans as “DubNation.”

Why are the Golden State Warriors called the Dubs?

The Warriors are called “the Dubs” in a truncated pronunciation of the “W” of Warriors

The Dubs is one of those nicknames or terms that doesn’t seem to make much sense when you first hear or see it. In fact, one of the reasons you’re likely reading this article is because you couldn’t figure out why the Warriors are called that on your own. While it may at first appear strange, once you realize where it comes from, it makes a lot more sense.

The nickname began in the 1990’s when younger fans decided to shorten the word “Warriors” when referring to the team. Instead of pronouncing the team’s full name, some fans began to refer to the team as the “W’s”. “W” soon was changed from its proper pronunciation to “dub-a-u,” which then was further shortened to just “dub.” As the team became more popular with the younger generation using this slang to describe the team, the term caught on with the general public, and the team began to refer to themselves in this manner as well. So while The Dubs may seem a little strange at first, it’s simply a shortening of the team name “Warriors” over time.

Why are the Warriors fans called Dub Nation?

Dub Nation is how fans refer to themselves as a collective whole. If you’re a Golden State Warriors fan, then you are part of the Dub Nation. Since it was the fans who originally came up with the nickname of the Dubs for the Warriors, they also began to call themselves by the same term. Instead of calling themselves “The Warrior Nation,” the fans use the same abbreviation for “Warriors” and began to call themselves the “Dub Nation.”

Why are the Warriors called the doves?

The Warriors and their fans don’t refer to themselves as the doves, although people thinking they call themselves “the doves” is a common misconception. The reason this happens isn’t too difficult to surmise. Since there is a similar pronunciation between the words “Dub” and “Dove,” it makes sense that the two words could get mixed up. This is especially true sine “Dub” isn’t a normal word in the English language, so many people likely mishear it as the closest real word they know, which happens to be “dove.”

Why are the Warriors called The City?

When the Warriors first moved to the west coast in 1962, the were located in San Francisco and were called the San Francisco Warriors. “The City” logo was created in the years before they moved across the San Francisco Bay and renamed themselves the Golden State Warriors. “The City” refers to San Francisco even though the Warriors currently are located in Oakland (but will be moving to a new stadium there soon).

“The City” logo uniforms were brought back in the mid-2000s as a throwback uniform. They’re iconic for the area, look good, and most importantly, sell well as merchandise. Since they are one of the most popular logos for fans, the Warriors use this throwback uniform on a regular basis these days.

Why do the Warriors rub their arms?

The Golden State Warriors have a unique 3-point celebration. If you watch the Warriors bench (and now many of the fans in the crowd as well) you will often see them make a 3-point gesture that might not make sense at first sight. The bench (and crowd) will stand up and point their arm toward the sky making an “okay” sign (thumb and pointer finger in a circle with the other three fingers sticking out), then take their other hand and begin to rub it up and down along the outstretched arm.

The gesture is supposed to represent a shotgun being fired and then reloaded. It’s the team’s way of showing approval toward the 3-point shooting ability of their teammates, and acknowledging that the players are “locked and loaded” and ready to score. The gesture originated on the warriors bench from Shaun Livingston, who brought it with him when he joined the Warriors. It stuck, and it now can be seen many times throughout most Warriors games.

How Many Letters Are There in the Alphabet?

Whether you want to do a word count or a character count, it helps to know the number of letters in the alphabet. Knowing the correct number of letters in the alphabet depends greatly on which language’s alphabet you are referring to. While many may assume you’re talking about English, that might not always be the best assumption since there are so many different languages around the world. Below are the answers to this question for some of the more popular world languages.

How many letters are there in the English alphabet?

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet which range from ‘a’ to ‘z’ (with b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, and y in between). What many people don’t know is as recently as 200 years ago, there used to be 27 letters in the English alphabet. While many probably are familiar with the number of letters in English (if they are native English speakers), they may not be quite as familiar with the numbers in other languages.

How many letters are there in the Arabic alphabet?

Those curly letters do look pretty, and there are 28 letters in Arabic – just two more than the English alphabet. Sounds simple? Perhaps not as simple as it looks! All 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet are consonants.

That’s not to say that Arabic doesn’t have vowels. It does, but instead of having special letters, vowels are shown by a “diacritical mark” — a glyph that’s added to a consonant. Just to make things more confusing, you won’t always bother with vowels. They’re essential if you’re quoting the Quran or if you’re writing a book for children, but most of the time, you just leave them out.

How many letters are there in the Chinese alphabet?

Now things get really complicated! If you want to have functional literacy in Chinese, you “only” need to know three or four thousand characters. And I say “only” because there are literally tens of thousands of Chinese characters.

That’s because Chinese doesn’t actually have an alphabet at all. Instead of the marks you make representing sounds, they represent ideas (ideograms) or pictures (pictograms). And of course, you can combine ideas and get compound pictograms. So the word “good” is represented by the ideogram for “woman” and the ideogram for “child” superimposed on one another.

How many letters are there in the Japanese alphabet?

To read Japanese, you’ll need to know about 2,000 symbols from three “alphabets.” The first of these is known as “kanji,” and it consists of pictograms that originated in China. Then there are two phonetic alphabets, “hiragana” and “katakana.” At least these two alphabets actually represent sounds, so they are easier for a foreigner to learn and understand. Both hiragana and katakana have 46 letters.

How many letters are there in the Korean alphabet?

Westerners may heave a sigh of relief when they hear that the Korean alphabet, known as the Hangul in the South and the Chosan’gul in the North, consists of 24 characters – and there are vowels too. However, we may have some difficulty piecing together some Korean writing, because Korean characters are arranged in blocks that become syllables. So what looks like a single character to us, may be a combination of characters representing a sound.

How many letters are there in the Russian alphabet?

Are you eager to learn Russian? You’ll begin with the alphabet consisting of 33 letters. 10 of these are vowels, 21 are consonants and there are two additional “signs” to learn. Luckily, Russian is a phonetic language, so you can learn what sounds each letter represents and take it from there.

How many letters are there in the Spanish alphabet?

English speakers will feel as if they’re on some familiar ground with the Spanish alphabet – but be warned – there are actually 29 letters in the Spanish alphabet. The extra four are ch, ll, ñ and rr, each of which represents a different sound. And while we’re talking about sounds, “h” may be vital to spelling, but it’s a silent letter.

How many letters are there in the Italian alphabet?

Although Italian may not be the easiest language in the world if you take grammar into account, the alphabet is a breeze. It only has 21 letters. “Foreign” letters: j, k, w, x and y are borrowed to write foreign words. Spelling is phonetical, but you’ll have to learn a few spelling rules before you can join a spelling bee.

How many letters are there in the French alphabet?

We’re back on familiar ground with a 26 letter alphabet for French. Of course, there are some accent marks that make a difference: è, é, or ç, but these are just modifiers, not extra letters. Of course, French and English are closely related languages, so it’s hardly surprising that the two alphabets are basically the same.

How many letters are there in the Greek alphabet?

From Alpha to Omega, we’re looking at 24 letters in the Greek alphabet. Greek is one of the oldest scripts still in use, and it’s one of the roots of Latin script that determines how we write today. Once one gets used to the different-looking letters and how they should sound, there should be few problems reading Greek – even without understanding it. It’s a phonetic language with few tricky vices to throw you off.

How many letters are there in the German alphabet?

Despite some formatting differences and the presence of the umlaut, which has different effects on pronunciation depending on where you put it, the German alphabet has the 26 letters that English speakers are used to. Of course, learning an alphabet and learning a language are two different things. Reading German isn’t all that difficult once you have some vocabulary, but becoming fluent with it is a different matter.

Luckily, there are things that everyone understands

It’s important to remember that alphabets aren’t everything when it comes to communication. You don’t have to be a linguist to smile, something everyone understands. The game of charades, which is often the foreigner’s last resort when verbal communication fails, can also get you through some tight spots. It may not always be effective, but even when it isn’t, it usually provokes hilarity at the very least.

(Photo courtesy of Mike)

How Many Words Are There in the Harry Potter Book Series?

The Harry Potter books are popular, and once someone reads the first book in the series, they often end up reading the entire series. What isn’t often considered is the sheer number of words a person who reads the entire series consumes. For those who like to keep track of their reading word count — or those who want to encourage their kids to read more — the Harry Potter books series is an excellent way to do so.

So, how many total words are there in the Harry Potter series? The answer may surprise you. The total number of words for the Harry Potter series is over 1 million words. That’s correct. If you want your kids to read over one million words in a short period of time, one of your best chances is to get them interested in the Harry Potter book series.

In order to reach the 1 million plus word count, it’s necessary to read all seven books which are part of the series. These include the following:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stones
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Not all the books are the same when it comes to the number of words in them. The book with the least total number of words is Sorcerer’s Stones, while the book with the most words is Order of the Phoenix. Only 2 of the 7 Harry Potter books came in at under 100,000 words (Sorcerer’s Stones and Chamber of Secrets) which happened to be the first two books in the series. Only one book (Order of the Phoenix) topped 200,000 words, but there were two books that came close with more than 190,000 words (Goblet of Fire and Deathly Hallows). When added all together, the Harry Potter books contain 1,084,170 words. Below you’ll find the total word count numbers for each book in the Harry Potter series:

How many words are in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stones? There are 76,944 words.

How many words are in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? There are 85,141 words.

How many words are in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? There are 107,253 words.

How many words are in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? There are 190,637 words.

How many words are in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? There are 257,045 words.

How many words are in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince? There are 168,923 words.

How many words are in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? There are 198,227 words.

While knowing the total number of words in the Harry Potter series isn’t going to convince anyone to read all the books, knowing the total word count is an excellent way to encourage kids to read more. Reading over 1 million words is a great accomplishment which can be celebrated in addition to the fun and adventure that comes with reading the books. Now you know you can congratulate anyone who has read all the Harry Potter books of reading more than a million words.

10 Surprising Facts About Harry Potter

(Image Source)

How Many Words on a Page?

For anyone who has taken the time to manually count the number of words on a page of paper, you know it’s both time consuming and frustrating. There has to be a better way. Fortunately, word counters can easily give you the information for your own writing, but what if you need to know the exact number of words for a particular page? Getting this information is a bit more difficult.

There could be a number of reasons you want to know how many words are on a page. Many times it’s because you have an assignment which requires you to write a certain number of pages, so you’d like to know how many words are needed to fill a page. The problem is there’s not a definitive answer to this questions because there are so many factors that go into calculating the number of words on a page.

For those looking for a general rule of thumb, you can estimate that there are about 250 words on a page double spaced, or 500 words on a page single spaced. This is a rough estimate and the true number of words on the page is likely to be more or less. This may not be a big factor for the single page, but if you are estimating for a lot of pages, the actual number can be significantly different than the estimated number.

If you know some basics about the writing and the page, you can get a much more accurate estimate by using a Words per Page calculator. This will allow you to input the font type (Arial, Calibri, Comic Sans MS, Courier, Times New Roman or Verdana), the font size, and whether the page is single or doubled spaced. Using this information and the number of words, the calculator can give a more accurate estimate than using the rule-of-thumb estimate. You also have the option of using the “type your own Words” function to get the estimated number of pages for your writing.

Another reason you may be searching for how many words there are on a page is you may want to know the number of words for a particular page on the Internet. Since web pages aren’t limited to the size of a standard sheet of paper, the actual number of words on the page can vary wildly, and are often much larger than a typical paper page. In cases like this, you can use a Website Page Word Count calculator.

To find out this word count information, you simply input the URL of the website’s page for which you need to know the number of words and the calculator will tell you exactly how many are on that particular page. Even better, it will also give you a list of the words used on the page including how many times each word is used.

(Photo courtesy of Murray Barnes)

Word Counter Keyword Density Feature

One of the many Word Counter features writers often find useful is “Keyword Density.” This feature can be found below the “Details” feature in the right sidebar of the website. Keyword Density gives writers an understanding of the words they are using most frequently which allows them to make any necessary adjustments to their word use frequency.

Keyword Density has a default setting for all those who come to the site for the first time. The ten words most frequently used words in the writing will appear in the sidebar excluding common words. For those who want more control over Keyword Density, you can make several changes to better customize it to your liking. To do this, you can click the options symbol directly to the left of the words “Keyword Density” in the right sidebar. You can also access the options by clicking on the Options Button (at the bottom right of the Word Counter text area), then clicking on “Keyword Density.”

Your first option is a checkbox which allows you to decide whether or not you want any keywords displayed or not. If keyword information isn’t useful to you, you can uncheck the box and they won’t display in your sidebar. If you want them to display, keep the checkbox checked.

The next option you have is to determine the number of keywords you want displayed in the sidebar. The default is 10 words, but you can increase or decrease that number to your desired level. For example, you could choose to only display the top 5 words by inputting “5” or you could display the top 20 words be entering “20.” You can change this as many times as you want depending on what you happen to be writing at the time.

The last option allows you to decide whether or not you want to include common words in the keyword density display. The default is to exclude these (such as I, am, he, she, your, etc.), but if you want to include them, you can check the box and they will show up.

By using the different options available, you can better customize the Keyword Density information to meet your specific writing needs. The information can be quite helpful for those who are writing for themselves or others with specific search engine optimization (SEO) goals in mind, but can also be quite useful to the average writer. Using this feature can help you see what words you may be using excessively so that you can vary them in your writing more. If nothing else, it can be interesting to see what words you use the most when you write.

We are always looking to improve the different aspects of this site. If you feel there is something we could do to make the Keyword Density feature better or more useful to writers, please feel free to contact us or leave a comment. Many of the current features were past recommendations from users and we do listen to the suggestions you offer.

(Photo courtesy of Cristian Cardenas)

Word Counter Details Options

If you came to Word Counter to find out how many words happened to be in a piece you’d written, you’ve likely noticed we offer a lot more information than just word count. While we started out primarily as a simple way for you to be able to count the number of words you had written, we’ve added a number of other Details to the counter over time. Currently, Word Counter offers 10 different “Details” areas located on the top right sidebar which can help you better understand your writing. The 10 Details options include the following:

Words: This tells you how many words you have written.
Unique Words: This tells you the number of unique words you have written. In the previous sentence, 11 words were written, but only 10 unique words were written because the word “you” was written twice.
Characters: This tells you the number of character spots which have been used including the blank spaces between words when writing.
Characters (no spaces): This tells you the number of characters you’ve written not counting the blank spaces between words.
Sentences: This tells you the number of sentences you’ve written.
Avg. Sentence (words): This tells you the average word length of all the sentences you’ve written. For example, if you write two sentences and one is 10 words and the other is 8 words, the average sentence length would be 9 words.
Avg. Sentence (chars): This tells you the average number of characters in each sentence. This calculation includes the blank spaces between the words.
Paragraphs: This tells you the number of paragraphs you’ve written.
Reading Level: Reading level gives an approximation of what grade level the person reading your writing would need to have completed to understand what you have written. You can get a better understanding of reading level here.
Reading Time: Reading time gives you an estimate of how long it would take for you to read what you have written. This is based on the average reading speed of 275 words per minute.

There’s a good chance that you aren’t currently seeing all of the above-mentioned Details in your sidebar. That’s because only six are turned on by default when you visit the site. The default Details shown are Words, Characters, Sentences, Paragraphs, Reading Level, and Reading Time. The other four (Unique Words, Characters no spaces, Average Sentence words, and Average Sentence characters) have to be turned on for you to see them.

In order to see all of the above 10 metrics displayed, you can click the “Options” button (at the bottom right of Word Counter writing area). Once in “Options,” you can then choose “Details” at the top. This will show all of the above-mentioned Details options and allow you to turn “off” or “on” the different options. In this way, you can customize the Details you want to be displayed exactly as you desire in the top right sidebar.

We are always looking to improve all parts of Word Counter. If you have suggestions on other Details you think would be valuable to you as a writer to display, please contact us with your suggestions or leave a comment below. many of the Details we display came from writers like you who suggested we add them.

Word Counter Reading Level Feature

One of the tracking features Word Counter provides in the “Details” section on the right side of the tool is a Reading Level. Of all the metrics the tool keeps track of, this is probably the one we receive the most questions about. With that in mind, we felt it would be beneficial to try to explain in a little bit more detail how this metric works and what exactly it means.

First and foremost, Reading Level isn’t a reflection of your writing skill in any way. You may have excellent writing which ranks at a fourth-grade reading level, while you may have substandard writing which ranks at the college reading level. There seems to be an assumption by many that a higher Reading Level rank means the writing is better. That is, a Reading Level at a college level is better writing than a Reading Level at a tenth-grade level. This is not what this metric is measuring.

The only thing the Reading Level tries to do is give an indicator of the education level a person would need to have in order to understand the words you’re using in your writing. It’s not meant to be a ranking of your writing ability in any way. It’s simply a general guideline so you can anticipate what education level a person would need to have to understand what you have written.

WordCounter assesses Reading Level by using the Dale–Chall readability formula. This formula uses 3,000 common words a fourth grader should understand as its foundation. Basically, if you use only the words found in the list of 3,000 words when you write, your Reading Level rank will be at a fourth-grade level. As you use more words which are not on the list of 3,000 words, the Reading Level will increase. The more words you use that fall outside the core 3,000-word list, the higher level of reading the Reading Level feature will assign to your writing.

When you first begin to type in the text area, Reading Level will display as N/A. In order for a Reading Level to appear, you will need to write a minimum of two sentences. The number of sentences is part of the formula used, and the more sentences in the writing, the more accurate the Readability Level will be. There’s a need for a two-sentence minimum to begin to make an accurate Reading Level determination.

With this in mind, when the metric shows your writing at “college level,” what it’s saying is that you’re using a significant number of words in your writing which a fourth grader won’t be familiar with. If the Reading Level says fourth-grade level, then a fourth-grader would understand the vast majority of the words you used in your writing. If the metric says a seventh-grade level, you’re using some words that a typical fourth-grader wouldn’t understand, but not as many as would be in the writing to rank the Reading Level at the college level.

Reading Level may be important for a number of reasons. If you are attempting to target your article, story or other writing to a specific audience who may be at a certain reading grade level, this metric can help make sure you’re not writing over their heads. At the same time, you may not want your writing to come across as too simplistic by using only common words elementary students would understand, and want to raise the number and variety of vocabulary in your writing to appeal to a higher educated reader.

(Photo courtesy of Kate Ter Haar)