reading level

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)

Title Capitalization, Spell Check and More New Word Counter Tools

This word counter tool originally counted words, characters, and letters. As more people found it, we started to get requests of what the users would like to see added to the tool. Over the years, we have added many of these suggestions. We continue to strive to keep this tool updated and to add new features which users have requested which make word counter more beneficial to all. We recently added the following features which you can now use:

Spell and Grammar Check

We’ve added a button to the top left of the Word Counter tool which says “Spell Check” Once you have finished writing, you can click this button and a spell and grammar check will be performed on what you have written and will highlight areas of the writing that may be grammatically incorrect or have spelling issues. It’s important to note that this shouldn’t be exclusively relied upon, and as with all writing, you should proofread what you have written, but it may catch some minor errors you missed or show you an area of your writing which may be able to be more clearly rewritten.

Different Cases

There may be instances where you want to have your writing (or certain portions of your writing) displayed in a certain way. The “Case” button just to the right of the “Spell Check” button gives you four options to display your writing in different ways. There are two ways to use this. You can highlight a certain portion of your writing, and only the highlighted portion will be affected by your choice. For example, if you highlight your first paragraph and choose “Uppercase,” then only the first paragraph will be turned to upper case and the rest of the writing will remain as it was. If you choose one of the options without highlighting any of your writing, the entire writing will be formatted by the choice you made. The four choices available are:

Uppercase: WHEN YOU CHOOSE THIS OPTION, ALL WRITING WILL BE DISPLAYED IN UPPERCASE LIKE THIS. iT’S THE SAME AS PUSHING THE CAPS LOCK ON YOUR KEYBOARD.

Lowercase: when you choose this option, all writing will be displayed in lowercase like this. even after periods, the letters will all be in lowercase.

Title Case: Also referred to as title capitalization, this gives the proper way to capitalize titles for your writing, articles and blog posts. It can often get confusing which words should and shouldn’t be capitalized in the title of the paper, and by choosing this option, it will automatically give you the correct way to display it. For example, the title of this article, “Title capitalization, spell check and more new word counter tools” gets transformed to “Title Capitalization, Spell Check and More New Word Counter Tools” when the title case option is used.

Sentence Case: This options will turn all the writing to a typical sentence construction. This can be convenient if you happen to forget to capitalize after periods, or if you tried some of the other case options, but decide you want to back to normal.

Reading Level

On the right side under “Details”, there is now a section at the bottom that displays Reading Level. The reading level is calculated by using the Dale–Chall readability formula based on 3,000 common words fourth graders understand. This can be useful if you’re writing to a certain age group to make sure your writing isn’t above or below their level.

Keyword Density Options

Under “Options” (top right corner) you can now choose the number of keywords you want displayed for keyword density. The default has been 10 words, but you can choose as few or as many as you wish to fit the particular type of writing you’re doing.

If there are other tools you’d like to see added to word counter, feel free to contact us or to leave a comment. We try to continue to add and update WordCounter.net with things the users would find beneficial.