Reading time estimator
Estimate reading time and list the top keyword density for a text, stop words removed. Runs entirely on your device, nothing is uploaded.
Reading time estimator counts a pasted text's words and reports reading time at a chosen words-per-minute rate, 200 by default. It also lists the ten most frequent words once stop words and short tokens are dropped. A result under a minute prints as less than 1 minute. Matching runs on Unicode letters only, so mostly-numeric text returns almost no words.
Questions
How is reading time calculated?
Word count divided by a words-per-minute rate you set, which defaults to 200. Words are counted with a Unicode letter pattern, so a wall of digits or punctuation barely counts as words at all. The result under a minute is printed as the words "less than 1 minute" rather than a decimal, and everything else is rounded up to a whole number of minutes.
How does it choose the top keywords?
It lowercases every word, drops a fixed list of English stop words and anything under two characters, then counts what is left and keeps the ten most frequent. There is no stemming, so run and running are counted as two separate words rather than merged into one.
What happens if I paste text with no real words?
It refuses, with the message "no words found". The word pattern requires at least one Unicode letter per match, so a file of only numbers, punctuation or symbols produces zero matches and stops the run before a reading time is computed.
Can I set a custom words-per-minute rate?
Yes, through the wpm option, which must be a positive number; anything else is refused with "wpm must be a positive number". There is no preset list of typical reading speeds, so you type the number you want compared against.
Does it work on more than one file at once?
Yes. It is a per-file tool, so drop several text files and each gets its own word count, reading time and keyword list back as a separate result.
Does the stop-word list account for language?
No. The list is a fixed set of about 40 common English words such as the, and, is and of. Text in another language is counted the same way, so non-English stop words will show up in the keyword list unfiltered.