How many words is a five-minute speech?

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You have been given five minutes for a wedding toast, a conference talk or a video script. The question is how much to write. Too little and you finish early and fill the gap with "um". Too much and you rush, or get cut off before the best part. The answer depends on speaking rate, and the averages are a good starting point.

Typical speaking rates

People speak at very different speeds, and the same person speaks differently in different situations. Rough ranges:

The slow end of the range is not a sign of a weak speaker. Formal speeches are slower on purpose: pauses for laughter, for emphasis and for the room to catch up are part of the delivery. A toast read at podcast pace sounds rushed.

The conversion

Once you have a rate, the arithmetic is simple:

words = minutes × words per minute
minutes = words ÷ words per minute

At 130 words per minute, a common middle value for a speech:

So a five-minute speech is roughly 600 to 700 words. A one-page double-spaced script is usually around 250 to 300 words, which is about two minutes at speech pace.

Your pace matters more than the average

Averages hide a lot. Nerves make most people speak faster. Some people naturally talk at 170 words per minute in conversation; others at 110. Accent, language and the complexity of the material all change it.

The way to find your own rate is to measure it:

1. Take a passage of about 300 words, ideally something you wrote.
2. Read it aloud at the pace you would use for the real thing, pauses included.
3. Time it, and divide the word count by the minutes.

Do this twice and take the average. Then use your number, not the table's, to size the script. The words per minute calculator works out a speaking or reading rate from a word count and a time if you would rather not do the division.

Leave room for pauses

A script that exactly fills the time on paper usually overruns in the room. Laughter, applause, a slide that will not advance, a pause to find your place: each costs a few seconds, and they add up.

A useful rule is to write for about 90% of the time you have. For a five-minute slot at 130 words per minute, aim for about 585 words rather than 650. If you finish slightly early, nobody minds. If you overrun, the person after you, the host and the audience all do.

For a talk with slides, also allow time for each slide change and for people to read what is on screen. A slide with a chart on it needs a few seconds of silence before you start talking over it.

Scripts that are easy to say

Word count is only half of it. A script written to be read silently is often hard to say aloud. A few habits help:

• Short sentences. Long sentences with several clauses are hard to deliver and hard to follow by ear. If you need a breath in the middle of a sentence, split it.
• Plain words. Listeners cannot reread. A word that would be fine on the page can lose the room when spoken.
• Signposting. Tell the audience where you are: "three things", "the second one", "finally". It feels repetitive on paper and is a relief to listen to.
• Read it aloud while editing. Anything you stumble on in practice, you will stumble on for real.

Readability scores are a rough check here. A script that scores as easy to read on the page is usually easier to say too. The readability checker gives Flesch reading ease and grade-level scores with a plain-English explanation.

Work it out

The words to minutes converter turns a word count into a speaking time at presets for speeches, presentations, podcasts and voiceover, or your own rate, and runs backwards to show how many words fit in a given time. If you already have the script, paste it into the reading time calculator, which shows reading and speaking time alongside the word count and average sentence length, so you can see whether the sentences need shortening as well as the speech.