Reading Time Calculator

Reading time is an estimate of how long an average reader needs to get through a piece of text. This tool computes it with a deliberately simple formula: it counts words by trimming the text and splitting on runs of whitespace (the regular expression \s+), then divides that word count by your chosen words-per-minute (wpm) rate. So a 1,000-word article at the Standard 200 wpm preset estimates to 5 minutes; results under one minute display as '< 1 min'. The four presets reflect common reading conditions: dense technical or reference material is read more slowly (150 wpm), general web and blog content sits around 200 wpm, light or familiar prose is faster (250 wpm), and 400 wpm approximates a trained speed reader. Because word detection is purely whitespace-based, the counter works well for English and other space-delimited languages but will miscount scripts that do not separate words with spaces, such as Chinese, Japanese, or Thai. It also counts numbers, code tokens, and punctuation-attached strings as words, and ignores the extra time images, tables, or equations add.