How Many Characters Are in Words?

On average, there are 4.79 characters in each word. This figure comes from analysis of 743 billion words from Google Books¹, probably making it the most comprehensive study of English word length to date.

Some studies report slightly higher averages around 5.1 letters², which is why some websites round up and use "five characters per word" as their conversion rate. However, 4.79 is the more precise figure.

Factors That Influence Character Count

Several factors can affect the actual character-to-word ratio in your text:

• Word count: The total number of words directly impacts your character count, but the ratio can vary based on the factors below.
• Language: Different languages have different average word lengths. Russian, for example, averages 5.28 letters per word².
• Word complexity: Simple texts with common words like "the", "a", and "is" will have fewer characters per word than technical or academic writing with specialized terminology.
• Writing style: Formal writing tends to use longer words, while casual writing often uses shorter, simpler words.
• Punctuation and spaces: Remember that spaces between words and punctuation marks also count toward your total character count, not just letters.

Quick Conversion Guide

To convert word count to character count:

• Without spaces: word count × 4.79
• With spaces: word count × 5.79 (adding 1 for the space after each word)