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Lexical Density Calculator

Measure how much meaning is packed into your writing

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How Information-Dense Is Your Writing?

Every text is a mix of two kinds of words. Content words — nouns, main verbs, adjectives, and adverbs — carry the meaning. Function words — articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and pronouns — hold the grammar together. Lexical density measures what percentage of your words are content words, giving you a single number that reflects how information-packed your writing is.

What the Number Tells You

A density below 50 percent is typical of spoken language and very casual writing — lots of"I think that maybe we should probably..." filler. Between 50 and 60 percent is standard written prose — news articles, blog posts, business emails. Above 60 percent is dense, information-heavy text — academic papers, legal documents, technical specifications. The color-coded view shows exactly which words carry meaning and which serve a structural role.

Practical Uses

If your density is low and the text feels padded, look for unnecessary function words —"the fact that" can be"because,""in order to" can be"to,""it is important to note that" can be cut entirely. If density is very high and readers complain the text is hard to follow, add transitional phrases and vary sentence structure. The tool helps you find the right balance for your audience.

Limitations

The tool uses a word-list approach to classify words, which works well for standard English but is not a full part-of-speech tagger. Words like"run" (noun or verb) and"light" (adjective or noun) are always counted as content words. For most texts, this gives a density estimate within a few percentage points of a linguistically tagged analysis.

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$ faq

What is lexical density? ▸
Lexical density is the percentage of content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) in a text. Content words carry meaning —"dog,""run,""beautiful,""quickly." Function words are grammatical glue —"the,""is,""of,""and." A text with 60 percent content words has a lexical density of 60 percent. Higher density means more information packed into fewer words.
What is a normal lexical density? ▸
Spoken English typically has a lexical density of 40 to 50 percent. Written English ranges from 50 to 70 percent. Academic and technical writing often exceeds 60 percent because it packs more information into each sentence. Casual blog posts and conversational writing sit around 50 to 55 percent. Below 40 percent usually signals padding or excessive hedging.
How does this tool classify words? ▸
The tool maintains a list of common English function words — articles (a, an, the), prepositions (in, on, at, to), conjunctions (and, but, or), pronouns (I, you, he, she, they), auxiliary verbs (is, was, have, do), and other grammatical words. Any word not in this list is counted as a content word. This heuristic approach is not perfect but gives a reliable estimate for most English texts.
Is higher lexical density always better? ▸
No. Very high density (above 70 percent) often means text is hard to read because it lacks the grammatical connectors that help readers follow the logic. Academic papers are dense but also harder to read than journalism. The ideal density depends on your audience — technical readers handle dense text; general audiences prefer moderate density with clear sentence structure.
How is lexical density different from readability? ▸
Readability formulas like Flesch-Kincaid measure sentence length and syllable count. Lexical density measures what proportion of words carry meaning versus serve a grammatical role. A text can have short sentences (high readability) but be packed with technical terms (high density). The two metrics complement each other — use both for a complete picture of text complexity.
Can I use this for languages other than English? ▸
The function-word list is English-only, so results for other languages will be inaccurate. The function words of French, German, or Spanish are different sets. For English texts, the tool gives a reliable estimate. For other languages, you would need a language-specific function-word list.
Is any data sent to a server? ▸
No. All processing happens locally in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never transmitted or stored.