A five-minute talk is about 650 words, not 750 — and the limits platforms publish are frequently not the ones they enforce.
Words to minutes
| Length | Words at 140/min | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 minute | ~140 | An elevator pitch |
| 3 minutes | ~420 | A lightning talk |
| 5 minutes | ~700 | A conference short |
| 10 minutes | ~1,400 | A TED-style slot |
| 20 minutes | ~2,800 | A standard conference talk |
| 45 minutes | ~6,300 | A lecture |
Write to about 90% of the figure. Two things eat time that a word count does not show: pauses, which you need and will not have rehearsed, and the questions people ask when you invite them. A talk written to exactly 700 words for five minutes will overrun.
What changes the rate
- Nerves speed you up, often to 170 words a minute. Rehearsed timing at a calm 140 does not survive the room.
- Technical content slows you down. Audiences need processing time, and the good speakers give it.
- Reading aloud is slower than talking — around 120 a minute for read text, because you honour the punctuation.
- Audiobooks sit at 150–160. Podcasts run 150–170.
- A non-native audience needs 15–20% longer, which is worth planning for rather than discovering.
The reliable method is not arithmetic: read it aloud, at the pace you will actually use, with a timer. Reading in your head is roughly twice as fast as speaking and gives a number that is always wrong.
Platform limits
| Where | Limit | Practical |
|---|---|---|
| Google title tag | ~580 pixels | ~55–60 characters |
| Google meta description | ~920 pixels | ~150–160 characters |
| X / Twitter post | 280 characters | URLs count as 23 regardless of length |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 characters | Truncated at ~200 with "see more" |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 characters | Truncated at ~125 |
| SMS | 160 characters | 70 if any non-GSM character appears |
| Email subject | No hard limit | ~40 shown on mobile |
The SMS row is the one that surprises people. A single emoji, curly quote or accented character switches the whole message to a 16-bit encoding, dropping the limit from 160 to 70 — so one smart quote can turn a one-part message into three billable parts.
Counting is not simple
A character is not one thing, and different systems count differently.
A family emoji can be five code points joined by zero-width joiners. Depending on what is counting, that is one character, five, or eleven. Accented characters may be one code point or two — a base letter plus a combining mark — and look identical either way.
This is why a post that looks under the limit gets rejected. If a count matters, test against the actual platform rather than a generic counter. The Word & Character Counter shows the count against each major platform limit specifically, which avoids the guesswork.
Title case or sentence case
A separate question that comes up whenever anyone writes a headline, and there is a defensible answer.
Sentence case — only the first word and proper nouns capitalised — reads faster, is harder to get wrong, and is what most modern publications and interfaces use. It is the safer default.
Title case — most words capitalised — looks more formal and has genuinely inconsistent rules. APA, Chicago and AP disagree about which short words to capitalise, so a team using "title case" without naming a style guide will produce three variants.
Pick one and apply it everywhere. Mixed casing across headings on a site is more noticeable than either choice, and it is the thing readers actually register. The Case Converter handles both plus the programming cases, which is useful when a style decision arrives after the copy is written.
Frequently asked questions
How many words is a five-minute speech?
About 650 to 750 at a conversational 130-150 words per minute. Write to roughly 90% of that — nerves push most speakers to 170 a minute, and pauses and questions eat time a word count does not show.
How fast do people actually speak?
Conversationally, 130-150 words per minute. Reading aloud is slower at around 120, because you honour the punctuation. Podcasts run 150-170. A non-native audience needs 15-20% longer, which is worth planning rather than discovering.
Why did my SMS count as three messages?
One non-GSM character — an emoji, a curly quote, an accented letter — switches the whole message to 16-bit encoding, dropping the limit from 160 characters to 70. A single smart quote pasted from a word processor does it.
Why does my post exceed the limit when the counter said it was fine?
Because characters are counted differently by different systems. A family emoji can be five code points joined together, counted as one, five or eleven depending on what is counting. Accented letters may be one code point or two.
Should headings be title case or sentence case?
Sentence case is the safer default — it reads faster and is hard to get wrong. Title case rules genuinely differ between APA, Chicago and AP, so a team using it without naming a style guide produces inconsistent results. Pick one and apply it everywhere.
How long should a meta description be?
About 150-160 characters, though Google truncates on pixel width rather than character count, at roughly 920 pixels. Front-load the important words, since the end is what gets cut.