How to use the Unique Word Counter
Count unique words and analyse vocabulary richness:
1
Paste your text
Paste any text into the input area. Unique word count and vocabulary richness update instantly.
2
Read the richness gauge
The Type-Token Ratio gauge shows vocabulary richness as a percentage with colour coding: green (rich, 60%+), orange (moderate, 40–60%), red (repetitive, below 40%).
3
Browse the word cloud
Toggle the word list to see every unique word as a tag. Words that appear more than once show a count badge. Sort alphabetically or by frequency.
When to use this tool
Use the unique word counter for vocabulary and writing quality analysis:
- →Measuring vocabulary richness in essays, creative writing, or student papers
- →Comparing the lexical diversity of two pieces of writing to assess vocabulary range
- →Identifying over-reliance on a small set of words in business copy or marketing content
- →Generating a unique word list from a text corpus for NLP vocabulary building or spell-check dictionary creation
- →Analysing language complexity in readability research or linguistic studies
- →Checking that translated text preserves appropriate vocabulary diversity relative to the original
Frequently asked questions
Q:What is the Type-Token Ratio (TTR) and how is it calculated?
The Type-Token Ratio (TTR) is the number of unique word types divided by the total number of word tokens (occurrences), expressed as a percentage. A TTR of 70% means 70 out of every 100 word positions in the text use a different word. A TTR of 30% means most words are repeated frequently. Higher TTR generally indicates richer, more varied vocabulary.
Q:What is a good vocabulary richness score?
TTR interpretation depends on text length — very short texts naturally have higher TTR because there is less opportunity for repetition. For texts of 500+ words: above 60% suggests rich, varied vocabulary; 40–60% indicates moderate variety typical of conversational writing; below 40% suggests high repetition, common in instructional or highly technical texts that must repeat specific terminology. Literary prose often scores 60–75%.
Q:Is the unique word comparison case-sensitive?
By default, the comparison is case-insensitive — 'Hello', 'HELLO', and 'hello' are all counted as the same unique word type. Enable the 'Case sensitive' toggle to treat capitalised and lowercase forms as distinct words. Case-insensitive mode is appropriate for most vocabulary analysis; case-sensitive mode is useful for code analysis or when capitalisation carries semantic meaning.
Q:What do the count badges on the word tags mean?
In the word cloud, words that appear only once have no badge. Words that appear more than once display a small numeric badge showing their total occurrence count. Words with higher counts are styled slightly differently — with an accent-coloured border — to visually distinguish frequently repeated words from words that appear only once.
Q:How does this tool differ from the Most Frequent Words tool?
The Unique Word Counter focuses on vocabulary diversity — the ratio of unique to total words — and surfaces every unique word in a browsable tag cloud. The Most Frequent Words tool focuses on identifying which specific words dominate the text, ranked by frequency with bar charts. Use Unique Word Counter for vocabulary richness analysis; use Most Frequent Words for keyword pattern discovery.
Q:Can I export the unique word list?
Yes — click the Download button in the word list panel header to export a CSV file containing every unique word and its occurrence count. This is useful for building custom vocabulary lists, spell-check dictionaries, or feeding into NLP pipelines for token frequency analysis.