After finishing a blog post, do you put a “5-minute read” at the end? That small number looks simple but hides plenty of traps — dividing by 200 is almost always wrong. Chinese, English, speeches, and academic papers all have very different reading speeds; plus, your readers are silent-reading, not reading aloud. This article breaks it all down and gives you the Piick word counter to calculate all three scenarios at once.

Why “200 words per minute” is a myth

The “200 Chinese characters per minute” number gets copy-pasted by countless tutorials, but it’s actually a very rough average. Linguists’ measurements show that native Chinese readers’ silent reading speed is around 300-500 characters per minute, while actual spoken reading speed is only 150-250 characters per minute. In other words, 200 characters per minute probably underestimates how long the reader will actually spend.

What’s worse, content type makes a huge difference:

  • Technical tutorials (lots of code and tables): silent reading speed drops below 200 characters per minute, because the eyes have to stop and digest figures
  • Stories and novels: can reach 400-500 characters per minute, because the brain is “watching a movie”
  • Academic papers: maybe only 150 characters per minute, with high terminology density

So “one-size-fits-all 200” might both overestimate (setting wrong expectations) and underestimate (making users think it’ll take 2 minutes when it takes 8). A better approach is to give a range, or just let a tool calculate it.

The difference between CJK and Latin letters

Mixed Chinese-English is normal, but their “information density” differs.

Each Chinese character carries a complete syllable and has no space separation. Latin letters need words and spaces, and on average one English word equals about 1.5 Chinese characters of information. So the common conversion formula is:

English word count x 1.5 ~ equivalent Chinese character count

But this only applies to plain text. If half the article is code blocks, tables, and lists, the “effective word count” needs further discounting — because the eyes scan those elements at a different speed than regular prose. A rough conversion method: count code and tables as 0.5x words (they contribute little to total time).

Example: a 2000-word English blog is equivalent to 3000 Chinese characters; suppose it includes 30 lines of code (counted as 30 words), 30 x 0.5 = 15 words — barely moves the needle. But for large sections of formulas or 5 tables, count each table as 50 words; 5 tables add another 250 words, making effective word count 3250 instead of the literal 3000.

Speech vs reading vs silent reading

The same text can vary up to 3x in speed across three scenarios:

  • Speech (reading from script): 150-200 words per minute. Normal speed for streamers and podcasts
  • Reading (reading aloud): 200-280 words per minute. Typical audiobook narrator speed
  • Silent reading (eyes scanning): 300-500 words per minute. Most people’s speed when scrolling phones or reading blogs

So “I write a blog for readers to see” — you should use silent reading speed. But if you write a speech or audiobook script, you must use speech speed. The two can differ by a factor of two.

Another common misuse is “calculate video scripts using silent reading time.” In reality, video is listened to, and listening is usually 20-30% slower than reading, because the brain processes audio information more slowly than visual. So video scripts should use the “listening” speed, 200-280 words per minute.

Use Piick to calculate 3 times at once

Rather than wrestle with formulas, use a tool. The Piick word counter displays reading time for three scenarios in real time — no signup, runs locally in the browser, no privacy worries.

Steps:

  1. Open the Piick word counter; “Word Count” is the default tab
  2. Paste the whole article into the text box; the tool instantly counts characters, words, and lines
  3. In the results area on the right, check “Reading time” — three estimates at once: quick scan / average read / careful study
  4. (Optional) Switch to “Ignore whitespace” or “Only Chinese characters” to get pure text count vs effective information count
  5. Copy the estimate directly to the beginning or end of your blog

A small tip: If your audience reads English, remember to switch to “count by words”; for Chinese users, use “count by characters”. The two algorithms don’t mix, saving you manual conversion.

Next time you finish writing a blog post, stop blindly guessing “about 5 minutes.” Open the Piick word counter, paste the text, and the three estimates appear instantly — your readers will appreciate the honesty.