Writing about text, tools, and language
Notes, deep dives, and reference material from the team behind Text Toolkit.
- · word count · speech writing · public speaking
How Many Words Is a 5-Minute Speech? A Complete Length Guide
The quick answer is around 750 words at 150 words per minute. The useful answer involves understanding what changes that number — and why most online estimates lead first-time speakers astray.
- · case conversion · style guides · writing
Title Case vs Sentence Case: Rules, Examples, and When to Use Each
The short version: title case capitalises major words, sentence case capitalises only the first word and proper nouns. The interesting version covers four style guides that disagree about almost everything in between.
- · readability · writing · plain language
What Is a Good Readability Score? Grade Levels and Reading Ease Explained
Readability formulas spit out a number between zero and a hundred — or a grade level between one and twenty — and the obvious next question is 'what's a good score?'. The answer depends entirely on who is reading.
- · character count · social media · SEO
Character Limits Explained: Twitter, SMS, Instagram, Meta Tags, and More
Every platform has its own character cap, and they don't count the same things. Here's the full reference — plus an explanation of why SMS messages with an emoji suddenly cost twice as much, and why your meta description might be getting truncated even though it's 'under 160 characters'.
- · lorem ipsum · typography · design history
Lorem Ipsum: 500 Years of Fake Latin
Open any design tool, hit the placeholder text button, and you'll meet a 500-year-old Latin corruption. The story of how a 45 BC essay on ethics became the universal placeholder of modern publishing involves a 16th-century typesetter, a 1960s page-layout supplement, and a long debate about whether Cicero is rolling in his grave.
- · style guides · AP style · Chicago Manual · editing
AP vs Chicago Style: The Headline Rules That Disagree
The two style guides agree more than they disagree, but their disagreements are concentrated in exactly the places working editors fight about: prepositions, hyphenation, commas, and the rules for capitalising words after a colon. Here's the working reference.
- · markdown · writing tools · documentation
Markdown vs WYSIWYG: When to Use Each (and the Hybrid Middle Ground)
The Markdown vs WYSIWYG debate isn't really a debate any more — most working writers use both, often in the same workflow. The interesting question is when each one wins, and when the new generation of hybrid editors makes the question obsolete.