How Many Words In A 5 Minute Speech

When you are writing or preparing for a speech, you come across many questions. One that is the most common one among all is how many words should a 5-minute speech have? People try to find a specific answer to this question which leads them to misunderstand as there is no specific answer to this. The explanation to this above query can only be explained by observing the delivery style of the person. The main factors that vary from person to person are the speed of delivering a speech. Some people deliver it fast and some deliver it slowly.

If a person delivers a speech slowly, he has to add more words to his or her speech as he or she will take less time to complete it. On the other hand, if a person delivers a speech fast, he or she has to keep the words less than the one who speaks slowly. Apart from this, you can guess approximate words of the speech by following some general guidelines

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General Rule:

On a general note, a speech that is 1 minute long should have approximately 100-200 words. So keeping the general rule in mind, a speech that is 5 minutes long should have 500- 1000 words in total.

How to Measure the Words Spoken In a Minute?

Different people deliver a speech at a different rate. So if you are looking for the words you will need to deliver for a 5 minutes speech, write out 650 words of your speech. You can keep as many words in a paragraph as you want. After writing up the speech, take a stopwatch, and stand in front of the mirror. Deliver the speech the way you are thinking of delivering it in front of your audience. Once you are done stop, and change the number of minutes in decimals. After converting, use the following formula to calculate the results:

Formula: Number of words% Minutes in decimals.

Let’s suppose you delivered your 650 words speech in 3.5 minutes, so to calculate the results, you will divide 650 by 3.5 minutes.

Different speech lengths at different speaking speeds:

To get a better idea of the words you will deliver in a five-minute speech, see the following results.

If you deliver and read slowly, you will better write 500 words in your speech.
If you deliver speed at an average speed then you need to write 650 words for your speech.
If you are a fast reader, you better write 800 to 1000 words for your 5-minute speech.

Wrapping Up:

So it’s clear from the above blog that number of words in a five-minute speech depends upon the person delivering the speech. The words and time do not change with the words in the paragraphs. Only your delivery style and speed can change the number of words in a 5-minute speech. Use the above formula to get an estimate of your speed and words required for your 5-minute speech.