# how wide would an LP be of every word ever spoken?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 2, 2020, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375 "2020-02-02T06:59:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![curwin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@curwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curwin)\
**Post date:** [February 9, 2020, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-wide-would-an-lp-be-of-every-word-ever-spoken/847375/41 "2020-02-09T20:19:03Z")

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> [@Banksiaman](#):
>
> The OP asked for ‘every word ever spoken by a human’, and you could interpret that both ways [Every Word Once, or All Words by All Humans]. However, some of us spelled out the quantity implied by the All words-All humans version, which he seemed to be very comfortable with.
> 
> Curwin might help here by chiming in and clarifying this before we get too much more wacky mathematical minimalism.

I meant all words spoken by all humans over all time. Sorry it wasn’t more clear.

I thought it was understandable from my last sentence:

“To figure this out, we need to estimate how much the average person speaks in a day/year, how long the average person lives, and **how many “average” people have lived in history**.”

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