# Is there a quick way to find out how many words are in a particular Wiki article? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 15, 2013, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-quick-way-to-find-out-how-many-words-are-in-a-particular-wiki-article/653060 "2013-03-15T23:33:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2013, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-quick-way-to-find-out-how-many-words-are-in-a-particular-wiki-article/653060/1 "2013-03-15T23:33:33Z")
If I’m looking at an article on Wikipedia, does the website itself give me something to click to find out info such as how many words are in the article? Or . . . If I were smarter about using computers, would I know that there is a basic function of a browser that allows me to check number of words on any web page I’m viewing (be it Wiki or whatever)? I have no grand purpose in this other than that I sometimes see an article that I think is way overblown for its subject and I want to be able to make snarky comments along the lines of “Can you believe Thing I Think Is Dumb gets a 1000 word article while Thing I Think I Wonderful only has a 348 word article?” ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2013, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-quick-way-to-find-out-how-many-words-are-in-a-particular-wiki-article/653060/2 "2013-03-15T23:39:02Z")
Cut and paste it into Word (or another word processing program) and use its word count feature. ---
**Author:** ![bienville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@bienville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bienville)\ **Post date:** [March 15, 2013, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-quick-way-to-find-out-how-many-words-are-in-a-particular-wiki-article/653060/3 "2013-03-15T23:49:31Z")
Hmmm, I guess that would be effective enough. Was kinda hoping there’d be some standard “right click” function I was too dumb to figure out, or a Wiki “Page Info” thing that I’d been staring at but unable to see. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2013, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-quick-way-to-find-out-how-many-words-are-in-a-particular-wiki-article/653060/4 "2013-03-16T00:39:04Z")
If you click on “View History”, you will find how many bytes (characters) are in the current version and in previous versions of the article. Divide by 8 to get a rough idea of how many words. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2013, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-quick-way-to-find-out-how-many-words-are-in-a-particular-wiki-article/653060/5 "2013-03-16T01:25:55Z")
If you are using Firefox, check at the Mozilla website to see if there are any plug-ins where you can do that directly from a button on your browser. My guess is that there is a word-count plug-in. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2013, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-quick-way-to-find-out-how-many-words-are-in-a-particular-wiki-article/653060/6 "2013-03-16T01:30:02Z")
Of course the length can change at any time.