Answer timer
Measure your own speaking rate, then paste an answer and see how many seconds it takes at that rate, beside the targets that guides give.
This page does arithmetic on counts you give it: words and seconds. It does not listen to you or judge an answer. Your main points uses it to time a main point and Practice answers to time practice answers.
1. Measure your rate
Record yourself answering a prompt for one minute, turn the recording into text (speech-to-text on your phone is fine) and count the words. Repeat with two or three different prompts, because rate changes with topic and with nerves. Enter one recording below at a time. Baruch College's Tools for Clear Speech page describes this method; its formula is words divided by minutes.
2. Time an answer
Published targets, and what each one measures
| Target | What it measures | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 5 to 15 seconds | The ideal length of an aired soundbite, the clip a producer picks | NPR Training, Soundbite essentials (2026) |
| 8 to 15 seconds | What AAAS calls a typical sound bite on TV or radio | AAAS Communication Toolkit, TV and radio tips (2022) |
| 20 seconds or less | Answers for recorded TV or radio | University of Florida IFAS Extension, Media Interview Skills |
| 30 seconds and under 90 words | The key point, first, in a spokesperson's answer | CDC, Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication manual, Spokesperson chapter (2014) |
| 9 seconds or 27 words | One practitioner's limit for a key message in a message map | Covello, Message Mapping (an archived EPA document with no cited basis for its numbers) |
| 8.9 seconds; 4.2 for ordinary voters | Average sound bite in 1988 network presidential election coverage. History, not today's local news. | Hallin, Sound Bite Democracy (1992) |
The targets measure different things. A producer's choice of an aired clip is not a rule for what you say, and none of these figures is a standard that you can fail.
Assumptions behind the numbers
- Seconds = words divided by your rate, times 60. A word is anything between spaces.
- The 150 words a minute figure is the National Center for Voice and Speech's round number for English speakers in the United States, with no stated measurement conditions. Measured American phone conversation ran 164 to 236 words a minute in a 2006 study, depending on how pauses were counted. Measure your own rate with the first tool.
- The 180 words a minute line is the rate that the 27-word, 9-second rule and the 90-word, 30-second rule imply. It is a practitioner's convention, not a measurement.
- Targets are published guidance for different things: an aired soundbite, a recorded answer, a key point. The page shows what each measures and does not say whether your answer is too long.
The timer counts words and divides by a rate. It does not hear pauses, nerves or emphasis, so your spoken answer will differ from the number. A short answer is not a better answer: it can leave out the fact a reporter needs. Practice answers explains how to check a recording.