Measure the lexical density of prose

Estimate how much of a passage consists of content words.

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ToolLexical Density Analyser
Input
Output
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Preview

How it works

Tokens are classified as content words or grammatical function words, then the number of distinct or content tokens is divided by total token count according to the selected density definition. Lemmatization and treatment of names change the measured result.

  • The ratio normalizes content presence across texts of different lengths.

Worked example

A well-known pangram
"the" (twice) and "over" are function words, the rest are content words
Input
											The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Output
												"the" - function word, appears 2 times
"over" - function word, appears 1 time

When to use this

Readability studies, language learning, and summary editing measure lexical density.

Edge cases

  • A technical proper noun can count as one type or many surface tokens.
  • Hyphenated compounds need a consistent tokenization rule.
  • Very short text produces unstable ratios.