complete.tools

Duplicate Word Finder

Identify recurring words in your prose to improve writing quality and reduce repetition.

What this tool does

Identify recurring words in your prose to improve writing quality and reduce repetition. You fill in these fields: Your text. It shows words that appear more than once, words in the text, different words, extra repeats, and same word twice in a row, plus a table (repeated words, most frequent first).

Inputs

  • Your text: Longer text, up to 100000 characters.

How to use

  1. Type your text.
  2. Read the result: words that appear more than once, words in the text, different words, extra repeats, and same word twice in a row, plus a table (repeated words, most frequent first). It appears once every required field has a valid value.

Worked examples

Example 1. Inputs:

  • Your text: "The cat saw the cat. The dog barked at the cat!"

Results:

  • Words that appear more than once: 2
  • Words in the text: 11
  • Different words: 6
  • Extra repeats: 5
  • Same word twice in a row: 0
  • Repeated words, most frequent first, row 1 of 2: Word the; Times 4; Share of all words 36.4%
  • Repeated words, most frequent first, row 2 of 2: Word cat; Times 3; Share of all words 27.3%

How this is worked out: Words (case ignored, edge punctuation dropped): the cat saw the cat the dog barked at the cat = 11. the appears 4 times (The, the, The, the), cat 3, saw 1, dog 1, barked 1, at 1, so 6 different words and 2 repeated. Extra repeats = (4 - 1) + (3 - 1) = 5. No two neighbours are equal. Share of the = 4 / 11 * 100 = 36.3636.

Example 2. Inputs:

  • Your text: "I think that that is right. Really really right"

Results:

  • Words that appear more than once: 3
  • Words in the text: 9
  • Different words: 6
  • Extra repeats: 3
  • Same word twice in a row: 2
  • Note: A word is directly followed by the same word, as in "that that". Check whether it is a typing slip.
  • Repeated words, most frequent first, row 1 of 3: Word really; Times 2; Share of all words 22.2%
  • Repeated words, most frequent first, row 2 of 3: Word right; Times 2; Share of all words 22.2%
  • Repeated words, most frequent first, row 3 of 3: Word that; Times 2; Share of all words 22.2%

How this is worked out: Words: I think that that is right Really really right = 9. Counts: i 1, think 1, that 2, is 1, right 2, really 2, so 6 different, 3 repeated, extra repeats 1 + 1 + 1 = 3. Neighbouring equal pairs: that that, Really really = 2. Ties of 2 are listed in alphabetical order: really, right, that.

Example 3. Inputs:

  • Your text: "one two three"

Results:

  • Words that appear more than once: 0
  • Words in the text: 3
  • Different words: 3
  • Extra repeats: 0
  • Same word twice in a row: 0

How this is worked out: Three different words, none repeated: 3 words, 3 different, 0 repeated.

Example 4. Inputs:

  • Your text: "Stop. Stop! -- stop"

Results:

  • Words that appear more than once: 1
  • Words in the text: 3
  • Different words: 1
  • Extra repeats: 2
  • Same word twice in a row: 2
  • Note: A word is directly followed by the same word, as in "that that". Check whether it is a typing slip.
  • Repeated words, most frequent first, row 1 of 1: Word stop; Times 3; Share of all words 100.0%

How this is worked out: The lone -- holds no letter or number, so it is not a word. Words: Stop, Stop, stop = 3, all the same word once case is ignored: 1 different word, 1 repeated, extra repeats 3 - 1 = 2. Punctuation between words is ignored, so both neighbouring pairs count as the same word twice in a row = 2. Share = 3 / 3 * 100 = 100.

Limitations

  • Every word is counted, including small common words such as the and of. There is no stop-word list.
  • Only exact repeats are found. Different forms of a word, such as run and running, count as different words.
  • Words are separated by spaces and line breaks only. Words joined by a hyphen, a slash or a full stop with no space, such as well-known or and/or, count as one word.
  • Chinese, Japanese, Thai and similar text is split into words by the browser's dictionary, which is an estimate.

FAQs

Q: Does it care about capital letters?
A: No. The, the and THE count as the same word.
Q: What counts as a word?
A: Anything between spaces that contains a letter or a number, with punctuation at its ends removed. So don't and well-known are one word each.
Q: Why are small words like the and of listed?
A: The tool counts every word and does not skip common ones. Look at the Times column to decide which repeats matter.
Q: What is the count of the same word twice in a row?
A: The number of places where a word is directly followed by the same word, such as the the. Punctuation between the two is ignored, so right. Right is counted as well. These are often typing slips.
Q: What does Extra repeats mean?
A: For each repeated word, the number of times it appears after the first, added up. A word used four times adds three.

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