What Stop Words Tell You About Your Writing
Paste your text and this tool counts stop words — the common function words like the, and, of, to — reports what percentage of your writing they make up, and lists which you use most.
Stop words are not bad. They are the connective tissue of English and you cannot write without them. What the percentage tells you is roughly how much of your text is structure versus substance, which is a crude but genuinely useful conciseness signal.
What counts as a stop word
There is no single official list. Stop words are conventionally the highest-frequency function words in a language: articles (the, a, an), prepositions (of, to, in, on), conjunctions (and, but, or), pronouns (it, they, we), and common auxiliary verbs (is, are, was, have).
Different tools use different lists, so percentages are not directly comparable between them. This tool uses a list of around 130 common English function words, which is a middle-of-the-road choice — some lists run to several hundred, others to a few dozen.
The label “stop word” comes from search engine history, where these words were literally stopped from being indexed to save space. That is no longer how search works, which is the source of most of the outdated advice about them.
Reading the percentage
- Under 30% — concise, possibly terse. Common in technical writing and lists.
- 30–40% — typical for clear web writing and general prose.
- 40–50% — wordier than average. Worth checking for padding.
- Over 50% — a lot of structure carrying not much content. Usually indicates hedging and filler.
Why a high percentage usually means padding
Padded writing is characteristically full of function words, because padding is made of them. Phrases like “it is important to note that”, “in order to”, “there are a number of” and “due to the fact that” are almost entirely stop words carrying almost no information.
Cutting them is the single easiest way to tighten prose. “In order to” becomes “to”. “Due to the fact that” becomes “because”. “There are a number of options available” becomes “several options exist”, or better, name them.
The percentage is a signal to look, not a target to hit. Writing deliberately to lower it produces the opposite problem — clipped, telegraphic prose that is harder to read than what you started with.
Stop words and SEO
Older SEO advice said to strip stop words from titles, URLs and headings. That advice is obsolete. Google processes full natural language and uses stop words to understand meaning — removing them from a title makes it read badly for humans and gains nothing.
In some contexts they are essential to meaning. “How to make bread” and “make bread” are different queries with different intents. Stripping “how to” from a title targeting the first one is actively harmful.
The one place trimming still makes sense is URL slugs, where shorter is genuinely better for readability and sharing. /best-running-shoes-beginners reads fine without its articles — the URL Slug Generator handles that conversion.
Which stop words to look at
The list of your most-used stop words is often more actionable than the percentage. A very high count for “that” usually means many of them can be deleted outright — English drops “that” after most verbs without losing anything.
Heavy use of “is”, “are” and “was” often signals passive constructions or weak verb choices. “The results were analysed by the team” carries more function words and less energy than “the team analysed the results”.
A high count for “very”, “really” or “quite” — where your list includes intensifiers — usually means the adjectives they modify could be stronger words instead.
Related checks
Sentence length is the other main conciseness signal. The Sentence Counter reports your average words per sentence, and long sentences plus a high stop-word percentage together is a reliable indicator of padding.
For which content words you lean on, the Word Frequency Counter ranks everything with stop words filtered out, and the N-gram Analyzer catches repeated filler constructions like “it is important to” as whole phrases.
Frequently asked questions
Should I remove stop words from my content?
No. They are necessary for readable English and Google processes them as part of understanding meaning. What is worth removing is padded phrasing built from them — “in order to”, “due to the fact that” — not the words themselves.
Do stop words hurt SEO?
No. That advice is obsolete. Search engines once excluded them from indexes to save space, but modern systems use them to understand meaning. “How to make bread” and “make bread” are genuinely different queries.
What is a normal stop word percentage?
Around 30–40% for clear web writing. Below 30% is concise and sometimes terse; above 50% usually indicates hedging and filler. Treat it as a prompt to reread rather than a number to optimise.
Should I remove stop words from URLs?
Often yes, but for readability rather than SEO. Shorter slugs are easier to read and share. /best-running-shoes-beginners works fine without its articles.
Why do different tools give different percentages?
There is no official stop word list. Different tools use lists ranging from a few dozen words to several hundred, so percentages are not comparable between them. Compare your own texts against each other instead.