Word Repetition Checker
Paste your writing to find words that come back too soon — argue followed by argued a line later, engagement three times in two sentences. Each repeated word gets its own colour, with the distance to its last use, and you decide how close counts as too close. Free, no sign-up.
Runs entirely in your browser — your text is never uploaded.
Key terms you repeat on purpose, separated by commas. Other forms of a word are ignored too.
Paste or type some text to see which words come back too soon after their last use.
How to Use the Word Repetition Checker
- Paste your text. Anything from a paragraph to a full paper; the results update as you type.
- Set the distance. By default a word is flagged when it returns within 30 words, or anywhere in the same sentence. Narrow the window to catch only the closest echoes, or widen it for a stricter pass.
- Exclude your key terms. Type the words you repeat on purpose — participants, anxiety — into the ignore box. Other forms of each word are ignored with it.
- Revise the echoes that add nothing. Each colour is one word; hover to see how many words separate it from its echo, and use the table to see which words repeat most.
What Counts as an Echo
An echo is the same content word used again before the reader has stopped hearing the first one. The checker treats the forms of a word as one — argue, argues, argued and arguing — by stripping inflections (-s, -ed, -ing) the way the first steps of Martin Porter's stemming algorithm do. It stops before Porter's later steps, which would merge different words, so general and generate stay apart, as do argue and argument. Function words and the most generic verbs (the, which, have, make) are never flagged, and a capitalized word in mid-sentence is treated as a name.
It is not a frequency count. A word used ten times across ten pages is not an echo; the Word Frequency Counter is the tool for whole-text totals. Nor does it look for a word typed twice in a row (the the) — that is a typo, and the Grammar Checker catches it.
Repetition That Helps, and Repetition That Doesn't
Academic writing repeats more than other prose, and should. If your paper is about engagement, calling it involvement in one sentence and participation in the next makes a reader wonder whether you mean three different things. H. W. Fowler named that habit elegant variation, and it does more damage than the repetition it avoids. Keep key terms constant.
The echoes worth fixing are the incidental ones: a verb or an adjective that comes back because it was the first word to hand. Swap it for a more precise word, merge the two sentences, or use a pronoun where the reference is clear. In the Try an example paragraph, the checker finds 11 echoes across 7 words at the default settings. Most involve engagement, students and feedback — the study's key terms, which belong in the ignore box. The two worth rewriting are argue and reported:
Before
Several of these studies argue, however, that engagement depends less on the platform than on how often instructors interact with students. In our survey, students who reported frequent feedback also reported higher engagement.
After
Several of these studies contend, however, that engagement depends less on the platform than on how often instructors interact with students. In our survey, students who received frequent feedback also reported higher engagement.
Engagement and students still appear twice, and should: they are what the study is about.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How close is too close for repeated words?
- There is no fixed rule. A content word repeated within the same sentence or the next one is usually noticeable; much further apart, most readers will not hear the echo. The checker defaults to 30 words or the same sentence — change the window to see closer or wider echoes.
- Is it bad to repeat words in an essay?
- Not when the word is a key term. Repeating participants or anxiety keeps your meaning exact, while swapping in synonyms can suggest you mean something different. Repetition is a problem when it is incidental — the same ordinary verb or adjective used again because it was the first to come to mind.
- Does the checker count different forms of a word?
- Yes. Argue, argues, argued and arguing count as one word, and so do study and studies. Words built with a different suffix are treated as different words, so argue and argument are not matched.
- How is this different from a word frequency counter?
- A frequency counter totals each word across the whole text. This checker measures distance: it flags a word only when it comes back within the window you set, so ten uses spread over ten pages are fine and two uses six words apart are not.
- Why aren't words like “the” or “make” flagged?
- They are function words or very general verbs that nearly every sentence needs, so repeating them is not something a reader notices. The checker looks only at content words, and it skips names — capitalized words in mid-sentence — for the same reason.
- Does my text leave my computer?
- No. The checker runs entirely in your browser, and nothing you paste is uploaded or stored.