The Words You Didn't Mean to Repeat
Run a word frequency analysis on your own writing and the results are usually uncomfortable.
Not the topic words — those are supposed to be frequent. It's the other ones. The verb you use for everything. The transitional phrase that shows up in every third paragraph. The intensifier you can't see because you've stopped noticing it.
Frequency analysis was built as an SEO tool and it isn't a good one — word counts don't determine rankings and haven't for a long time. What it's genuinely useful for is a different job entirely: showing you the writing habits you can't see because they're yours.
Reading Your Own Frequency Profile
The Keyword Density tool counts word and phrase frequency across a body of text:
- Paste your draft.
- Read the frequency list.
- Ignore the topic words — those should be there.
- Look at everything else.
Four categories are worth attention.
Filler verbs
The verbs that mean almost nothing:
use, using, make, get, do, have, provide, help, allow, enable
A high count for use usually means several sentences that could be more specific. "Use the calculator to determine your rate" versus "Enter your rate." "This allows you to configure" versus "Configure."
Not every instance needs replacing — sometimes use is the right word. But twelve instances in a thousand words is a pattern, not a series of coincidences.
Hedges
somewhat, fairly, quite, rather, generally, typically, often, usually,
may, might, could, potentially, arguably, relatively
Some hedging is honest. If a claim genuinely varies by context, saying so is accurate.
The problem is reflexive hedging — qualifying statements that don't need qualifying, out of a habit of not wanting to be wrong. A paragraph where every sentence contains "generally" or "typically" reads as though the writer isn't confident about anything, which undermines the parts where the hedge is warranted.
A high hedge count is a prompt to check each one: is this uncertainty real, or is it a verbal tic?
Intensifiers
very, really, extremely, incredibly, absolutely, highly, significantly, quite
Intensifiers usually weaken rather than strengthen. "Very important" is less forceful than "important" because the qualifier signals that "important" alone wasn't sufficient. The Mark Twain advice — substitute "damn" for "very" and let the editor delete it — remains sound.
Significantly deserves specific mention: it has a precise statistical meaning and a vague colloquial one, and using it loosely in anything data-adjacent creates ambiguity.
Sentence openers
Count the phrases that start your sentences:
However, Additionally, Furthermore, Moreover, In addition, That said,
It's worth noting, It's important to, One of the
If However opens nine sentences in a two-thousand-word piece, the reader notices even if you don't. Transitional variety isn't decoration — repeated openers make prose feel mechanical.
It's worth noting that is a particularly common one, and it's almost always deletable. If it weren't worth noting you wouldn't have written it.
Phrase-Level Repetition
Single words tell you about vocabulary. Two- and three-word phrases tell you about structure.
Look for repeated bigrams and trigrams that aren't your topic:
"in order to" → "to"
"due to the fact" → "because"
"a number of" → "several" or a real number
"it is possible to" → "you can"
"in terms of" → usually deletable
"at this point in time" → "now"
Each of these is a phrase that takes several words to do what one word does. Individually harmless; in aggregate they add substantial length without adding information.
A frequency count surfaces them because they repeat. You can't catch them by reading — they're invisible precisely because they're formulaic.
What the Numbers Mean
A few calibration points, though these vary enormously by genre and topic:
Function words dominate. the, a, to, of, and, is will always top the list. This is Zipf's law in action and tells you nothing about your writing.
Your main topic term typically appears somewhere in the low single digits as a percentage. Substantially higher and the text may be repetitive; substantially lower and you might be over-using pronouns in ways that hurt clarity.
No single content word should dominate. If one non-topic word appears more often than your actual subject, that's the finding.
Compare drafts, not against a benchmark. The useful comparison is your current draft against your previous one, or against a piece you were happy with. Absolute thresholds don't exist.
Vocabulary Range
Frequency analysis also shows you the shape of your vocabulary use.
A long tail of single-occurrence words is generally healthy — it means varied, specific language.
A short head with very high counts on a handful of content words suggests you're circling the same terminology rather than developing the idea.
Missing synonyms. If you use one term twenty times where two or three related terms would be natural, the text can feel monotonous. The counter-consideration: in technical writing, consistent terminology is a virtue. Calling the same thing a "user," a "customer," a "client" and an "account holder" in one document is worse than repeating one term.
The rule of thumb: vary your verbs and connectives; keep your nouns consistent.
Using It on Other People's Writing
Frequency analysis on published pieces you admire is a useful exercise.
Paste in a piece of writing you think works well and look at the profile. What's the hedge count? How varied are the sentence openers? What verbs do they reach for?
The comparison against your own draft is often more instructive than any style guide, because it's concrete and specific to the kind of writing you're trying to do.
Similarly, running it across several pieces of your own writing from different periods shows you which habits are persistent and which came from a particular project.
What This Isn't For
Worth being direct about the limitations.
It's not a ranking tool. Word frequency isn't a search ranking factor in any direct sense, and optimising a density percentage is wasted effort. If the term appears naturally at the rate the subject demands, that's the correct rate.
It doesn't measure quality. A well-written piece and a badly-written one on the same topic can have similar frequency profiles. The tool surfaces patterns; interpreting them requires judgement.
It can't see context. Three instances of the same word in one paragraph is repetitive; three instances spread across two thousand words isn't. Frequency counts don't show distribution.
It doesn't know your genre. Legal writing repeats defined terms deliberately. Technical documentation repeats command names. What looks like repetition in an essay is precision elsewhere.
A Practical Editing Pass
A workflow that uses this well:
1. Finish the draft. Don't run frequency analysis on something half-written.
2. Run the count. Read past the function words.
3. Pick the top three non-topic offenders. Not everything — three. Fixing everything at once produces a stilted rewrite.
4. Find each instance and decide individually. Some will be fine. Some will be lazy. The point is making the choice consciously rather than by default.
5. Re-run. Confirm you haven't just swapped one crutch for another. This happens — replacing every use with utilise is not an improvement.
6. Keep a personal list. Over a few pieces you'll notice the same words recurring. That list is more useful than any generic "words to avoid" article, because it's yours.
FAQ
What's a good keyword density? There isn't a target. Write the term as often as the subject naturally requires and ignore the percentage.
Does keyword density affect rankings? Not directly. Modern retrieval systems use far more sophisticated relevance signals than raw term frequency.
Should I remove all instances of a repeated word? No. Review each one and decide. Some repetitions are correct, particularly for technical terms where consistency aids comprehension.
What's a normal number of hedges? Depends entirely on the content. The useful question is whether each hedge represents genuine uncertainty or a reflexive habit.
Can this tool find passive voice?
Not directly, but a high count of is, was, been and by alongside past participles is a reasonable proxy.
Should nouns or verbs be more varied? Verbs and connectives benefit from variety. Nouns — especially technical terms — benefit from consistency.
The Takeaway
Word frequency analysis is a poor SEO tool and a good editing one. It shows you the words you overuse without noticing, which is precisely the category of problem that rereading your own draft can't fix. Use it after the draft is done, act on the top few findings, and build a personal list of the habits it keeps surfacing.
Analyse word and phrase frequency free with the Keyword Density tool at sadiqbd.com — no sign-up, instant results.
