Customers often ask me this question. Their text is ready and they’re wondering how long it will be once recorded.

Generally speaking, we calculate that a narration has a rate of approximately 150 words a minute.

Of course, we’re talking about an average.

A script for a 15- or 30-second commercial could be narrated much faster than a highly technical e-learning (online learning) project requiring a more measured narration to support learning.

Voice-over (or off-screen voice) is not an exact science, but as a general rule of thumb, we use 150 words per minute.

And in general, this is how the length of a narration is assessed all over the world.

A 300-word text will therefore take approximately 2 minutes,

a 450-word text will take 3 minutes, etc.!

(For long texts, such as audiobooks, this gives 9,000 words per hour.)

And of course, to find out quickly how many words are in your text, you stick them in Word, if you haven’t already done so, and at the bottom of the page on the left of your document, Word tells you the number of words. Thanks Word!

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Website of Yves Amyot’s recording studio. Narrator, off-screen voice, voice-over, narration.