Speech length is 130 words a minute. Four minutes is 520 words.
Plan at 130 words for every spoken minute — unhurried, pauses left in. That puts a two-minute toast at 260 words, four minutes at 520 and six at 780. Going the other way, divide your word count by 130.
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What a spoken minute is worth
A spoken minute is about 130 words at an unhurried pace, so speech length converts directly: a four-minute speech runs roughly 520 words, a two-minute toast 260, and six minutes 780. To go the other way, divide the word count by 130. Nerves push the real rate higher, which makes a script finish early.
That 130 is a planning figure, not a stopwatch reading. It's the pace of someone speaking clearly, breathing normally, and leaving a pause where the sentence asks for one. Every speech we write is built to it. Pick four minutes in the interview and the draft comes back near 520 words, because that's what four minutes holds.
We plan low on purpose. Conversation runs faster than a podium does, and a script written at conversational speed gives you more words than you can comfortably say standing up in front of people. Overrunning costs the caterer, the next speaker and the room's patience. Landing a little early costs nothing.
Words at every speech length
Find your slot on the left and read across. The second column is the number to write to.
| Length | Words at 130 wpm | What fits at that length | Typical occasion |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 minute | 130 | One line of setup and a toast. No story survives this. | A quick thank-you, or the fourth speaker in a running order |
| 2 minutes | 260 | A hook, one short story, a toast. Nothing spare. | A rehearsal-dinner toast; a groom thanking both families |
| 3 minutes | 390 | Hook, one story with the detail left in, a line that means something, toast. | Milestone birthday — the length that interview starts at |
| 4 minutes | 520 | Hook, one strong story, a turn into what you actually think of them, toast. | Best man, maid of honour, retirement, eulogy — the common default |
| 5 minutes | 650 | Two stories, or one story that comes back at the end as a callback. | A father of the bride covering two families |
| 6 minutes | 780 | Two stories and a middle section that's allowed to breathe. | The longest we'll write; the only speaker at a small wedding |
| 7 minutes | 910 | Three stories. Most rooms notice the third one arriving. | A retirement for someone who ran the place for thirty years |
| 8 minutes | 1,040 | A structured talk rather than a toast. Needs signposting to hold. | An after-dinner address; a service where one person speaks |
| 10 minutes | 1,300 | A full address with sections. Written to be delivered, not read. | A keynote, a tribute lecture, an awards-night host |
Basis: 130 words per spoken minute, unhurried delivery with the pauses left in. Stage directions are excluded — they're stored apart from the prose and never count toward the spoken time.
Going the other way: words to minutes
You've already written something and want to know how long it runs. Divide the word count by 130.
640 ÷ 130 = 4.92 minutes → 4 min 55 sec
A 640-word draft is nearly a minute over a four-minute slot. Cut 120 words and you're at 520, which is the slot exactly.
The decimal is minutes, not seconds — 4.92 is four minutes and about 55 seconds, not four minutes and 92 of anything. Multiply the part after the point by 60 if you want it in seconds.
How long each speech should run
Every interview starts at a length chosen for the occasion, not for the speaker. You can move it, and you can move it again after you've read the draft — changing the length is one of the revision moves, like asking for warmer or funnier or more me.
| Occasion or role | Length | Words | What the room can take |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best man | 4 min | 520 | Four minutes and the room is still with you. Past six, after dinner and a bar, it isn't. |
| Maid of honour | 4 min | 520 | Same as the best man. If you're both speaking, agree lengths first — two eight-minute speeches back to back is a long sitting. |
| Father of the bride, mother of the groom, groom | 4 min | 520 | Usually earliest in the order, while people are still listening properly. Four is plenty. |
| Eulogy | 4 min | 520 | Four minutes is enough to say something true about a person. Shorter is fine, and normal, when several people are speaking or when reading aloud is hard. |
| Retirement | 4 min | 520 | Often given standing, in a room people walked into from their desks. Four minutes, then the cake. |
| Milestone birthday | 3 min | 390 | Three. It's a party, and there's rarely only one speaker. |
| Shorter, if you'd rather | 2 min | 260 | A rehearsal dinner, a second speaker, or any room that's already three speeches deep. |
| Longer, if the room is yours | 6 min | 780 | Worth it when you're the only person speaking and people came to hear it. |
Lengths offered are 2, 4 and 6 minutes; a milestone birthday starts at 3. The first six rows are the defaults each interview opens with.
Four minutes covers most of it. It's what a best man gets, what a colleague speaking at a retirement gets, and what a eulogy gets — different rooms, the same amount of time to say one thing properly. To see what 520 words actually looks like on a page, there's a full best man speech for a brother, annotated beat by beat, and a retirement speech for a colleague at the same length. Both run to exactly the count in the table.
For what goes inside those minutes, the structure guides break it down: the five beats of a best man speech, and how to write a eulogy.
How to time it properly
A word count gets you close. A stopwatch and your own mouth get you there. Six steps, in order.
- Stand up. Sitting changes your breathing and your pace. Stand where you can hold the cards at the height you'll actually hold them.
- Read it out loud. In your head doesn't count and never has. Silent reading skips the breaths, the consonants and the two or three words your mouth doesn't want to make.
- Leave the pauses in. The beat after a name is part of the speech. So is the silence before the last line. Time the version with the silence in it, not the version that gallops.
- Start the timer on the first word. Not on "right, okay". Do it twice and keep the slower run.
- Add 10% for the room. Laughter, a glass going down, someone finding a chair. A script that times at 4:00 alone in the kitchen will run nearer 4:24 with people in front of you.
- Then cut. Whole sentences, whole clauses, ideally a whole story. Trimming adjectives saves you four words and costs you the rhythm.
One thing that quietly ruins this: stage directions sitting inside the text. [pause], [look at them], [raise glass] — read a script with those inline and you'll time a speech that's longer than the one you're going to give, because you're reading words nobody hears. We store directions separately from the prose for that reason. They show up styled on the teleprompter and printed on the cue cards, and they never enter the word count.
What goes wrong at each length
Three failures, and they're not the same failure at different sizes.
It reads as a duty discharged
A 180-word speech isn't brief, it's absent. There's no room for a story, so you end up on general praise — good person, always there, will be missed — and general praise is what everyone says about everyone.
One exception. Where several people are each speaking for ninety seconds, that's the plan, and it works.
After dinner, the room goes
Eight minutes is fine at eleven in the morning in a conference room. At nine at night, after three courses, it isn't. People have been sitting a long time and the bar is open.
You can feel it happen. The laughs get shorter, then politer, then they stop.
Writing to the count, not the story
The word count is a container. It isn't a brief. Padding a 380-word speech up to 520 adds exactly the sentences a listener forgets — the ones with no detail in them.
Better to be 40 words short with one real story than on target with two half-told ones.
Counting words honestly
Three things in a speech don't obey the 130 figure, so count them apart from the prose and add their time separately.
- Names read from a list. Eight names off a card takes far longer than twelve words suggests. You slow down for a name, and you pause between them, because that's what makes it sound like you meant each one.
- The thank-yous. Applause, a laugh you have to wait out, someone passing you the microphone. None of it is in your word count and none of it is free.
- Stage directions. They're not spoken, so they're not words. Keep them out of the count or you'll cut prose you didn't need to cut.
Word processors disagree with each other on hyphenated words and numerals too, which is worth knowing before you fight your draft over eleven words. At this scale, being within twenty either way is fine.
Where 130 stops being reliable
Nerves speed people up. Alone in the kitchen you'll read somewhere near 130; standing in front of sixty people, 150 or 170 is ordinary, and you won't notice it happening while it happens. So a script you timed at your own rehearsal pace will finish early on the day. That's the failure nobody plans for — you rehearsed four minutes and you're done in three and a bit, holding a glass, deciding whether to add something. Adding something is how a good speech acquires a bad ending.
We plan at 130 anyway, and we'd rather you finished early than late. Overrunning costs other people time; landing early costs nothing and gets forgiven within a second. But 130 is a planning figure, not a promise. A speaker who waits out laughs will run long. Someone reading a eulogy who has to stop and start will run long too, and that's fine — nobody in that room is timing you. If you want a number that holds to the second, there isn't one, and anybody quoting you one is guessing.
What the $24 buys here is the pace timer in the teleprompter, which tells you whether you're ahead or behind while you're speaking rather than afterwards. What's included at $24 lists the rest of it.
Common questions
How many words is a 5 minute speech?
About 650 words, at 130 words per spoken minute.
That's enough for two stories, or for one story that comes back at the end. Five minutes suits a father of the bride with two families to cover; most other roles are better at four.
How long is 500 words spoken out loud?
Just under four minutes. 500 ÷ 130 = 3.85, which is 3 minutes 51 seconds.
Add a little if you're reading names from a list or expecting laughs, since neither runs at conversational pace.
How long should a wedding speech be?
Four minutes, or about 520 words. That's the length every wedding role in our interview starts at — best man, maid of honour, father of the bride, mother of the groom and groom.
Six is the ceiling, and only if you're the sole speaker. Three speeches at eight minutes each is twenty-four minutes of sitting between courses, and the room will find it.
How long should a eulogy be?
About four minutes, which is roughly 520 words. That's long enough to say something specific about a person rather than something general.
Shorter is fine. If several people are speaking, or if reading aloud is going to be hard, two or three minutes said properly is worth more than six read through tears. Ask whoever is leading the service what time you have.
How many words per minute do people speak?
We plan every speech at 130 words per spoken minute — a calm, unhurried public-speaking pace with the pauses left in.
Real delivery varies. Nerves commonly push a speaker to 150 or 170 without them noticing, and a slow, deliberate reading can drop below 120. Planning at 130 keeps you off the end of the schedule.
Does reading from cue cards change the timing?
A little, and mostly for the better. Cards add small pauses where you look down and find your place, so a carded delivery usually runs slightly longer than a memorised one.
Time it with the cards you'll use, in the order you'll hold them. A card you have to turn over mid-sentence is the one that costs you.
How do I make a speech shorter?
Cut a whole story, not adjectives. Going from 520 words to 260 means losing a section, not tightening every sentence by two words.
The list to cut from, in order: the second story, the setup nobody needs, the thank-yous that could be said privately, and any sentence that would be true about someone else. If you've bought a draft from us, asking for it shorter is one of the revision moves and doesn't cost anything.
Pick a length. We'll write to it.
Answer six to nine questions about the person, choose two, four or six minutes, and read a draft built to that word count — with cue cards and a pace timer that tells you whether you're ahead while you're still speaking. Most people feel weird about this. Then they read their draft.
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