So the most commonly used words tend to be shorter ones (which makes sense), and for some reason, they are even more overrepresented in spoken language and especially songs, than in written language?
I feel like your titling is a little vague, and should instead be “the length of words in written media, film and contemporary music, compared to all English words”. The current title implies a much wider scope than it actually has. 109 Oscar’s nominated films is relatively narrow and will not properly reflect actual spoken words day to day in real life.
there’s no way the entire English dictionary is normally distributed, and now way the mean/ median is near 8 chars.
I’m not going to lie, I originally thought your title meant “the length of actual time it takes to write, speak or sing a word, compared to all English words”.
Which I’m aware is a nonsense sentence, but I was still trying to figure it out. I think the words “spoken” and “sung” threw me off.
![[OC] The Lengths of Words Written, Spoken, and Sung, Compared to All English Words](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/c415nxfmu5gf1-1920x1024.jpeg)
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**Tools:**
* Python
* Adobe Illustrator
**Details:**
Scripts, sources, data, and sample test results: [paulgalea.com/projects/word_lengths/information.txt](http://paulgalea.com/projects/word_lengths/information.txt)
So the most commonly used words tend to be shorter ones (which makes sense), and for some reason, they are even more overrepresented in spoken language and especially songs, than in written language?
I feel like your titling is a little vague, and should instead be “the length of words in written media, film and contemporary music, compared to all English words”. The current title implies a much wider scope than it actually has. 109 Oscar’s nominated films is relatively narrow and will not properly reflect actual spoken words day to day in real life.
there’s no way the entire English dictionary is normally distributed, and now way the mean/ median is near 8 chars.
I’m not going to lie, I originally thought your title meant “the length of actual time it takes to write, speak or sing a word, compared to all English words”.
Which I’m aware is a nonsense sentence, but I was still trying to figure it out. I think the words “spoken” and “sung” threw me off.
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