Most people use word counters exactly once per piece of writing: right at the end, to check they've hit the minimum. That's fine, but it's leaving a lot on the table. Word count, when you actually pay attention to it throughout the process, tells you things about your writing that are hard to see from inside it.
I started tracking word count per section rather than just per article, and it completely changed how I structure longer pieces. Here's what I mean.
What the total count is actually telling you
Reading speed for most adults in comfortable conditions sits around 230-250 words per minute for normal prose. That means a 1,200-word post is about a five-minute read. A 2,500-word piece is roughly ten minutes.
Whether that's the right length depends on what you're writing and who's reading it. A general-audience blog post? Most people won't finish much beyond 1,500 words unless you've really got their attention. A technical tutorial where someone is actively following along? Length becomes less of a barrier because they're engaged in doing something, not just reading.
What word count can't tell you is whether those words are doing useful work. A padded 1,200-word post is worse than a tight 900-word one. Don't write toward a number. Write what the piece needs and then check whether the number makes sense.
Sentence length as a readability check
Here's a quick test: paste your draft into a word counter that shows average sentence length. If the average is over 25 words, your readers are probably working harder than they need to.
Long sentences aren't always wrong - sometimes a thought genuinely needs that much space. But consistently long sentences are usually a sign of over-qualification. You're hedging too much, adding caveats that don't earn their place, stacking clauses that could be separate sentences.
Short sentences land harder. They rest the eye. Mix them in.
Using counts to spot structural imbalance
This is the one that really changed things for me. If you're writing a piece with five sections and one of them is three times longer than the others, that's a signal. Either that section needs to be its own piece, or it's full of material that doesn't need to be there.
Before you write, rough out how many words each section should have. If the whole piece is 1,500 words and you have five sections, that's about 300 words each (minus intro and conclusion). When you're done, check whether the actual distribution matches the intended one. Big deviations usually mean something is off.
When you have to cut
Cutting to a specific word count is one of the most useful skills in writing. The trick is to not go line by line looking for things to shorten - that's slow and it makes you reluctant to cut things you spent time writing.
Instead, go structural first. Is there a whole section that's doing less work than the others? A paragraph that makes the same point as the one before it? An example you could drop without weakening the argument? Cutting structure is faster and more effective than trimming sentences.
Once you've made the structural cuts, then go sentence by sentence. Every sentence that exists only to link two other sentences is a candidate. Every adverb modifying a strong verb is a candidate. 'Very quickly' can usually be 'fast.'