How to Use the Duplicate Word Finder
Paste or type your writing into the input box. The Duplicate Word Finder checks the text as you edit it, highlights repeated words in the full passage, and lists each duplicate with its occurrence count. Matching colors make it easier to see where each repeated word appears.
- Enter or paste text into the input box.
- Review the highlighted passage and duplicate-word list. Copy the plain-text list when you need to reuse the duplicate words without their counts.
- Use Ignore capitalization to combine uppercase and lowercase versions.
- Turn on Ignore common words to exclude the exact words listed in its information popup.
- Select Clear to remove the text and begin again.
What Does the Duplicate Word Finder Check?
The tool looks for words that appear more than once in the text. It highlights the occurrences of each repeated word and assigns each duplicate word a color. Punctuation around a word does not need to match for the word to be recognized again. For example, “draft,” and “draft.” are both instances of “draft.”
By default, capitalization is ignored, so “Draft,” “draft,” and “DRAFT” are grouped together. Turn off Ignore capitalization if you want differently capitalized forms to be treated as separate words. Repeated words next to each other, such as “the the,” can also be found.
The scanner treats sequences of letters and numbers as words and keeps straight or curly apostrophes inside contractions, so “don't” stays one word. Punctuation, spaces, and line breaks separate tokens but are not part of a match. It compares exact word forms: “write,” “writes,” and “writing” are separate results. Use the Word Frequency Counter when you want a count for every word, including words that appear only once.
Understanding the Duplicate Word Results
The highlighted text keeps your original passage readable while color-coding each repeated word. Use the separate plain-text list below the results to copy duplicate words without their counts.
- Words Scanned is the number of words analyzed in the text.
- Duplicate Words is the number of distinct words that appear more than once.
- Extra Occurrences counts each repeat after a word’s first appearance.
For example, if “draft” appears three times, it is one duplicate word and contributes two extra occurrences. This distinction helps show both how many different words repeat and how many repeat instances appear overall.
Ignore Common Words
Common words such as “the,” “and,” and “of” appear often in ordinary writing. Turn on Ignore common words to leave the tool’s built-in English common-word list out of the duplicate results. Select the (i) information button beside the option to view every excluded word. The filter only affects which duplicate words are reported; the Words Scanned metric still includes all detected words.
The common-word filter is optional. Leave it off when you want to find every repeated word, including short function words, or turn it on when you want the results to focus on less frequent vocabulary.
When to Check for Repeated Words
Repeated words are not always mistakes. Writers use repetition for emphasis, rhythm, clarity, and consistency. A duplicate finder is useful during proofreading because it draws attention to repeated wording, especially in a long essay, article, report, email, or story. Review the highlighted passage and decide whether each repetition is intentional before changing your draft. It can be especially helpful after a substantial revision, when an earlier version of a sentence may have left an extra word behind. For web copy, a frequency count alone does not show whether a keyword is overused; read each occurrence in context and decide whether the wording sounds natural and helps the reader.
How to Review Duplicate Words in Context
Use the color highlights and occurrence counts together. The count shows how often a word appears, while the highlighted passage shows where it appears and how close the occurrences are to one another.
- Read the sentence and nearby paragraph for each highlighted word.
- Keep repetition that is deliberate, clarifies a point, or keeps an important term consistent.
- If a repetition is accidental, remove redundant wording, combine sentences, or revise the phrasing. Use a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning.
- Run the checker again after editing and read the revised passage for clarity.
Checking Words and Duplicate Lines
This tool highlights repeated word forms inside prose and leaves your text unchanged. If you want to remove entire repeated entries from a pasted list, use the Remove Duplicate Lines tool. It checks repeated lines rather than repeated words within sentences.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the finder detect words repeated right next to each other?
Yes. If a sentence contains “the the,” the repeated word is included in the results unless the common-word filter is turned on.
Does capitalization affect the results?
Ignore capitalization is on by default. Turn it off to treat differently capitalized forms as separate words.
Does it group plurals, verb forms, or synonyms?
No. The finder checks exact word forms, so “book” and “books,” or “begin” and “start,” are separate results. Ignore capitalization combines different letter cases, but it does not combine related words.
Which common words does the filter exclude?
The information popup beside Ignore common words lists the exact words. The list is built into the tool and does not change based on the text you enter.
Can I copy the duplicate words without their counts?
Yes. A comma-separated plain-text list appears below the color-coded results. Select Copy Words to copy the duplicate words without the occurrence counts shown in the color-coded list.
Can it find repeated phrases?
This page checks individual words, not multi-word sequences. To count repeated phrases such as “in addition to,” use the Phrase Frequency Counter.
Does the finder automatically correct my writing?
No. It highlights and lists repeated words without rewriting your original text, so you can decide which changes make sense for your meaning and style.
Is my text stored or uploaded?
The duplicate-word check runs in your browser. The text you enter is not sent to a server for analysis.