How many words should an infographic have?
By the InfographicHQ team · · Updated
A single-image infographic should have about 170 words in the body, plus a short title and subtitle. That is enough for four to six sections of two or three points each, and it stays readable on a phone. InfographicHQ calls this the 170-word rule and uses it as its Standard length.
Why do AI images misspell words?
AI image tools can misspell words because they draw letters as part of the picture instead of typing them.
Image models draw text; they do not type it. Every letter in the body of an AI-made infographic is painted as part of the picture. The more text a model has to letter in one image, the more likely it is to drop a letter, double one or invent a word.
Where the 170-word limit comes from
About 170 words is where InfographicHQ sets its Standard limit. It is what one image holds at a size that reads on a phone, and the most our tests found an image model lettered cleanly.
In InfographicHQ's own tests while building the product, the image model we used then came back clean at about 170 words of body text and made around a dozen typos at 300. So Standard stops at 170. We have changed image model since and kept the limit, and every infographic is still proofread.
InfographicHQ's three lengths
InfographicHQ has three lengths. Short holds 20 to 70 words, Standard 80 to 170 and Detailed 170 to 240. The top of each range is the limit, and the editor counts words as you type.
| Length | Words in the body | Cards | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Short | 20 to 70 | Up to 3 | Every plan |
| Standard | 80 to 170 | Up to the layout's limit | Every plan |
| Detailed | 170 to 240 | Up to the layout's limit | Pro plan, Portrait only |
Counted: every heading, line, point and key number on a card, the closing line, and a chart's title and labels. Not counted: the title (up to 48 characters), the subtitle (up to 90), your logo and your footer. Those are set in code, not drawn, so they are spelled exactly as you typed them.
What 170 words looks like
Five sections of about 27 words each, plus a closing line, come to about 150 to 155 words.
| Part | How many | Words each | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Section headings | 5 | 3 | 15 |
| Framing lines | 5 | 6 | 30 |
| Points | 15 | 6 | 90 |
| Closing line | 1 | 15 to 20 | 15 to 20 |
| All of it | 150 to 155 |
That is a complete, useful page. What does not fit is the connective tissue of prose: "in addition", "it is important to note that", "as mentioned above". None of it is missed.
Why less text reads better anyway
An infographic is read like a poster, not an article: scanned, seen small and reshared.
- It is scanned, not read. People take in the title, then the headings, then whichever section caught their eye. Text that is not a heading or a short point is mostly skipped.
- It is seen small. In a social feed the whole image is only as wide as the phone in your hand. Text has to be large to be legible at that size, and large text means fewer words.
- White space is doing a job. The gaps between cards are what let the eye see that there are five things here rather than one grey block. Fill the gaps with words and the structure disappears.
- Short text survives resharing. Images get compressed, cropped and screenshotted. A page of large, short lines still reads afterwards; a page of small paragraphs does not.
How to cut to fit
Cut filler before you cut ideas.
- Write fragments, not sentences. "Audit existing workflows" instead of "The first step is to audit your existing workflows".
- Start every point with a verb or a noun. It forces the filler off the front of the line.
- Delete anything that repeats the heading. Under "Set Constraints", the point "Set constraints on length" wastes two words. "Specify length" says it.
- Prefer the specific to the emphatic. "Halves review time" beats "dramatically improves the review process", provided the number is one you can stand behind.
- Drop the weakest point in every section. Three points become two, and the two that remain get more attention.
- Move the rest to the caption. The post, the email or the slide the image sits in can hold the detail. The image only has to make the idea clear.
When you genuinely have more to say
Split the subject, do not shrink the text. Two focused infographics on "Planning a product launch" and "Running launch week" can each be read in one look. One crowded infographic covering both cannot. A series also gives you several posts from one piece of thinking, and each can point to the full article for readers who want everything.
On InfographicHQ's Pro plan the Detailed length holds up to 240 words, and a LinkedIn carousel puts each card on its own slide. Read more: LinkedIn carousel vs single infographic and How to turn a blog post into an infographic.
How InfographicHQ keeps the spelling right
InfographicHQ uses three safeguards: a word limit, words you can read and change before anything is drawn, and an automatic proofread of every finished infographic. If the check finds a mistake, the infographic is drawn again at our cost. No tool that draws its words can honestly promise perfect spelling every time.
Common questions
How many words is too many for an infographic?
Past about 170 words in the body, the text gets small on a phone and an AI image model is more likely to misspell it. Split the subject into two infographics instead.
