Duplicate Word Finder

Our brains read the meaning of a sentence rather than every word, so a repeated "the" across a line break is easy to skip, even after several proofreads. Many spell checkers ignore it too, because each word on its own is spelt correctly. These errors are common after editing, when a sentence is rearranged and an old word is left behind.

This finder flags the same word twice in a row, ignoring capitalisation, across spaces and line breaks. Words separated by punctuation, such as "that, that", are not flagged because they are sometimes intentional.

Repeating a word several times in a short passage makes writing feel flat. The Most repeated list counts every word of three or more letters, ignoring common words like "the" and "and", and ranks them by frequency.

Some repetition is right: your main topic and technical terms should stay consistent, and swapping them for synonyms can confuse readers. Focus on general words that tend to creep in, such as "great", "really", "very", "important", "thing" and "just", and on words repeated within the same paragraph.

• Cut intensifiers like "very" and "really"; choose a stronger word instead ("very big" becomes "huge").
• Vary sentence openings if several start with the same word.
• Use pronouns where the subject is already clear.
• Read aloud. Repetition you might skim past on screen is obvious when spoken.

For repeated phrases rather than single words, try the N-Gram Generator. To replace a word everywhere, use Find and Replace with whole-word matching.

Not every repeat is a mistake. Writers use repetition deliberately for rhythm and emphasis ("Location, location, location"), in speeches ("We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds"), and in a few grammatical structures where the same word legitimately appears twice:

• "had had": "She had had enough."
• "that that": "He said that that was final."
• "is is" in some spoken constructions ("The thing is, is that...") is usually best rewritten.

The finder lists every back-to-back repeat so you can decide case by case. Use Fix doubled words only after checking the list, or edit individual cases by hand.

Students proofreading essays before submission, bloggers and copywriters checking final drafts, translators reviewing machine translation (which often produces doubled words), and developers checking interface text and documentation. It is also useful for transcripts, where speech habits like "I I think" are recorded word for word.