The Outline panel of the WordPress Editor shows your page or post’s word count, character count, estimated reading time, and heading structure. This guide will show you how to view the outline of your pages and posts.
The Outline panel is part of List View in the editor. To open it, follow these steps:
- Open your page or post in the editor.
- Click on the List View icon in the top-left toolbar. The icon looks like three horizontal lines on top of each other.
- Click the Outline tab to view your page or post’s details and structure:
The Outline panel displays the current word count and character count for your page or post:
- Word count shows how many words your content contains.
- Character count shows how many characters your content contains, including spaces.
These counts update automatically as you add or remove text.
The Outline panel shows the estimated reading time for your page or post, listed as Time to read. This estimate is based on the amount of text in your content and the reading speed of an average reader.
To display the reading time to visitors on your published page, add the Time to Read block.
The Outline panel lists every heading in your page or post in order, so you can review your content’s structure at a glance. Headings with structural issues will be flagged in orange:
- Empty headings: A heading block that contains no text.
- Incorrect heading levels: A heading that skips a level, such as a Heading 2 followed by a Heading 4.
Correcting these issues keeps your content accessible and well-structured for both readers and search engines.
