A quick Medium writing tip. Many of you probably know that you can hit CTRL-A to select all of the story you’re typing, and the number of words will appear in the upper left corner of the editor next to the Medium logo. Divide the number by 250 to get a rough idea of the number of minutes to read.

However, what I learned this week is that when you select a specific block of text, the number of words in that block will appear in the upper left. This is useful when writing long-form stories to see how long your introduction is. If it is less than 150 words, it’s possible that the first main point in the body will creep into the preview. If that’s undesirable, you can lengthen your intro.