I was looking for a lightweight, shortcode-free plugin to re-implement estimated reading time information for all of our articles. I found the solution in nigauri’s “Insert Estimated Reading Time” plugin. Despite not having been updated in three years, there are no recorded code errors and it has no effect on page loading time. It is perfect but for one issue – the plugin is Japanese and counts characters per minute instead of words. Makeshift solution? 1600 characters per minute produces estimated reading time estimates for my article that are almost identical to the word-based estimates I studied. (Shh – don’t tell anyone.)