Stocks are typically listed with their yield as one of the statistics. The yield is a measure of what percentage of the current price is handed out each year in dividends.
So a stock priced at 100 doller-pounds and a yield of five percent could be expected to hand a stockholder 5 doller-pounds a year.
Obviously, this is an instantaneous snapshot, based on the price now and the dividend then, trying to give an idea of something that might be expected to happen in the future. So it's by no means any kind of guarantee; it is, however, an easy starting place before looking deeper into the stock to see if you really could expect a good yield going into the future.
