Word Counter
Paste or type: words, characters, sentences and paragraphs update as you go. Reading time is calculated at 200 words a minute.
What the numbers mean
The counter uses one consistent rule set, so the same text always produces the same numbers:
- Words are runs of letters or digits. Internal apostrophes and hyphens stay attached, so don't and well-known each count as one word.
- Characters count every character, including spaces and line breaks. The "no spaces" figure strips all whitespace, which is the number some forms and databases actually check.
- Sentences are the non-empty pieces between full stops, question marks and exclamation marks. A heading without punctuation counts as a sentence.
- Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line. Single line breaks inside a block do not start a new paragraph.
Reading and speaking time
Reading time uses 200 words per minute, a common average for adult silent reading of ordinary prose. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, roughly a comfortable presentation pace. Both are estimates: technical text, numbers and names slow readers down, and a practised speaker can hold 150 words a minute.
For a 1,000-word article, that is about 5 minutes of reading and 7 minutes 40 seconds of speaking. The tool prints the arithmetic for whatever you paste.
Why the two character counts differ
A 280-character tweet limit counts spaces. A database column might count bytes, not characters. A meta description is usually measured in pixels by search engines, not characters, even though the tools show a character count.
The rule of thumb: if a platform says "characters", it almost always includes spaces; if it says "letters", it probably means only alphabetic characters. When a form rejects text that your counter says fits, check whether it counts bytes: an emoji or an accented letter can take two or more.
What this counter does not handle well
- Chinese, Japanese and Korean text. These languages do not put spaces between words, so the word count is meaningless; use the character count, which is how those platforms measure length.
- Emoji. One emoji can be several Unicode code points. The character count sees code units, not visible glyphs, so it may report a higher number than a social platform does.
- Hyphenated compounds. Kept as one word here; some word processors split them. Neither is wrong, but the numbers will differ.
- Numbers and symbols. "2026" counts as a word. A standalone "&" does not, because it is not a letter or digit.
On word-count targets. An essay limit of 2,000 words is usually checked by a person, not a script, and going 3% over rarely matters. The counter is most useful for trimming, not for hitting an exact number.
Questions
Does the counter send my text anywhere?
No. Everything runs in this page: the script reads the textarea, computes the numbers and writes them back. There is no request, no storage and no account.
Why is my word processor's count different?
Word processors usually split hyphenated words and count some symbols differently. A 1–2% difference between two counters is normal and rarely worth chasing.
How accurate is the reading time?
Within a minute or so for ordinary prose. It assumes a steady 200 words a minute with no re-reading; dense technical material can take twice as long.
Can I count a whole book?
The tool handles long text, but the browser has to keep it in memory. For files over a few megabytes, count chapter by chapter. Pasting 100,000 words is fine on a desktop; it may be slow on an old phone.