Word Counter

Word Counter counts the words, characters, sentences and paragraphs in any text, and estimates its reading time, live as you type or paste. It suits students checking an essay against a word limit, writers trimming a post to fit a character cap, and anyone who wants to know how long a speech or article takes to read. It follows the Unicode rules for text, so emoji, accented letters and Chinese or Japanese text are counted the way a reader sees them.

How to use

1. Type into the box, or paste text copied from a document, an email or a web page.
2. Read the six counts under the box. They change with every letter you add or delete, so you can edit until you reach the length you need.
3. Compare the two character counts: one includes spaces and line breaks, the other leaves them out, which is what some forms and social networks limit.
4. Press Clear text to empty the box and start again with a new piece of writing.

Examples

Paste this short passage into the box:

The river rose overnight. By morning, the old bridge was gone.

Nobody was hurt.

The counts read 14 words, 80 characters, 66 characters without spaces, 3 sentences, 2 paragraphs and a reading time of 4 sec. Notice that the blank line is what makes the second paragraph, and that the comma after morning does not end a sentence. A hyphenated word such as well-known counts once, and a number such as 3.14 is one word.

Limits

Reading time is an estimate at 238 words per minute, an average for adults reading English silently. Reading aloud is slower, and people read Chinese or Japanese at a different pace, so treat the time as a guide. Word boundaries in Chinese, Japanese and Thai come from the dictionary built into your browser, so two browsers can disagree by a word or two on the same text. A line break ends a sentence, so a heading or a list item on its own line counts as one. Emoji and punctuation are characters but never words. A very long text, such as a whole book, is counted in the background, and its counts can take a moment to settle after you stop typing.

FAQ

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. The counting runs in JavaScript inside this page, and the text you type is never sent to a server, saved or logged. You can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and it keeps working.

Does it count spaces as characters?

Both ways. The Characters figure includes spaces, tabs and line breaks, while Characters without spaces drops every kind of white space. Use whichever one the form or the limit you are writing for asks for.

How are emoji counted?

An emoji is one character, even when it is built from several code points, such as a family, a flag or a thumbs up with a skin tone. It adds nothing to the word count.

How are paragraphs counted?

A paragraph is a block of text with a blank line before and after it. Lines that follow each other directly belong to the same paragraph, and a blank line that holds only spaces still separates two.