Word Counter

How the Word Counter works

The counter splits your text into words as you type. A word is a run of letters or digits, so punctuation on its own is not counted. Apostrophes and hyphens inside a word keep it together (don't and well-known are one word each), and so do the dots and commas inside numbers such as 3.14 or 1,000. Letters from any script count, including accented letters, Cyrillic and Arabic. Chinese and Japanese are written without spaces, so each Han or kana character counts as one word.

Characters are counted as you see them: an emoji such as a family or a flag, or a letter with a combining accent, is one character even though it is stored as several code points. Sentences end at ., ! or ? followed by a space or the end of the text; common abbreviations such as Dr., Mr., e.g. and i.e. do not end a sentence. Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by a blank line.

Reading time is the word count divided by 238 words per minute, a typical silent reading speed for adults. Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, a typical pace for a presentation. The keyword table lists the most frequent words, ignoring case, with each count as a percentage of all words. Numbers are not listed, and common English words such as "the" and "and" are left out unless you tick the option to include common words.

How to use the Word Counter

1. Type or paste your text into the text box, open a text file, or select Load example.
2. Read the statistics next to the text: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, reading time and speaking time. They update as you type.
3. Check the Keyword density table for the words you use most. Tick Include common words to also count words such as "the" and "and", and choose how many keywords to show.
4. Select Clear to start again with an empty box.

Example

This input:

The cat sat on the mat. The cat didn't move!

It's a well-known cat.

gives 14 words, 68 characters, 54 characters without spaces, 3 sentences, 2 paragraphs, 3 lines and a reading time of 4 seconds. The top keyword is cat with a count of 3 and a density of 21.4%.

Common use cases

• Checking that an essay, cover letter or assignment meets a minimum or maximum word count.
• Estimating how long a blog post takes to read or how long a speech or video script takes to say.
• Spotting words you repeat too often before publishing an article.
• Keeping product descriptions, abstracts and summaries within a word limit.

Frequently asked questions