How to use the word counter
Type or paste your text into the box. All nine figures update with every keystroke, so you can keep this page open next to an essay, a cover letter or a product description and watch the numbers change as you edit. Copy text puts the whole text on your clipboard, and Clear empties the box so you can start again.
What each number means
- Words – the text is split at spaces, tabs and line breaks, and every piece that contains at least one letter or digit counts as one word. That means well-known, don't, 3.14 and a full web address each count once, while a dash or an ampersand standing on its own is not counted. Chinese, Japanese, Thai and other languages written without spaces are split into words with the dictionary built into your browser.
- Characters – everything in the box, including spaces and line breaks. Characters are counted the way you see them on screen, so an emoji with a skin tone such as 👍🏽, or an é typed as e plus an accent, counts as one character.
- Characters (no spaces) – the same count after removing spaces, tabs and line breaks.
- Sentences – found with your browser's sentence rules, which look for full stops, question marks and exclamation marks, including the Chinese and Japanese versions 。！？.
- Paragraphs – blocks of text separated by at least one empty line. A single line break does not start a new paragraph.
- Lines – every line in the box, empty ones included.
- Bytes (UTF-8) – how much space the text takes in UTF-8, the encoding used by almost every website and modern database. Plain English letters take 1 byte each, accented Latin letters 2, Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters 3, and most emoji 4 or more.
- Reading time and speaking time – the word count divided by 238 words per minute, a commonly used average for silent reading, and by 140 words per minute, a relaxed pace for a talk or voice-over.
Worked examples
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.– 9 words, 44 characters, 36 characters without spaces, 1 sentence and 44 bytes. Every character here is basic ASCII, so characters and bytes are equal.Hello 👍🏽 café– 2 words (an emoji is not a word), 12 characters and 20 bytes. The thumbs-up with a skin tone is built from two code points that need 8 bytes together, and é needs 2.It's a well-known fact: 3.14 is π — roughly.– 8 words. It's, well-known and 3.14 each count once, and the free-standing dash is skipped.- A 1,000-word article shows a reading time of 4 min 12 sec and a speaking time of 7 min 9 sec. Working backwards, a five-minute speech is roughly 700 words.
When each count matters
- Essays and assignments usually set a word limit. Check whether titles, footnotes and the reference list are included before you trim.
- Online application forms often limit characters instead, and they don't always say whether spaces count. The two character figures let you check both.
- Social posts, ad text and meta descriptions are limited by characters. Be aware that X (Twitter) counts each Chinese, Japanese or Korean character and each emoji as two toward its limit, so its count will be higher than the one shown here.
- Databases and APIs sometimes cap a field in bytes. Text in non-Latin scripts reaches a byte limit much sooner than its character count suggests, and the byte figure shows the real size.
- Scripts for videos, podcasts and presentations – speaking time gives a quick first estimate before you rehearse with a timer.
Tips and common pitfalls
- Abbreviations can inflate the sentence count.
Dr. Smith arrived at 3 p.m. on Monday. He left early.is counted as 3 sentences because the full stop after “Dr” looks like the end of one. Word and character counts are not affected. - Text copied from a PDF often carries a hard line break at the end of every line. These count as characters and inflate the line count; clean them up with Remove Line Breaks before counting.
- Reading speed depends heavily on the reader and the material. The times are estimates for ordinary English prose, and only a rough guide for other languages.
- If you need to change capitalisation while editing, the Case Converter does it without retyping.
FAQ
Why is my count different from Microsoft Word or Google Docs?
Every program decides slightly differently how to treat dashes, slashes, numbers, URLs and words joined by punctuation, so totals can differ by a few words in a long text. If you're working to a strict limit, stay a little under it, or use the counter of the program your teacher or editor will use.
How many words fit on one page?
With a 12-point font and normal margins, roughly 500 words single-spaced and 250 words double-spaced. Headings, lists, short paragraphs and larger fonts all lower that number.
Why does Chinese or Japanese text get an unexpected word count?
There are no spaces to show where words begin and end, so the browser divides the text with a dictionary, and different browsers and programs split some phrases differently. For these languages, the character count is usually the figure that matters.
Is the text I paste kept anywhere?
No. The counting is done by the page itself in your browser; the text is not uploaded or saved, and it is gone when you close or reload the tab. That makes the counter safe to use with unpublished drafts and application answers.