Word and character counter

How things are counted

• Words: the text is split at spaces, tabs and line breaks. A piece counts as a word if it contains at least one letter or digit, so a lone dash or emoji is not a word, but "don't", "e-mail" and "2026" each count as one.
• Characters: every visible character, space and line break, counted the way a reader sees them. An emoji such as 👍🏽 or a letter with an accent counts as one character, even when it is stored as several code units. "Characters without spaces" leaves out spaces, tabs and line breaks.
• Sentences: text ending in . ! ? or … followed by a space or the end of the text. Abbreviations like "e.g. " can be counted as an extra sentence end.
• Paragraphs: blocks of text separated by at least one empty line.
• Lines: the number of line breaks plus one.

Reading and speaking time

Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for non-fiction in English found by a 2019 review of 190 studies (Brysbaert, Journal of Memory and Language). Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, a typical pace for a talk or presentation. Real speeds vary a lot from person to person and with how hard the text is.

Worked example

The text below has 9 words, 3 sentences and 2 paragraphs:

The quick brown fox. It jumps!

New paragraph here.

It has 51 characters including the two line breaks and spaces, and 42 without them.

FAQ

Why does my word processor give a different number?

Programs differ in how they treat dashes, numbers, web addresses and words joined by slashes. The difference is usually a few words in a long document.

Does it work for languages without spaces?

Not well for words. Chinese, Japanese and Thai do not put spaces between words, so a run of text counts as one word. Character counts are still correct.

Is my text saved?

No. It stays in this browser tab and disappears when you close or reload it.