Word Counter
Paste your text to instantly count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and estimate reading and speaking time.
Type or paste your text and instantly see words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs — with estimated reading and speaking time.
Words
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Characters
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No Spaces
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Sentences
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Paragraphs
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Lines
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Reading Time
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Speaking Time
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How to use the word counter
Paste or type any text into the editor above. Every stat — words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, lines, reading time, and speaking time — updates in real time as you type. No button click required. You can also set a word count target to track your progress with a live progress bar.
How word count is calculated
The counter splits text on whitespace and filters out empty tokens, so multiple spaces or tabs between words don't inflate the count. Punctuation attached to words is ignored. Unicode text — including emoji and non-Latin scripts — is counted correctly using Unicode-aware splitting.
Character counts come in two variants: “with spaces” counts every character including whitespace; “without spaces” counts only non-whitespace characters. Both are accurate for copy-platform limits.
Why word count matters
Word count is the most basic measure of content length, but it also predicts reading time, SEO content depth, and publishing eligibility. Blog posts under 300 words are often considered thin content by search engines. Academic papers, grant applications, and most publications have strict word limits. Knowing your count at a glance removes the guesswork.
Frequently asked questions
How does the word counter count words?
It splits text on whitespace (spaces, tabs, newlines) and counts non-empty segments. Hyphenated words like 'well-known' count as one word. Numbers count as words. Punctuation attached to a word (e.g. 'end.') is ignored — only the word itself is counted. This matches the behaviour of Google Docs and Microsoft Word.
Does it count words the same way as Microsoft Word?
Almost identically. Word also splits on whitespace and ignores punctuation. The main edge case is contractions: both tools count 'don't' as one word. The only consistent difference is that some versions of Word count footnotes and text boxes separately — this tool counts everything you paste.
What counts as a sentence?
Sentences are split on terminal punctuation: full stops, exclamation marks, and question marks. A heading or bullet point that has no terminal punctuation is treated as a single sentence. For prose, the sentence count is accurate. For structured content like bullet lists, treat the sentence count as approximate.
What counts as a paragraph?
Any block of text separated from the next block by one or more blank lines. If your text has no blank lines at all, the entire paste is counted as one paragraph.
Why does reading time vary between tools?
Different tools use different reading speed assumptions. This tool uses 238 words per minute as the average adult silent reading speed, based on a 2019 meta-analysis by Brysbaert et al. Some tools use 200 wpm (slower) or 250 wpm (faster). The Reading Time Calculator on this site lets you switch between slow, average, and fast reader speeds.
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