How to use the online word counter
The word counter tool is free, needs no sign-up and gives you a word count online without installing anything:
- Paste your text into the box, or start typing. Any copy and paste source works: Google Docs, Word, an email, a web page or a PDF.
- Read the totals beside the box. Words and characters are on top; sentences, paragraphs, average sentence length, reading time, speaking time and pages are below.
- Keep editing. Every number changes as you type, so you can trim a draft down to a word limit and watch the count fall.
- Press Clear when you are done. The draft is kept only in this browser’s local storage until you clear it.
What this word count checker counts
Word count tools do not all agree on edge cases, so here are the exact rules used on this site:
- Words: text between spaces, tabs, line breaks or an em dash (—) that contains at least one letter or digit. Numbers like 2025, e-mail addresses and links count as one word each. In Chinese and Japanese text, which has no spaces, each character counts as one word.
- Characters: every character you see, including spaces and line breaks. An emoji such as 👍🏽 is one character even though it is stored as several code points. “Characters (no spaces)” leaves out spaces, tabs and line breaks.
- Sentences: text ending in a period, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis followed by a space. Titles and abbreviations such as Mr., Dr. and e.g. do not end a sentence, and a line without end punctuation, like a heading, is its own sentence.
- Paragraphs: blocks of text separated by a line break. Empty lines are ignored.
Because of these choices, the result can differ by a word or two from another text counter, usually around dashes, slashes or symbols.
Reading time, speaking time and pages
Reading time uses 238 words per minute, the average silent reading rate for adult English non-fiction in a meta-analysis of 190 studies (Brysbaert, 2019). Speaking time uses 160 words per minute, the middle of the 130–190 words per minute that Reynolds and Givens (2001) describe as the average speaking range. The page estimate assumes 12 pt Times New Roman, 1-inch margins and double spacing, about 250 words per page; that is a common rule of thumb, not a standard.
For your own reading pace use the reading time calculator, for a speech the speech time calculator, and for other fonts or spacing the words to pages converter.
Worked example
Paste this short text into the essay word counter:
Our team’s well-known report is due on Friday. Can we finish it?
Yes—if we start today.
The counter reports:
- 17 words: “team’s” and “well-known” are one word each, and the em dash splits “Yes” and “if”.
- 88 characters, including 14 spaces and the 2 line breaks, and 72 characters without spaces.
- 3 sentences and 2 paragraphs (the blank line is not counted).
How many words do I have? Tips for word limits
- Check what your limit includes. Many assignments exclude the title, reference list or footnotes; paste only the parts that count.
- Watch the average words per sentence. If it is high, splitting long sentences is often the quickest way to cut words and make the text easier to read. The sentence counter lists your longest sentences.
- Need characters instead of words, for a tweet or a form field? Use the character counter, which also shows X, Instagram and SMS limits.