Count characters, words, sentences, and paragraphs instantly. Get reading time estimates for your text.
Word counting tools tally how many words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs are in a piece of text. The numbers seem simple — count tokens separated by whitespace — but real-world text counting has subtleties: contractions count as one word or two? Hyphenated phrases? URLs? Punctuation? Different tools answer differently, which is why writers comparing word counts across platforms sometimes see discrepancies.
This counter follows the most common conventions. Words are tokens separated by whitespace, with hyphenated phrases counted as single words. Contractions count as one word (don't = 1 word). Characters can be counted with or without spaces. Sentences are detected from terminal punctuation (.!?). Paragraphs are blocks separated by blank lines.
The tool runs in your browser as you type or paste. Counts update in real time. No data is uploaded; the text stays in your browser tab.
Many writing tasks have explicit word count targets: blog posts (typically 800-2000 words for SEO), articles for publication (varies by outlet), academic essays (specified by instructors), book chapters, social media posts (Twitter character limits, LinkedIn post norms). Hitting the target requires knowing the count.
Word count also serves as a writing pace metric. Tracking words written per session, per day, or per project supports productivity goals. NaNoWriMo's 1,667-words-per-day pace, professional content writing quotas, and personal writing goals all depend on accurate counting.
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Word tokenization: split on whitespace (any combination of space, tab, newline). Each non-empty token counts as one word. Hyphenated phrases (state-of-the-art) are typically counted as one word; em-dashes and en-dashes treated as separators.
Character counting: with-spaces is the total length including whitespace. Without-spaces excludes spaces, tabs, and newlines. Both are useful in different contexts (Twitter counts code points; SMS counts something more like characters-without-spaces).
Sentence detection: terminal punctuation followed by whitespace and a capital letter typically marks a sentence boundary. Edge cases include abbreviations (Dr. Smith said.) and ellipses; perfect detection requires more sophisticated parsing.