Text and data

Word counter

Words, characters, sentences, reading time.

What this tool does, exactly

Type or paste, and every number updates as you go: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, unique words, reading time and speaking time. The count uses the same word rules Word and Google Docs use, and says so, because the reason people open a second counter is that the first one disagreed and did not explain why.

What counts as a word: A run of letters or digits, with the apostrophes and hyphens inside it kept: don't and well-known are one word each, 3 is a word, and a dash or an ellipsis on its own is not. That is the rule Word, Google Docs and a teacher's count use, so the numbers should agree with theirs. The browser's own word segmenter does the splitting, which is why Chinese, Japanese and Thai are counted as words rather than as one word per paragraph.
Sentences and paragraphs: A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis followed by a space or the end of the text — so 3.5 and e.g. stay inside their sentence — and a run with no terminator still counts as one. A paragraph is text between blank lines; a line is any line with something on it.
Reading and speaking time: Reading time is the word count at 238 words a minute, the median adult silent reading rate across 190 studies (Brysbaert, 2019). Speaking time is 150 words a minute, the pace of a measured speech. Both are estimates for plain prose; a technical text reads slower and a story faster.
The most used words: Ranked by how often they appear, with very short words and the commonest function words — the, and, of — left out, because a list that starts with the tells you nothing about the text. Numbers are left out for the same reason.
Where the text goes: Nowhere. The box and the counts are the same page, the counting runs in this browser tab, and there is no endpoint on this site to send anything to. You can check by going offline after the page loads and pasting again.

About this tool

Why does this count differ from another word counter?

Almost always hyphens, contractions or numbers. Some counters split well-known into two words and don't into two, and some skip numbers. This one keeps each of them as one word, which is what Word and Google Docs do. If a submission form gives a different count, its rule is the one that matters, and the notes above tell you which rule to compare against.

Does it count characters with or without spaces?

Both, side by side. Character limits on forms and social networks almost always include spaces; typesetting and translation quotes usually exclude them. Every character is counted once, including accented letters and emoji, which some counters count as two.

Can I count a Word document or a PDF?

Convert it to text first. The PDF to text tool and the Word to Markdown tool on this site both run in your browser, and their output can be pasted or dropped straight into this box. The counter itself reads plain text files only, so the count is of the words, not of the formatting around them.

How accurate is the reading time?

It is an average: 238 words a minute for silent reading of ordinary prose. A reader of technical material, a second language or a phone screen is slower; a familiar story is faster. Use it to size a piece — a two-minute read, a ten-minute talk — rather than to time a particular person.

Is anything sent anywhere?

No. The count runs in a worker inside this page and the page has no server to talk to. Nothing you type or drop leaves the device, and nothing is kept when you close the tab.

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