Tools
Word counter
Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs and estimate reading time.
About this tool
Paste or type any text and you will see straight away how many words, characters, sentences and paragraphs it has. Use it to stay within the limit of an essay, a grant application or a web form, to check the length of a blog post before it goes live, or to see whether a press release has run long. It also estimates how long the text takes to read and to say out loud.
Type straight into the text box or paste from Word, Google Docs or any web page. The main figures sit at the top and update with every keystroke; underneath you get characters without spaces, lines, and reading and speaking times. Press “Copy stats” to put every figure on your clipboard, ready to drop into a report, and “Clear” to start again.
Everything is counted in your browser: the text is never uploaded or stored, so it is safe to use with confidential documents. Accented letters and words in other languages are handled properly, and stray punctuation such as dashes does not count as a word. It does not check spelling or grammar, and formatted text is counted as plain text.
How do you count the words in a text?
- Type into the text box or paste your content with Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac). Text copied from Word, Google Docs, a PDF or a web page all works.
- Look at the four main figures at the top: “Words”, “Characters”, “Sentences” and “Paragraphs”. They change with every key you press.
- Below the text you get “No spaces” (characters without spaces or line breaks), “Lines”, “Reading time” and “Speaking time”.
- Press “Copy stats” to put every figure on your clipboard, one per line, or “Clear” to empty the box.
What counts as a word, a sentence and a paragraph?
A word is an unbroken run of letters or digits. Joins made with a hyphen, an apostrophe, a middle dot or a full stop without a space do not split it: “well-known”, “don’t”, “col·legi”, “baimarketing.es” or “1.000” each count as one. Nor does a comma between digits: “3,5” is one word. Stray symbols (—, ¿, ¡, «») are not counted.
A sentence ends with a full stop, an exclamation mark, a question mark or an ellipsis, followed by a space, a closing quotation mark, a closing bracket or the end of the text. That is why “3.5” or a web address does not break a sentence. A line with no final full stop followed by a blank line, such as a heading, also counts as a sentence.
A paragraph is a block separated from the others by at least one blank line. A single line break does not start a new paragraph, but it does add to “Lines”. “Characters” includes spaces and line breaks too, and an accented letter or an ñ counts as a single character.
How are reading time and speaking time worked out?
Reading time divides the number of words by 230 per minute, an adult’s silent reading pace. Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, the pace of clear speech on radio, in a video or in a talk.
They are estimates: a technical text is read more slowly, and a presentation with pauses runs longer. They tell you whether an article is a two-minute or a ten-minute read, or whether a script fits the time you have.
If you only need one of these figures, this site has pages that show it in large type: the character counter, the sentence counter, the paragraph counter and the reading time calculator.
Frequently asked questions
How does this tool count words?
Every run of letters or digits counts as a word, including hyphenated words and contractions such as “well-known” or “don’t”. Stray symbols like a dash or a quotation mark on their own are not counted.
How many words are on a page?
It depends on font size and spacing, but a single-spaced page in 12-point type usually holds 450 to 550 words; double-spaced, roughly half that.
Will I get the same count as Microsoft Word?
For most texts the numbers match or differ only slightly. Small differences can appear with numbers, web addresses or isolated symbols, because each program uses slightly different rules.
Is my text saved anywhere?
No. It is all worked out on your device, and the text disappears when you close or reload the page.