How to use the word counter
- Type into the box or paste text from any document. The figures update a tenth of a second after you stop typing, so even long texts stay responsive.
- Read the headline numbers: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and an estimated reading time.
- If you are writing to a limit, enter it as a word goal. A bar shows how far along you are and the exact percentage, which is handy for essays, abstracts and product descriptions.
- Open Most frequent words to see which terms you lean on. Common function words such as "the" and "of" are left out so the list shows the words that carry meaning.
- Use Copy to put all the figures on your clipboard as plain text, for example to paste into a submission form or a message to an editor.
Nothing you type is saved. The text lives only in this page; reloading or closing the tab clears it.
How words are counted
Counting words sounds trivial until you look at real text. The rules below are the ones this tool applies, chosen to match what most editors, publishers and submission systems expect.
Latin-script words
A word is a run of letters or digits. Apostrophes and hyphens inside a word do not split it, so "don't" and "stop-me" are one word each, and the curly apostrophe in "rock’n’roll" is treated the same as a straight one. A decimal point or thousands separator between digits keeps a number together: "3.14" and "1,000" are one word each. Punctuation on its own — a dash between spaces, an ellipsis, a bullet — is not a word.
Chinese, Japanese and Korean
Chinese and Japanese are written without spaces, so there is no gap to split on. The convention used by Microsoft Word, and by most Chinese publishers, is to count every Chinese character and every Japanese kana as one word. This tool follows it and shows the two numbers separately, so a mixed text such as "Hello world 你好世界" reports 2 Latin words plus 4 CJK characters, 6 in total. Korean Hangul does use spaces between words, so it is counted like English.
Characters, sentences and paragraphs
Characters are counted as a reader sees them rather than as the computer stores them. An emoji with a skin-tone modifier, such as 👍🏽, is stored as two code points but displays as one symbol, so it counts as one character. A Windows line break (a carriage return followed by a line feed) also counts as one. The no-spaces figure removes spaces, tabs and line breaks.
A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis followed by a space or the end of the text, and at the Chinese full-width marks 。！？. Text with no closing punctuation still counts as one sentence. Paragraphs are blocks separated by at least one blank line.
Reading time
Reading time assumes 238 words per minute for English — the average silent reading rate for non-fiction found by Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies — and 300 characters per minute for Chinese, then rounds up to the nearest half minute. Treat it as a guide for readers, not a promise: technical material is read more slowly, and skimming is much faster.
Worked examples
| Text | Words | Why |
|---|---|---|
Hello world 你好世界 | 6 | 2 English words + 4 Chinese characters |
don't stop-me | 2 | apostrophes and hyphens stay inside the word |
3.14 and 1,000 | 3 | each number is one word |
안녕하세요 세계 | 2 | Korean is split on spaces |
カタカナ | 4 | each Japanese kana counts as one |
Reading time for a 300-word English article: 300 ÷ 238 = 1.26 minutes, which rounds up to 1.5 min. A 238-word piece comes out at exactly 1 minute, and 300 Chinese characters also come out at 1 minute.
Sentence counting: "One. Two? Three!" is 3 sentences, and so is "一句。二句！三句？". A line with no final punctuation, such as a heading, is counted as a single sentence rather than zero.
Limits and differences from other counters
- Other tools disagree at the edges. Google Docs counts some hyphenated compounds and URLs differently, and some counters split on every apostrophe. When a limit is strict — a grant application, a journal abstract — use the counter the recipient uses to check the final draft.
- Abbreviations can inflate the sentence count. "e.g. this" or "Dr. Smith" contain a full stop followed by a space, which looks like a sentence boundary. The count is a close estimate, not a grammatical analysis.
- Frequent words in Chinese depend on a dictionary. Chinese has no spaces, so the keyword list splits text using your browser's built-in dictionary. Most common words are recognised, but some compounds are split in two — 浏览器 (browser) may appear as 浏览 plus 器.
- Formatting is ignored. Pasting from a word processor brings in plain text only, so footnotes, text boxes and hidden text are not counted unless they arrive as text.
- Very long texts are fine, but not instant. A few hundred thousand words are counted in well under a second on a laptop; phones take a little longer.
Frequently asked questions
Does this word counter count Chinese correctly?
Yes. Each Chinese character counts as one word, which is the convention used by Microsoft Word and most Chinese publishers. The breakdown line shows Latin words and CJK characters separately so you can report whichever figure you need.
Why does my word count differ from Google Docs?
Counters differ on hyphenated words, URLs, numbers with separators and some punctuation. The difference is usually under one percent on ordinary prose. This page lists the exact rules it uses in the "How words are counted" section.
Are spaces counted as characters?
The Characters figure includes spaces and line breaks; the "no spaces" figure excludes them. Many forms ask for the first; many social networks limit the second.
Is my text stored or sent anywhere?
No. Counting happens in the page itself. Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is written to your browser's storage, so closing the tab discards the text.
How is reading time calculated?
At 238 words per minute for English and 300 characters per minute for Chinese, rounded up to the nearest half minute. The English rate is the average for non-fiction reading reported by a 2019 meta-analysis.