Word Counter
Words, characters, lines and reading time
Counting words sounds unambiguous until you decide what a word is. Splitting on whitespace treats a hyphenated compound as one word and an em-dash-joined pair as one too; splitting on punctuation splits "don't" into two. Different tools make different choices, which is why the same document counts differently in a word processor, a CMS and a text editor.
Character counts have their own subtlety, because a character is not a byte and not always a single code point. Counts here cover words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and lines, plus reading time, which is a rough figure derived from an average silent reading speed rather than anything measured about your particular text.
How to use it
- Paste or type your textEvery figure updates live as you edit, so you can trim toward a limit and watch it come down rather than recounting.
- Pick the count that matches your limitA social platform usually counts characters including spaces; an essay limit counts words. Check which one applies before trusting a number.
- Use reading time as an estimate onlyIt assumes a general reading speed on ordinary prose. Technical writing, code samples and reference material are all read far more slowly.
Frequently asked questions
How is a word actually counted?
By splitting on runs of whitespace and counting the non-empty pieces. That means a hyphenated compound counts as one, a number counts as one, and an ellipsis standing alone counts as one. It is the same rule most word processors use, which is why counts usually agree within a percent or so rather than exactly.
Why does my character count differ from another tool?
Usually spaces or line breaks. Some tools count characters including spaces, some exclude them, and some exclude trailing whitespace. Line endings differ too: a CRLF file has one more character per line than an LF one, which adds up quickly over a long document.
Do emoji count as one character?
Rarely. Many emoji are made of several code points joined by zero-width joiners — a family emoji can be seven or more — and skin tone modifiers add another. Depending on whether a tool counts code units, code points or grapheme clusters, one visible emoji can count as one, two or eight.
How is reading time calculated?
From an assumed silent reading speed, conventionally somewhere between 200 and 250 words a minute for adults on general prose. It is a presentation device rather than a measurement, and it is systematically wrong for anything dense, technical or read for reference rather than start to finish.
Does this count words in other languages correctly?
For languages that separate words with spaces, yes. For Chinese, Japanese and Thai, which do not, whitespace splitting is meaningless — a whole sentence counts as one word. Those languages need character counts or a proper segmenter instead.