Word & Character Counter

Why count words?

Word and character limits are everywhere — essays, meta descriptions, tweets, product listings and academic assignments. This counter updates instantly as you type so you always know where you stand. Everything runs in your browser, so your text stays private.

Reading time is estimated at roughly 200 words per minute, a typical adult pace. Sentences are counted by terminal punctuation, and paragraphs by blank lines.

How each figure is counted

Counting rules vary between tools, which is why two counters can disagree on the same text. These are the rules used here.

• Words — runs of characters separated by whitespace. Hyphenated compounds count as one, and numbers count as words.
• Characters — every character including spaces, plus a separate figure excluding them.
• Sentences — terminated by a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark. Abbreviations such as “e.g.” can inflate this count slightly.
• Paragraphs — blocks separated by a blank line.
• Reading time — words divided by 225 words per minute, a common average for adult silent reading of general prose.

Limits worth knowing

Words, characters and pages

A standard double-spaced page in 12 pt Times New Roman holds roughly 250 words; single-spaced, about 500. Publishers count a “page” as 250–300 words when estimating manuscript length. English averages about 5.1 characters per word, plus a space, so a 1,000-word piece lands near 6,100 characters with spaces.

Using the counts to edit, not just to comply

Two derived numbers are more useful than the raw totals. Average sentence length above about 25 words usually signals sentences that need splitting; most readable prose sits between 14 and 20. Average word length creeping past six characters often means abstract nouns are crowding out verbs. Neither is a rule, but both point at the paragraphs worth rereading.