Word Counter
Words, characters, sentences, reading time.
Words, characters, sentences, reading time.
How to use it
- Paste your text. The counts update as you type. There is no button to press and nothing to submit.
- Read the figures. Words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, and two timings.
- Copy the summary. Copy takes the whole breakdown, which is useful when a brief asks you to state the count.
When you would use this
Word counts matter when somebody else is enforcing a limit: an essay ceiling, an application field, a meta description, a journal submission. The awkward part is that tools disagree about what a word is. Hyphenated compounds, numbers, contractions and text in brackets are all handled differently depending on what you ask, which means a count can be correct and still be rejected. This one splits on whitespace, the same rule Word and Google Docs use, so the figure lines up with wherever the text is going. Characters are shown with and without spaces because different limits count them differently, and the two timings are estimates from published averages rather than anything measured about your particular reader.
Questions
- How is a word counted?
- Any run of characters separated by whitespace. A hyphenated word counts as one, which is what Word and Google Docs do, so the figure matches whatever you will paste into.
- Is my text stored or sent anywhere?
- No. The work happens in the page as you type. There is no server involved, and closing the tab is all it takes to be rid of it.
- How are the times worked out?
- Reading assumes 238 words a minute, the median for adult silent reading. Speaking assumes 130, a comfortable presenting pace. Both are estimates rather than measurements.