Word & Character Counter
Count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs in your text. Useful for writers, students, and content creators.
How to Use
- Type or paste your text into the input area
- View real-time statistics including word count, character count, sentences, and paragraphs
- Toggle 'Exclude spaces' to count characters without spaces
Frequently Asked Questions
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How are words counted?
Words are counted by splitting the text on whitespace boundaries. Hyphenated words count as one word.
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Does it count Chinese/Japanese characters?
Yes. For CJK text, each character is counted individually as a word since CJK languages do not use spaces between words.
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How is reading time estimated?
Reading time is estimated at approximately 200 words per minute for English text and 300 characters per minute for CJK text.
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Is my text stored or sent anywhere?
No. All counting happens locally in your browser. Your text never leaves your device.
Why Word and Character Counts Matter
Writing to a constraint is one of the most common tasks in professional communication. Social media platforms, academic institutions, and publishers all impose length limits — and understanding exactly where you stand against those limits is essential.
Content platforms with strict limits:
- Twitter/X: 280 characters per tweet
- LinkedIn posts: 3,000 characters
- Meta descriptions for SEO: 150–160 characters recommended
- YouTube titles: 100 characters (60 recommended for full display)
Academic and professional writing:
- University essays often specify word ranges (e.g., 1,500–2,000 words)
- Journal abstracts: typically 150–250 words
- Resume summaries: 50–100 words is standard
How Words Are Counted
Word counting sounds trivial but has surprising edge cases. This tool splits text on whitespace boundaries (spaces, tabs, newlines), treating any contiguous sequence of non-whitespace characters as a word. This handles most Latin-script languages correctly.
CJK languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) don't use spaces between words, so each character is counted individually. This is a pragmatic approximation — actual word segmentation for CJK requires a dictionary-based algorithm.
Hyphenated words like "well-known" or "twenty-one" are counted as a single word, which matches the conventions of most style guides (APA, MLA, Chicago).
Reading Time Estimation
Reading time is calculated at approximately 200 words per minute for English prose — a standard figure derived from literacy research on average adult reading speed. Silent reading of technical content is typically slower (100–150 wpm), while light fiction can be faster (250–300 wpm).
For CJK text, the estimate uses approximately 300 characters per minute, which aligns with published research on Chinese reading speed.
Beyond Word Count
Pay attention to sentence length and paragraph count as proxies for readability. Long sentences (over 30 words) and long paragraphs (over 150 words) increase cognitive load. Most plain-language guidelines recommend sentences under 20 words for professional writing.