Word Counter

How to use it

1. Type or paste your text into the box above.
2. Watch the word, character and sentence counts update instantly, no button to press.
3. Use the reading time and keyword density panels to check length and repetition.

What is a word count?

A word count is the number of separate words in a piece of text. This word counter applies the same rule as Microsoft Word and Google Docs: every unbroken run of characters between spaces or line breaks counts as one word.

words = number of character groups separated by whitespace

Under that rule, state-of-the-art is one word, 3.14 is one word and an email address is one word. A stray dash sitting alone between two spaces also counts as a word, so tidy loose punctuation before you check a strict limit. Characters are counted separately, with and without spaces, because essays and assignments usually cap words while forms, ads and social platforms cap characters.

Worked example

Word counts for common formats

What the word counter measures

A word counter tallies every run of characters between spaces as one word, so hyphenated terms, contractions, numbers and email addresses each count once. Microsoft Word and Google Docs use the same basic rule, which is why the totals here normally match what a teacher or editor will see. Characters are counted two ways, with and without spaces, because platforms differ on which one they limit.

Sentences are detected from periods, question marks and exclamation points followed by a space or the end of the text. Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by a blank line, so a single press of Enter between two lines does not start a new paragraph. Unique words are counted after stripping punctuation and ignoring case, so The and the count as one.

Reading time and speaking time

Reading time uses 200 words per minute, a common average for silent reading of plain English prose. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, a comfortable pace for a presentation or a speech read from notes. The math is simple: a 1,000-word article takes about 5 minutes to read and around 7 minutes 40 seconds to say out loud. If you know you read faster or speak slower, scale the estimate to match.

Keyword density

Keyword density shows how often your five most-used words appear as a percentage of the total. A content word that makes up 3 or 4 percent of a short article usually reads as repetitive; in SEO copy it can also look like keyword stuffing. Function words such as the, and and of will naturally sit at the top of the list, so look past those to the words below them.

Your text auto-saves in your own browser, so a reload does not wipe a draft. Nothing is uploaded, and there is no upper limit on length beyond what a browser can hold in a text box, which is comfortably a full novel.

Common uses

• Meeting essay, assignment and application word limits
• Checking blog and article length and reading time
• Timing speeches and presentation scripts
• Spotting overused words with keyword density
• Fitting social posts inside character limits
• Estimating page counts for manuscripts and reports

When to use it

• You need to count words in an essay against a 500 or 650 word limit before you submit it.
• You are timing a talk and want to know how many words a 5-minute speech holds.
• An editor asked for 1,200 words and your draft sits in a plain text file with no built-in word count.
• You want to check keyword density in an article before publishing, so no term reads as stuffed.
• A job application caps the cover letter at 400 words and you are trimming sentence by sentence.

Related tools

Character Counter is the better pick when the limit is measured in characters rather than words, such as a tweet, an SMS or a meta description.

Remove Extra Spaces cleans double spaces and stray tabs first, so pasted text counts the same way it will in the destination.

Case Converter fixes capitalization once the length is right, turning an all-caps draft into a normal sentence or headline.