Word Counter

How this word counter works

Type into the box above or paste text from anywhere — a document, an email, a draft in another tab. The counts update as you type. There is no button to press, no sign-up, and no limit on how much text you can paste.

Nothing you type is uploaded. The counting runs entirely in your browser, so your text never reaches our server, is never stored, and is never logged. Closing the tab is all it takes to erase it. That matters if what you are counting is a cover letter, a legal draft, a medical note, or anything else you would rather not paste into someone else’s server.

What counts as a word

Words are separated by spaces, tabs, or line breaks. Anything containing a letter or a number counts once:

• Hyphenated words count as one. State-of-the-art is one word, not four. So is mother-in-law.
• Contractions count as one. Don’t and they’re are single words.
• Accented and non-Latin alphabets count normally. Café is one word, and so are words written in Greek or Cyrillic.
• Stray punctuation does not count. A dash sitting alone between two spaces is not a word.
• Numbers count. 3.14 and 2026 are each one word.

One limitation worth knowing: this counter finds words by looking for spaces, so it cannot count words in languages that are written without them — Chinese, Japanese, and Thai among them. A Japanese sentence will be reported as a single word. The character counts remain correct for those languages, and are usually the more meaningful measure anyway.

What counts as a character

Characters are counted the way a person reads them, not the way a computer stores them. An accented letter like é counts as one character even when it is stored as two pieces. An emoji counts as one character, including the compound ones — a family emoji is a single character here, though naive counters report it as eleven.

Both totals are shown: characters with spaces, which is what most character limits mean, and characters without spaces, which is what some academic and publishing guidelines ask for.

What counts as a sentence

Sentences end at a period, question mark, or exclamation point. The tricky part is the periods that end no sentence, and this counter ignores them:

• Abbreviations. Dr. Smith left. is one sentence, not two.
• Decimals. It cost $3.14 exactly. is one sentence.
• Initials. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote it. is one sentence.
• Ellipses. An ellipsis is treated as a pause rather than an ending.
• e.g. and i.e. are treated as abbreviations, not sentence endings.

Text with no final punctuation still counts as one sentence, which is what you want while a draft is still in progress.

What counts as a paragraph

Paragraphs are separated by a blank line. If your text uses single line breaks instead — a pasted list, a poem, a set of notes — each line counts as its own paragraph, which is what you would count by eye.

How reading time is estimated

Reading time assumes 225 words per minute, a common mid-point for adult silent reading of ordinary prose. Treat it as a rough guide rather than a measurement. Dense technical writing reads slower; a familiar, conversational text reads faster. It is most useful for comparing two drafts of the same kind of writing.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my count different from Microsoft Word or Google Docs?

Word counting has no single standard — every tool draws the lines a little differently. The usual culprits are hyphenated words, numbers, footnote or caption text, and whether headings are included. Small differences on a long document are normal. If you're writing to a hard limit, count with the same tool the person setting the limit will use, and leave a margin.

Is my text saved anywhere?

No. It's never uploaded, stored, or logged, and it isn't kept after you close the tab — reloading the page clears the box. All counting runs in your browser.

Does it count hyphenated words as one word or two?

One. State-of-the-art counts once, matching how most style guides and word processors treat it.

Is there a limit on how much text I can count?

No fixed limit, and no upload to wait through — essays, reports and book-length drafts of tens of thousands of words all count instantly. Very large documents (around a hundred thousand words) may feel slightly less responsive while typing, but pasting and reading the totals stays immediate.

Can I count words without an internet connection?

Yes — once the page has loaded, the counting needs no further connection.