Word Counter

How words are counted

The counter finds every run of letters or digits in your text. Apostrophes, hyphens and full stops that sit between letters or digits are treated as part of the word, so "don't", "mother-in-law", "3.14" and "e.g" each count once. Spaces, line breaks, dashes surrounded by spaces, emoji and standalone punctuation do not count as words. Letters from any alphabet are recognised, including accented Latin letters, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic and Hebrew.

words = number of runs matching letters/digits (with inner ' - .)
reading time = words ÷ 238 per minute · speaking time = words ÷ 183 per minute

Sentences are counted at full stops, question marks, exclamation marks and ellipses that are followed by a space or the end of the text, and only if the piece before them contains a letter or digit. Paragraphs are blocks separated by at least one blank line.

Worked examples

Example 1: a short sentence

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." contains 9 words, 44 characters including spaces, 36 without, and 1 sentence. Its average word length is 3.9 letters.

Example 2: contractions and numbers

"It's 2026 and we're on track — aren't we?" counts 8 words: It's, 2026, and, we're, on, track, aren't, we. The spaced dash is ignored.

Example 3: a 1,500-word essay

At 238 words per minute, 1,500 words take about 6 min 18 sec to read silently; read aloud at 183 words per minute, about 8 min 12 sec.

How to read the result

The headline is the word total. The table adds characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, average word length (letters and digits per word), words per sentence, and the two time estimates. Under "Most frequent words" the five words you use most often appear with their counts and proportional bars; short function words such as "the", "and" and "with", and bare numbers, are left out so the list highlights meaningful repetition. The result updates on every keystroke, and the Calculate button does the same thing for anyone who prefers to click.

Why different tools give different counts

Word processors agree on ordinary prose but differ at the edges. Some count "e-mail" as two words, some count a spaced dash or an ampersand as a word, and some count URLs as one word while others split them at slashes. Footnotes, headers, text boxes and tracked changes may be included or excluded. Differences of a few words on a long document are normal. If an assignment or publisher sets a strict limit, check which tool they use and leave a small margin.

Reading and speaking time estimates

The reading speed of 238 words per minute and the reading-aloud speed of 183 words per minute come from Marc Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies, which found those averages for adults reading English non-fiction silently and aloud. Fiction tends to be read a little faster; technical or unfamiliar material much slower. Presentations with pauses, slides and audience interaction usually run slower than 183 words per minute, so rehearse with a timer before a talk with a strict slot.

Common word-count targets

Word limits show up everywhere: school and university essays, personal statements for admissions, scholarship and grant applications, abstracts for journals and conferences, cover letters, news articles, blog posts written to a brief, translation and copywriting jobs priced per word, and speeches with a fixed time slot. Many of these are strict, and an application form may cut off or reject text over the limit. Pasting your draft here before submitting avoids surprises.

Tips for hitting a word limit

To cut, start with the frequency list: if a word appears far more often than others, rephrase some uses. Remove filler phrases ("in order to" → "to", "due to the fact that" → "because"), merge sentences that repeat a point, and drop adverbs that do not change the meaning. To expand, add a concrete example, a short explanation of why a point matters, or evidence from a source. Long average sentence lengths — well above 20 to 25 words — can make text harder to follow, so splitting sentences often improves clarity even when you are not short of space. For hard character limits such as SMS or form fields, switch to the character counter.

Privacy and limits

Everything runs in JavaScript inside this page; the text is not transmitted, stored or logged, and it disappears when you reload. Very long texts, such as a full novel, are fine but may take a moment to count on older phones. Languages that do not separate words with spaces, such as Chinese, Japanese and Thai, are not split into words by this method; use the character count for those. To turn a word count into a percentage of a limit, use the percentage calculator.