About this word counter
Use this counter to check a draft, an assignment, a post, or a script against a length target. Besides words and characters, it shows how many different words you used, your longest and most repeated words, and how the text fits common social media limits. Your text is counted in the browser and is not sent to our server.
How to use this counter
- Add your text. Type, paste, or press an example. An example only fills the box; it does not count yet.
- Press Count words. All totals, the most common words, and the social media table appear below the button.
- Check the result. Compare words or characters with your target, and look at the most common words to spot repetition.
- Edit and count again. Change the text and press Count words again. Use Copy stats to paste the totals elsewhere.
Frequently asked questions
How are words counted?
A word is a run of letters or digits. Spaces and punctuation such as commas, slashes, and dashes separate words, so "Hello,world" is two words. An apostrophe, hyphen, or dot inside a word keeps it together: don't, well-being, U.S., and 3.14 each count as one word. Chinese and Japanese characters count as one word each.
Are numbers and symbols counted?
Numbers count as words, including 2024, 1,000, and 2.5. Symbols on their own, such as %, $, &, a dash between spaces, or an emoji, are not words, but they are included in the character totals.
How are sentences counted?
A sentence ends at a period, question mark, exclamation mark, or ellipsis when the next word does not start with a lowercase letter, and a line break always ends a sentence. "U.S. economy" and "5 p.m. today" stay in one sentence, and titles such as Mr., Dr., and Prof., references such as e.g. and Fig., and initials such as J. K. never end one.
How are paragraphs and lines different?
Every line that contains text is a paragraph; empty lines are skipped. Lines counts every line in the box, including empty ones.
How are characters counted?
Characters count what you see on screen, including spaces and line breaks, so an emoji such as 👍🏽 counts as one character. Without spaces removes every space, tab, and line break.
What do unique words and vocabulary diversity mean?
Unique words counts each different word once, ignoring capital letters, so "The" and "the" are the same word. Vocabulary diversity is unique words divided by total words. In "the cat saw the cat", 3 of 5 words are unique, so diversity is 60%.
Which words appear in Most common words?
Words of three or more letters that appear at least twice, up to ten words, most frequent first. Short words such as "a", "an", and "to" are left out.
How are reading and speaking time estimated?
Reading time uses 225 words per minute and speaking time uses 130 words per minute. For Chinese and Japanese characters, the estimates use 260 and 200 characters per minute. Actual speed depends on the reader and the text.
How accurate are the social media limits?
The table compares your character total with each platform's published limit. X counts links as 23 characters and counts Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and emoji characters as two, so a post near the limit can still be rejected there.