How to use the word counter
- Click in the text box and type, or paste text from any document, email or web page.
- The counts update instantly: words, characters, characters without spaces, sentences and paragraphs.
- Check reading time for articles and speaking time for speeches, videos and presentations.
- Select Clear to start again.
Separate paragraphs with a blank line for the paragraph count to be accurate.
How the counts are calculated
- Words come from your browser’s built-in, language-aware word segmentation (the Unicode text segmentation rules). Each segment that contains letters or numbers counts as one word. Punctuation and spaces are not counted.
- Characters counts every character, including spaces and line breaks. Emoji and accented letters each count as one character.
- Characters (no spaces) removes all spaces, tabs and line breaks first.
- Sentences counts runs of text that end with a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis. A final sentence without punctuation still counts.
- Paragraphs counts blocks of text separated by at least one blank line.
Reading and speaking time use these formulas:
reading time (min) = words ÷ 238
speaking time (min) = words ÷ 140- 238 words per minute is the average silent reading speed for adults reading non-fiction in English, from a 2019 meta-analysis.
- 140 words per minute is a typical, comfortable pace for presentations and voice-overs. Fast speakers reach 160 or more.
Worked examples
Example 1: a blog post
A post has 1,200 words.
- Reading time: 1,200 ÷ 238 = 5.04, shown as 5 min.
- Speaking time if you turn it into a video script: 1,200 ÷ 140 = 8.6, shown as 9 min.
Example 2: a two-minute speech
You have two minutes at a wedding. At 140 words per minute, aim for about 280 words. Paste your draft and trim until the speaking time shows 2 min.
Example 3: an essay limit
Your assignment allows 500 words ± 10%, so between 450 and 550. Paste your essay to check. If your school counts footnotes or references, include them. If not, paste only the main text.
How to interpret the results
Word counts are best used as a guide. For strict limits, such as an application, a journal submission or a social media post, use the counter in the system you submit to, because counting rules differ slightly between tools. Reading time is an average. Technical or unfamiliar text is read more slowly, and skimming is much faster.
Tips and common mistakes
- Check the counting rules. Schools, publishers and forms differ on whether headings, references and hyphenated words count. Follow the rules you’ve been given.
- Characters with or without spaces. Social posts and SMS usually count spaces; some forms and translation quotes don’t. The counter shows both.
- Paste plain text. Text copied from PDFs can contain line breaks inside sentences or hidden characters that affect sentence and paragraph counts.
- Reading time is an estimate. It assumes an average adult reading speed; technical text and readers new to a language take longer.
- Aim for clarity, not just length. Hitting a word limit by padding rarely helps. Cut repetition first, then add detail where it matters.
Assumptions and limitations
- Hyphenated words, contractions and URLs may be counted differently from your word processor.
- Sentence detection treats abbreviations like “e.g.” or “Dr.” as sentence ends, so sentence counts are approximate.
- In languages written without spaces, word counts rely on the browser’s dictionary-based segmentation and are estimates.
- Very long texts (hundreds of thousands of words) still work, but updates may take a moment on older phones.