Word and character counter

Counts that update as you type

Everything here is calculated in your browser on every keystroke. Nothing is sent anywhere, which matters when the text is an unpublished manuscript, a cover letter or a client's brief — and which is also why it is instant.

What each figure means

Words are runs of non-whitespace, which is how word processors count and how editors mean it. Characters counts every character including spaces; the separate no-spaces figure is what Twitter-style limits and some form fields actually enforce.

Characters are counted by grapheme rather than by code unit, so an emoji counts as one character rather than two. That sounds pedantic until you are up against a 280-character limit and your count disagrees with the platform's.

Sentences are detected from terminal punctuation, which is a heuristic rather than a certainty — abbreviations like "Dr." and "e.g." can inflate the count slightly.

Reading and speaking time

Reading time uses 238 words per minute, which is the figure from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of silent reading in adults, rather than the 200 that circulates online. Speaking time uses 130, which is close to a measured, unhurried presentation pace. If you are timing a talk, read it aloud once against a stopwatch — individual pace varies more than any average admits.

Where the limits usually bite

University essays and journal abstracts count words. SMS and social platforms count characters. Meta descriptions are truncated by pixel width rather than either, though 155 characters is a reasonable proxy. Knowing which one applies is most of the battle.

Counting a document

For a PDF, run it through PDF to Text first and paste the result here.