What is a word counter?
A word counter reports how long a piece of text is: the number of words, characters, sentences and paragraphs. Writers use it to hit essay or article limits, marketers to keep meta descriptions and social posts within character caps, and students to check assignment length before submitting. This one updates live as you type.
How to use it
- Type or paste your text into the input box.
- Read the counts in the output panel. They update with every keystroke.
- Click Copy if you want the counts as text, for example to paste into a report.
The output lists five numbers: words, characters, characters without spaces, sentences and paragraphs.
Worked example
Paste this two-paragraph text:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. It barked!
Why? Nobody knows.
and the counter shows:
Words: 14
Characters: 75
Characters (no spaces): 61
Sentences: 4
Paragraphs: 2
The 75 characters include the spaces and the two line breaks between paragraphs. Removing every space and line break leaves 61.
How each number is counted
| Count | Rule used |
|---|---|
| Words | Runs of non-whitespace characters, separated by spaces, tabs or line breaks |
| Characters | Every character, including spaces and line breaks |
| Characters (no spaces) | Every character except spaces, tabs and line breaks |
| Sentences | Groups of . ! ? followed by a space or the end of the text |
| Paragraphs | Blocks of text separated by at least one blank line |
Knowing the rules explains most surprising results:
- Hyphenated words count once. "well-known state-of-the-art" is 2 words.
- Spaced dashes count as words. "one — two" is 3 words, because the dash stands on its own between spaces. Use an unspaced dash if that matters to you.
- Repeated punctuation counts once. "Hello... world" is one sentence ending, and "Wait?! Really?!" is two.
- Abbreviations inflate sentences. "Dr. Smith arrived at 3.30 p.m. today." counts as 3 sentences. Decimal numbers like 3.30 are fine, because there's no space after the point.
- Punctuation inside closing quotes or brackets isn't counted. In
He said "Stop." Then left.only the final period counts, since the first one is followed by a quote mark rather than a space. - A single line break doesn't start a new paragraph. You need an empty line between blocks, which is how most editors and Markdown separate paragraphs.
Characters, emoji and character limits
The character count uses JavaScript string length, which counts UTF-16 code units rather than visible characters. Most letters, including accented ones, count as 1, but many emoji count as 2, so "👍 ok" shows 5 characters. Windows-style line breaks (\r\n) also count as 2.
That matters when you're working to a limit, because platforms count in their own ways. X, for instance, documents its rules in a counting characters guide. When you're close to a hard limit, check in the platform itself.
Common length targets
Some limits are set by the software you're writing for. Others are only guidelines:
- Page titles and meta descriptions. Google doesn't publish a fixed limit and says it truncates snippets to fit the device width (Google Search Central). Use the "Characters" count and keep the important words near the start.
- Posts on X. The 280-character limit uses weighted code points, and every link counts as a fixed length whatever its real size, so this counter and X can disagree.
- Academic work. Most institutions set their own rules on whether headings, footnotes and references count. Check your brief.
Related text tools
- Case converter: switch text between upper, lower, title and sentence case.
- Remove duplicate lines: clean up lists before counting them.
- Find and replace: fix repeated typos across a whole document.
- Lorem ipsum generator: placeholder text of a set length for layouts.
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