Word Counter
Paste or type your text to count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs, and to estimate how long it takes to read or say aloud.
What counts as a word
A word is any run of letters or numbers. Words joined by a hyphen or an apostrophe count as one word (“well-known”, “don’t”), and so do numbers with a decimal point (“3.14”). Punctuation, symbols and emoji on their own are not words. Letters from any alphabet are recognized, including accented, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew letters.
Example: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. It didn’t stop!” followed by a new paragraph “A well-known fact: 3.14 is pi.” has 18 words, 3 sentences and 2 paragraphs.
Languages written without spaces between words, such as Chinese, Japanese and Thai, cannot be counted this way: a run of characters without spaces counts as one word. For those languages, the character counter gives a more meaningful measure.
Why word counts differ between tools
Word processors and websites each use their own rules, so counts can differ by a few words on the same text. The usual differences are hyphenated words (one word or two?), numbers, standalone symbols such as “&” or “—”, and web addresses. If your teacher, publisher or form uses a specific tool to check a limit, use that tool for the final check and leave a small margin.
Reading and speaking time
Reading time is estimated at 238 words per minute, the average silent reading rate for non-fiction English text found by a 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies (Brysbaert). Speaking time uses 183 words per minute, the average rate for reading aloud in the same review. Real rates vary widely with the reader, the language and how difficult the text is, so treat both as rough guides.
| Words | Reading (238 wpm) | Speaking (183 wpm) |
|---|---|---|
| 250 | 1 min 3 s | 1 min 22 s |
| 500 | 2 min 6 s | 2 min 44 s |
| 1,000 | 4 min 12 s | 5 min 28 s |
| 2,000 | 8 min 24 s | 10 min 56 s |
Common questions
How are sentences counted?
A sentence ends with a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis followed by a space or the end of the text. Abbreviations such as “Dr.” or “e.g.” followed by a space are counted as sentence ends, so the sentence count is an estimate.
Is my text saved or uploaded?
No. Everything is counted in your browser. The text is not sent to any server and is gone when you close or reload the page.