Word & character counter
Count words, characters, and reading time.
Questions
What does this tool do?
The Word & character counter tallies your text as you type or paste it: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs and an estimated reading time. Counts update on every keystroke, so you can trim a post to a limit, hit an essay's word target or check that a meta description is short enough. A word is a run of letters, digits or apostrophes; reading time assumes a typical 200 words per minute.
What counts as a word?
A run of letters, digits or apostrophes separated by whitespace or punctuation. Numbers count as words.
How are sentences and paragraphs detected?
A sentence ends at a full stop, an exclamation mark or a question mark. Paragraphs are separated by one or more blank lines.
How is reading time estimated?
At 200 words per minute — the rough average for adult readers of English prose. Dense technical text or other languages may differ.