Word Counter

How to use the word counter

1. Type your text in the box, or paste it from a document, email or web page.
2. Read the results as they update: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs.
3. Check the estimated reading time and speaking time to see how long your text takes to read silently or deliver out loud.
4. Edit the text freely. Every figure is recalculated instantly, so you can trim or expand until you hit your target.

What this word counter measures

This tool gives you the main statistics you need when writing to a length requirement. The word count is the number most people look for, but the other figures are just as useful depending on the task:

• Words: the total number of words in your text.
• Characters with spaces: every character, including spaces and punctuation.
• Characters without spaces: the same count with spaces left out, a figure some publishers and translation agencies use for pricing.
• Sentences: useful for checking whether your sentences are too long on average.
• Paragraphs: blocks of text separated by line breaks.
• Reading time: based on an average silent reading speed of 200 words per minute.
• Speaking time: based on an average speaking pace of 130 words per minute, handy for speeches, presentations and video scripts.

For example, a 1,000-word article takes about 5 minutes to read and around 7 minutes 42 seconds to read aloud.

How words are counted

A word is a sequence of letters or digits. Spaces, line breaks and punctuation separate words, with two exceptions: an apostrophe or a hyphen inside a word keeps it as a single word. That means “don’t”, “mother-in-law”, “l’homme” and “peut-être” each count as one word. This rule works well for English and French, where contractions and compound words are common.

Numbers count as words too, so “3 apples” is two words and “2026” is one. Standalone punctuation such as a dash surrounded by spaces or a row of asterisks is not counted as a word.

Keep in mind that word processors and online platforms don’t all follow exactly the same rules. If you need to meet a strict limit set by a specific platform, leave yourself a small margin.

Privacy

Your text never leaves your device. The counting happens entirely in your browser, and nothing is sent to a server or stored anywhere. You can safely paste confidential drafts, unpublished manuscripts, school assignments or client documents.