Word Counter
Paste or type your text. Word, character, sentence, and paragraph counts update instantly.
Estimated read time: 0 min
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About the Word Counter
Whether you are writing a university essay with a strict word limit, crafting a social media post with a character limit, or editing a document for clarity, knowing your exact word and character count is essential. Our word counter gives you all the key statistics in real time.
What is counted
- Words — total number of space-separated tokens
- Characters — every character including spaces and punctuation
- Characters (no spaces) — useful for SMS and social media limits
- Sentences — blocks ending in a full stop, exclamation, or question mark
- Paragraphs — sections separated by blank lines
- Reading time — estimated at 200 words per minute
Common word count targets
- Tweet / X post: 280 characters
- LinkedIn post: 3,000 characters recommended
- Blog post: 1,000–2,500 words for SEO
- University essay: typically 1,500–3,000 words
- Short story: 1,000–7,500 words
- Novel: 70,000–100,000 words
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the word counter work?
Paste or type your text into the box. The counter splits your text by whitespace to count words, counts every character for the character count, detects sentence-ending punctuation for sentences, and counts blank-line-separated blocks for paragraphs.
What counts as a word?
Any sequence of characters separated by whitespace is counted as a word. Hyphenated words like 'well-known' count as one word. Numbers and punctuation attached to letters are included.
How is reading time estimated?
Reading time is based on an average adult reading speed of 200 words per minute (wpm). Academic research suggests most adults read between 200–250 wpm for general content.
Does this tool store my text?
No. All counting happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text is never sent to any server and is not stored anywhere.
What is the character limit?
There is no enforced character limit. The tool works with texts of any length, from a single word to entire documents.