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Word Counter

Live counts as you type. Nothing you paste leaves your device.

Words
0
Characters
0
No spaces
0
Sentences
0
Paragraphs
0
Reading time
0s

How to use it

  1. 1
    Paste or type

    The counts update on every keystroke — there is no button to press.

  2. 2
    Read what you need

    Words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, reading time.

  3. 3
    Copy the summary

    One click puts the whole set of figures on your clipboard.

What gets counted

Common limits worth knowing

A meta description wants about 155 characters before search results cut it off. A tweet is 280. A UCAS personal statement is 4,000 characters or 47 lines, whichever comes first. Most journal abstracts sit between 150 and 300 words. If you are writing to a limit, the character-with-spaces figure is almost always the one being counted.

Why the counts stay on your machine

Counting words needs no server, so this one does not use one. Nothing you paste is transmitted, logged or stored, and there is nothing to delete afterwards. The trade-off is that closing the tab loses the text — this is a measuring tool, not a place to keep a draft.

Common questions

Does this match the count in Word or Google Docs?
Word counts match. Character counts can differ by a handful, because editors disagree about trailing whitespace and line breaks — both totals are shown here so you can pick the one your brief asked for.
How is a word defined?
Any run of characters separated by whitespace. So a hyphenated compound counts once, "don’t" counts once, and an em dash with spaces around it counts as its own token — which is the same convention almost every editor uses.
How is reading time worked out?
At 200 to 250 words per minute, the usual range for adult silent reading of ordinary prose. It is shown as a bracket because a single number would imply a precision that does not exist: technical writing runs slower and light fiction faster.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. Everything happens in your browser. Open the network panel and type — there are no requests at all. That is why this is safe to use on an unpublished draft.
Is there a length limit?
Nothing enforced. Very long documents — hundreds of thousands of words — may feel slightly slow as you type, since the count is recomputed on each keystroke.

Other ways to attack the same letters.

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Letter Frequency Counter

See which letters your text leans on, as a ranked chart.

Syllable Counter

Count syllables per word and per line — built for haiku and lyrics.

Palindrome Checker

Check whether a word or sentence reads the same both ways.

Alphabetizer

Sort any list alphabetically, with dedupe and case options.