Word & Character Counter
Paste any text to instantly count words, characters, sentences, reading time and more.
What this counter measures
Any sequence of non-whitespace characters separated by spaces or line breaks. Hyphenated words like "well-known" count as one word.
Counted by sentence-ending punctuation: periods, exclamation marks and question marks. Multiple spaces and abbreviations may affect count slightly.
Based on 200 words per minute, the average adult silent reading speed. Academic texts may take longer; news articles slightly faster.
Frequently asked questions
What is the average reading speed?
Adults read silently at 200–250 words per minute on average. Speed readers can reach 400–700 wpm with comprehension drop-off. This tool uses 200 wpm for reading and 130 wpm for speaking.
Does it count emojis as characters?
Yes — emojis are Unicode characters and are counted. Some emojis use multiple code points (surrogate pairs), which may count as 2 characters depending on the rendering.
Is my text sent to any server?
No. All analysis runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text never leaves your device.
How are paragraphs counted?
Paragraphs are counted as blocks of text separated by one or more blank lines. A single block with no blank lines is one paragraph.
What word count is needed for different content types?
Blog posts: 1,000–2,000 words. SEO articles: 1,500–3,000 words. Short stories: 1,000–7,500 words. Novels: 50,000–100,000 words. Academic papers: 3,000–8,000 words.