Word and Character Counter

How to use it

1. Paste your text. Everything is counted as you type, and the text never leaves the page. "Load example text" fills in a mixed English and Chinese sample if you want to see how the rules behave.
2. Read words first, then characters. Forms that ask for a word count want the word figure; fields with a character limit usually want the count including spaces.
3. Set your reading speed if the estimate matters. The default is 200 words per minute. If you read more slowly, or your text is Chinese or Japanese, change it — the estimate is only as good as the speed you give it.

What counts as a word here

"Word" has no single definition across languages, so this counter states its rule rather than leaving you to guess why the number differs from another tool.

The rule in full: runs of letters and digits count as one word, with apostrophes, hyphens and digit-to-digit full stops allowed inside; Chinese ideographs and Japanese kana count one word each; everything else — spaces, punctuation, symbols and emoji — separates words without being one.

Why a Chinese sentence is not one word

Chinese and Japanese do not put spaces between words. A counter that splits on whitespace therefore reports a whole sentence as a single word, which produces a reading time that is wrong by an order of magnitude and a word count nobody can use.

This counter detects Chinese ideographs and Japanese kana and counts them per character instead. You can see the split in the "word composition" row: it tells you how many words came from space-separated scripts and how many from per-character counting, so the total is never a mystery.

Korean works differently — it separates words with spaces — so it is counted like English rather than per character. Getting that wrong is a common bug in word counters, and the row above will show you which rule was applied.

Sentences, paragraphs and lines

Each of these is defined, and each definition has limits worth knowing because none of them is a grammar analysis:

• Sentences are counted by terminators: a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark (including the Chinese and Japanese equivalents) followed by a space or the end of the text. The "followed by a space" condition is what stops 3.5 and v2.1 being read as the end of a sentence. The known weakness is abbreviations: "e.g. this" and "Mr. Smith" count as two sentences. Treat the figure as an estimate, and do not use it where a sentence count is contractual.
• Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by a blank line, which is the plain-text and Markdown convention. A single line break does not start a new paragraph, because most people use it for layout.
• Lines are the non-empty lines, so a trailing newline at the end of your text does not inflate the count. Line breaks are normalised first, so text pasted from Windows does not report twice as many lines as the same text pasted from macOS.

Characters, code points and why emoji count as one

Characters are counted as Unicode code points, not as the internal units a programming language happens to use. The practical difference: an emoji or a rare character is stored as two units in JavaScript strings, so a counter that reports string length says two where this one says one.

That matters when you are fitting text to a limit. Input limits in forms and databases are usually expressed in characters, and the count people check by hand is the one that does not double-count emoji. If a field truncates your text, the count including spaces is almost always the one it is measuring.

Both figures are shown side by side — with spaces and without — because "characters" means different things in different places. An abstract limit of 1,500 characters usually includes spaces; a design brief asking for "characters" often means without.

Reading time is a convention, not a measurement

The reading time estimate is words divided by a reading speed: words ÷ words per minute × 60 = seconds. The default of 200 words per minute is the figure most often quoted for adults reading English silently, but it is a convention rather than something we measured, and it is wrong for anyone who reads unusually fast or slowly.

So it is a setting rather than a hidden constant. Use 150 for careful reading of dense material, 250 to 300 for skimming and 400 when your text is Chinese or Japanese — where the count is per character and a Latin reading speed would understate the time. If you need a defensible figure for a spoken script, time yourself reading one paragraph aloud and use that.

Where to go next

• Percentage calculator — when the question is not the count but how much something changed.
• ATS-friendly resume template — the length question on a resume is really about readability, and the template explains the rules it follows.
• Everyday tools — the rest of this category: dates, working days and percentages.

Common questions

How do you count words in Chinese and Japanese text?

One character counts as one word. Chinese and Japanese do not separate words with spaces, so a counter that splits on whitespace returns a whole sentence as a single word — the number looks absurd and the reading time is wrong by an order of magnitude. Counting per character gives a number in the same range as the character count of the text, which is how word counts are usually quoted for these languages. Korean uses spaces between words, so it is counted as space-separated text, not per character.

Why does my word count differ from Word, Google Docs or my CMS?

Because "word" is a definition, not a measurement, and every tool defines it slightly differently. The differences worth knowing: hyphenated and apostrophised forms ("well-known", "don't") are one word here; numbers and version strings like 3.5 are one word; punctuation and emoji are characters but not words; and only the text you paste is counted, so headers, footers, footnotes and text boxes are not included. If a limit is important, check it with the same tool the recipient uses.

How many words is 1,000 characters?

It depends entirely on the words, so this page will not give you a ratio. English averages roughly five characters per word plus a space, which puts a thousand characters somewhere near 160 to 180 words — but technical writing, long words or Chinese text move that number a lot. Paste your actual text above and read the exact count instead of scaling an estimate.

Does the character count include spaces, and do emoji count as one or two?

Both figures are shown: characters including spaces, and characters excluding them. Characters are counted as Unicode code points, so an emoji or a character outside the basic multilingual plane counts as one, not two — that is the number most input limits measure, and it is why a counter that reports JavaScript string length will disagree with this one for emoji.

How long does it take to read 1,000 words?

At the default of 200 words per minute, about five minutes. That default is a convention rather than a measurement — it is the figure most often quoted for adults reading English silently — so the calculator lets you change it. Set 150 for careful reading, 250 to 300 for skimming, and use around 400 when your text is Chinese or Japanese, where the count is by character.

Is the text I paste uploaded or stored?

No. The counting happens in your browser, in the page you already loaded. There is no request to our server, so there is nothing for us to store, log or leak, and the tool has no usage limit because it costs nothing to run. Close the tab and the text is gone.