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A word counter counts the number of words in a piece of text. Writers use it to hit word limits for articles, essays, and assignments. Developers use it to validate input length. SEO professionals use it to check if page content meets minimum length targets. This tool goes beyond a basic word count and shows characters, sentences, paragraphs, lines, reading time, and speaking time all at once.
Words are counted by splitting the text on whitespace. Any sequence of characters separated by a space, tab, or line break counts as one word. Numbers count as words. Hyphenated words like well-known count as one word. This matches how most word processors count words including Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
The character count includes every character in the text including spaces, punctuation, and line breaks. The characters without spaces count removes all space characters before counting. This is useful when you have a limit measured in characters rather than words, for example Twitter's 280 character limit or a database column with a maximum length.
Reading time is calculated at 200 words per minute which is the average adult reading speed for general content. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute which is a comfortable presentation pace. These are averages and real times vary. Technical content is read more slowly. Conversational content is read faster. Use these numbers as a starting point rather than an exact measurement.
Blog posts typically perform best between 1,500 and 2,500 words for SEO. Academic essays are usually 500 to 5,000 words depending on the level. A short story is typically 1,000 to 7,500 words. A novel is usually 70,000 to 100,000 words. Twitter posts are limited to 280 characters. LinkedIn posts perform best between 150 and 300 words. Email subject lines should be under 60 characters to avoid being cut off in most email clients.
No. Your text is never sent to any server and is not saved anywhere. When you close the tab the text is gone. Everything runs entirely in your browser.
Reading time uses an average adult reading speed of 200 words per minute. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute which is a typical conversational or presentation pace. Both are estimates and real times will vary depending on the complexity of the content and the individual reader.
Sentences are counted by detecting full stops, exclamation marks, and question marks. It is an approximation and may not be perfectly accurate for all writing styles, particularly text with abbreviations or decimal numbers that contain periods.
A paragraph is any block of text separated by a blank line. A single line break without a blank line does not count as a new paragraph. This matches the standard definition used in most word processors.
No hard limit. Since everything runs in the browser the only constraint is your device memory. The tool handles large documents without any issues.
Different tools use slightly different rules for what counts as a word. Microsoft Word may count hyphenated words differently or handle certain punctuation marks differently. Small differences of a few words are normal between different counting tools.