How to use the word counter
- Click the Your text box and paste or type. The sample text is selected the first time you click, so your paste replaces it. Clear empties the box.
- Read the seven counts: Words, Characters, Characters (no spaces), Sentences, Paragraphs, Reading time and Speaking time. They update on every keystroke, so there is no button to press.
- Scan Top 10 keywords to see which words you repeat most and what share of the text each one takes.
How each number is calculated
- Words: pieces of text separated by spaces or line breaks that contain a letter or digit. "Well-known" and "don't" are one word each, and a lone dash or bullet is not counted. Chinese, Japanese and Thai are written without spaces, so for those the browser's word segmentation is used.
- Characters: what you would count by eye, so an emoji or an accented letter is one character. Spaces and line breaks are included, and "no spaces" leaves all of them out.
- Sentences: a run of . ! or ? followed by a space or the end of the line, with closing quotes and brackets allowed. Abbreviations such as Mr., Dr., e.g. and p.m. do not end a sentence, and a last sentence with no punctuation still counts.
- Paragraphs: every non-empty line, which is how text pasted from Word or Google Docs is separated.
- Reading time: words divided by 238, the average silent reading speed for adult English non-fiction in a meta-analysis of 190 studies (Brysbaert, 2019). Speaking time divides by 150 words per minute, a brisk presentation pace. Both are rounded to the nearest second. To use your own speed, try the Reading Time Estimator.
- Keyword density: how many times a word appears, divided by the total word count, times 100.
Worked example
The sample text in the box has 46 words, 266 characters (220 without spaces), 4 sentences and 2 paragraphs. Reading time is 46 Γ· 238 Γ 60 = 11.6 seconds, shown as 12s. Speaking time is 46 Γ· 150 Γ 60 = 18.4 seconds, shown as 18s. The word "time" appears 2 times, so its density is 2 Γ· 46 Γ 100 = 4.3%.
Limits and edge cases
Only the text in the box is counted, so footnotes, headers and text boxes in a Word file are not included. For a .docx file, use the DOCX Word Counter. Sentence detection is a rule of thumb: initials such as J. K. can be counted as sentence ends. The keyword table skips English stop words only. Posting to X, Instagram or LinkedIn? The Social Media Character Counter checks each platform's limit.
Frequently asked questions
How many words is a page?
A single-spaced page in 12-point Times New Roman with 1-inch margins holds about 500 words. Double-spaced, it holds about 250. Font, margins and line spacing all change the number, so treat it as an estimate.
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time is the word count divided by 238 words per minute, and speaking time is the word count divided by 150 words per minute. For example, 1,000 words take about 4min 12s to read silently and 6min 40s to say aloud.
Why is my count different from Microsoft Word or Google Docs?
Programs disagree on edge cases such as hyphenated words, lone dashes and symbols, and text in footnotes, headers or text boxes. This counter counts only the text in the box, treats a hyphenated word as one word and skips lone symbols.
What is keyword density and what percentage is best?
Keyword density is how often a word appears divided by the total word count. Search engines do not publish a target percentage, and Google's spam policies list keyword stuffing, repeating words unnaturally, as a violation. Use the table to spot words you overuse, then write naturally.
Sources: Brysbaert, M. (2019), "How many words do we read per minute?", Journal of Memory and Language 109, 104047, doi:10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047. Speaking pace: Words per minute (Wikipedia).