Count words, characters and reading time as you type.
A word is a run of letters or digits. An apostrophe inside a word, as in don't, stays part of it, and so does a comma or a dot between two digits, so 1,234 and 3.14 each count as one word. Hyphens, slashes and dashes separate words: well-known counts as two. Characters are counted the way a person sees them, so an emoji, a flag, or a family of emoji joined together counts as one character, and a line break written as two codes counts as one. Characters (no spaces) leaves out spaces, tabs and line breaks. A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark that is followed by a space or the end of the text, so an abbreviation such as Dr. counts as a sentence end. A paragraph is a block of text separated from the next by a blank line. A line is any line break, blank or not. Languages written without spaces, such as Chinese or Japanese, are split into words only in browsers that provide Intl.Segmenter.
Reading time divides the word count by 238 words a minute. Speaking time divides it by 150 words a minute, a pace that suits reading aloud or giving a talk. Both are rounded to the nearest second, and the tool shows them as seconds under a minute and as minutes and seconds above it: 238 words read in 1 min, and 500 words read in 2 min 6 sec and take 3 min 20 sec to say. These are averages, not measurements of you. Dense text, numbers, code or a slide with pauses will take longer, and a familiar topic will go faster. Use the figures to compare drafts or plan a talk, and test your own pace once with a stopwatch.
The limit menu offers presets for X/Twitter (280), SMS (160), a meta description (155) and a LinkedIn post (3,000), plus a custom number from 1 to 1,000,000. Pick one and the tool shows how many characters you have used against it. A warning appears from 90% of the limit, and above it a message gives the number of characters you are over. Treat the presets as rules of thumb. Platforms change their rules, and some count links, emoji or non-Latin scripts differently, so the X preset is marked as approximate. Check the platform's own counter before you publish if the exact number matters.
The counting runs in your browser, in this tab. There is no upload step and no server that receives your text, and the text is never put in the page address. The page counts visits with Google Analytics, using only the name of the tool and the fact that a result appeared, never your text. By default nothing is saved: close the tab and the text is gone. If you tick Keep my draft on this device, the text is saved in this browser's local storage so it is there when you come back, and it is never uploaded. Untick the box or press Clear to delete the saved draft. Texts above 1,000,000 characters are not counted, and above 50,000 characters the counts update a moment after you stop typing.
A word is a run of letters or digits, and it can contain an apostrophe (don't) or a comma or dot between digits (1,234 and 3.14). Hyphens, slashes and dashes split words, so well-known is two words and 3.14 is one.
Yes in Characters, no in Characters (no spaces). Both are shown at once. For Hello world the counts are 11 and 10. The limit bar uses Characters, spaces included.
Programs draw the line between words differently. This tool splits at hyphens, so well-known is two words, and keeps 1,234 as one. Em dashes, slashes, numbers with separators and emoji are the places where its rules can differ from another program's.
Yes. An emoji, a flag and a family emoji joined from several people each count as one character, because the tool counts what you see. A platform that counts emoji as two characters will show a higher number than this tool does.
Only if you tick Keep my draft on this device, and then only in this browser. The text is not uploaded in either case. Untick the box or press Clear to delete the saved draft, which uses the key yolopicker:draft:word-counter in local storage.
Up to 1,000,000 characters. Above 50,000 characters the counts update about 150 milliseconds after you stop typing, so a long paste does not freeze the page. Longer text shows a message asking you to remove some.