Word Counter

How the word count works

The counter splits your text into words the way a word processor does: a run of letters or digits is one word, and a hyphenated word such as well-known counts once. Numbers count as words, so 1,000 is one word. For Chinese, Japanese and other languages written without spaces, the browser's own word dictionary finds where each word ends.

Characters are the characters you see. An accented letter or an emoji is one character, and line breaks are not counted. The count without spaces leaves out spaces and tabs. A sentence ends at a full stop, a question mark, an exclamation mark or an ellipsis, or at the end of a line, and every line with text in it is a paragraph.

What to do with the numbers

Reading time uses 238 words a minute, the average silent reading speed for English non-fiction, and speaking time uses 150 words a minute. A manuscript page is 250 words, the way agents and publishers count double-spaced pages, so 1,000 words come to 4 pages.

The list of most used words helps you find repetition. It shows only words of four letters or more that appear at least twice, so small grammar words stay out of the way. A word that comes back every few sentences, such as looked or suddenly, is worth a second look when you revise.