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Localtools

Word Counter

Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs as you type, with reading time.

Your text is saved in this browser only, so it is still here if you reload the page.

Words
0
Characters
0
Characters without spaces
0
Sentences
0
Paragraphs
0
Reading time
0

How to use

  1. Type in the box or paste text from any document, email or web page.
  2. Watch the counts update as you type — no button to press.
  3. Use the character counts to check limits for posts, titles, meta descriptions or forms.
  4. Press "Clear text" to start again. Your draft is kept in this browser until you clear it.

How the counts are calculated

Counting words sounds simple — split the text at spaces — but that breaks quickly. Two spaces in a row, a dash between words, a line break without a space or a sentence in Japanese all trip up a naive count. This tool uses the text segmentation rules built into modern browsers, which follow the Unicode standard for finding word, sentence and character boundaries in many languages.

  • Words: segments that contain letters or digits. Punctuation, spaces and symbols on their own are not counted. Contractions such as “it’s” count as one word.
  • Characters: what you would count by eye. An accented letter, an emoji or a flag is one character, even if it is stored as several code points.
  • Sentences: text ending with a period, question mark, exclamation mark or the equivalent in other scripts. An abbreviation followed by a capital letter, such as “Mr. Smith” or “Dr. Lee”, is counted as the end of a sentence.
  • Paragraphs: non-empty lines.

Different programs disagree slightly on words and characters, especially for hyphens, numbers, URLs and emoji. If you must meet an exact limit set by a specific website, check the count on that website as a final step.

Typical length limits

Knowing your counts is most useful when you are writing for a fixed space:

  • Search result titles usually show around 50–60 characters before they are cut off.
  • Meta descriptions are typically shown up to about 150–160 characters.
  • Essays and assignments are usually set in words, often with a tolerance of about 10%.
  • Pages: as a rough guide, 500 words fill about one single-spaced page and 250 words one double-spaced page in a 12-point font, so a 1,000-word essay is about four double-spaced pages.
  • Short posts on social networks have character limits that include spaces and links.

Writing tips

If your text is too long, start by removing filler words (“very”, “really”, “in order to”) and repeated ideas. Shorter sentences are easier to read on a phone. A reading time under five minutes keeps most readers until the end of a blog post; for longer guides, add headings so readers can scan. If you write a lot, typing speed matters too: the typing speed test shows your words per minute.

Your draft stays on your device

The text you type is not sent anywhere. To protect you from losing work, the latest draft is stored in your browser’s local storage — a small storage area that only this site, in this browser, on this device can read. Clearing the text box removes it, and so does clearing your browser’s site data.

Frequently asked questions

How does the word counter decide what a word is?

It uses your browser's built-in language rules (the Intl.Segmenter standard) to find word boundaries. Hyphenated words such as "well-known" count as two words, numbers count as words, and punctuation is ignored.

What is the difference between characters with and without spaces?

Characters with spaces counts every letter, digit, punctuation mark, space and line break. Characters without spaces leaves out spaces, tabs and line breaks. Many social networks and SMS limits use the count with spaces.

How are emoji counted?

Each emoji counts as one character, even emoji made of several code points such as flags or skin-tone variants. This matches what you see on screen, although some websites count them as two or more.

How is reading time estimated?

Reading time assumes an average adult silent reading speed of 238 words per minute, based on a large 2019 review of reading studies. For Chinese, Japanese and Korean text it uses about 500 characters per minute.

Does it work for Japanese, Chinese and Korean?

Yes. When most of the text is in these scripts, the counter leads with characters without spaces (the count with spaces is shown next to it), because character count is the standard length measure in those languages. Japanese and Chinese do not put spaces between words, so the word count is hidden for them; Korean words (eojeol, the units between spaces) are still counted.

How are paragraphs counted?

Every line that contains text counts as a paragraph. Empty lines between paragraphs are ignored.

Is my text uploaded or stored on a server?

No. Counting happens in your browser. The draft is saved only in your browser's local storage on this device, and you can delete it with the Clear text button.

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