Word counter

Words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, lines and reading time, updated as you type. Useful for a post with a length limit, an essay with a word count, or a meta description that has to fit.

What counts as a word here

A word is a run of characters between whitespace that contains at least one letter or digit. So don't is one word, state-of-the-art is one word, 3.14 is one word, and a lone dash or bullet between two spaces is not a word at all.

Characters are counted as characters, not as bytes or as UTF-16 units, so one emoji counts as one. That is what a person counting them expects — though it is worth knowing that a database column length, a Twitter-style limit and an SMS segment all count differently, and an emoji can cost two or four of their units.

Sentences are counted by looking for full stops, question marks and exclamation marks followed by whitespace, ignoring the ones that belong to abbreviations like e.g. and Dr.. Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line.

Why two word counters disagree

Paste the same document into Word, Google Docs and a counter like this one and you will often get three numbers. They are all right, under different rules. Word counts hyphenated compounds as one word and em-dash-joined words as two. Google Docs counts things in text boxes that Word may not. Some counters count a standalone number as a word; some do not.

The differences are usually under one per cent, which does not matter for a blog post and does matter for a 5,000-word assignment with a ten per cent tolerance. If a specific number is being enforced, count with whatever tool the person enforcing it uses.

Reading time is an estimate, not a measurement

The estimate here uses 200 words per minute, which is the middle of the range usually quoted for adults reading non-technical prose silently. Real reading speed varies enormously — with the reader, with the difficulty of the material, and with whether they are reading or skimming.

Dense technical writing, anything with code samples, and anything the reader has to stop and think about all run well below 200. Treat the figure as a rough guide for a "5 min read" badge, and do not use it for anything where being wrong by half matters.

How long is that to read?

At 200 words per minute — the usual mid-range figure for an adult reading ordinary prose silently. Technical writing runs well below it.

Page counts assume 12pt type, double spaced, at about 250 words a page. Font, margins and spacing all move that figure.

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