Word & Character Counter
Count words, Unicode characters, non-space characters and lines in pasted or typed text. The counts update while you write, making this useful for forms, drafts and social posts.
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Estimated reading time: 0 minutes at 200 words per minute.
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What is the Word & Character Counter?
Count words, Unicode characters, non-space characters and lines in pasted or typed text. The counts update while you write, making this useful for forms, drafts and social posts.
How to use it
- 1Type or paste text into the editor.
- 2Read the live counts and approximate reading time.
- 3Clear the editor to start a new count.
How it works
Words are counted as runs of letters or digits, including an internal apostrophe. Characters are counted by Unicode code point, and reading time assumes 200 words per minute.
A short headline
“Free tools for everyone” contains four words, 23 characters including spaces, and 20 characters without spaces.
Limitations & notes
- Emoji sequences can contain multiple Unicode code points and may count as more than one character.
- Reading speed varies by language and subject.
Frequently asked questions
How are hyphenated words, numbers and contractions counted?
A word is a run of letters or digits, and an apostrophe inside it keeps it together, so don't counts as one word. A hyphen splits words, so well-known counts as two, and a decimal point splits numbers, so 3.14 counts as two. Microsoft Word counts both of those as one word, so totals here can be slightly higher for technical text. Emoji and punctuation on their own are not counted as words.
Why is my count different from Twitter/X or a form limit?
Sites measure length differently. This tool counts Unicode code points, so most letters count as one, but an emoji built from several parts, like a family or a flag, counts as two or more. X weights many emoji and CJK characters as two, and some databases limit bytes rather than characters, where é takes two bytes in UTF-8. Leave a small margin when you are close to a hard limit.
How long should an essay or blog post be in words?
It depends on the purpose. Common targets are 250 to 300 words for a short news item, 1,000 to 2,000 for a detailed blog guide, and 650 words for the Common App personal essay. At the 200 words per minute this tool assumes, a 1,500 word article takes about 8 minutes to read. Length alone does not help ranking or grades; cover the topic fully, then cut repetition.
Does the counter work for Chinese, Japanese or Thai text?
Character counts work for every language. Word counts do not for scripts written without spaces, because the tool splits words only on spaces and punctuation, so a whole Japanese phrase like 東京タワー counts as one word. For Chinese, Japanese or Thai, use the Characters figure, which is how length limits are usually defined in those languages. Accented Latin text, Cyrillic, Greek and Arabic are counted as words correctly.
How does the tool count lines?
Every line break starts a new line, including blank lines between paragraphs, so a three-paragraph text with empty lines between them shows five lines. A trailing line break after the last word also adds one line, which is why pasted text sometimes shows one more line than you expect. Windows, Mac and Unix line endings are all recognized, and visual wrapping in the text box does not count.
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