Paste or type your text, or drop in a PDF or Word file. Words and characters are counted as you type, along with pages, reading time and speaking time.
The word count, the character count and the count without spaces are the three numbers most limits are set in, so they sit at the top. Everything is counted again on every keystroke, which makes it easier to write to a limit than to write first and trim afterwards.
Pages are worked out the way most teachers and editors do it: about 500 words to a single-spaced page and 250 to a double-spaced one, in a 12-point font with one-inch margins. Reading time assumes 238 words a minute and speaking time 140, the pace of a calm talk.
Drop a PDF, a Word document (.docx), an OpenDocument file (.odt) or a plain text file on the box, or open it with the button. Its text appears in the box and is counted like anything you paste, so you can see exactly what was counted.
The file is read by your browser and never uploaded. A Word document is counted the way Word counts it, footnotes and text boxes included and headers and footers left out. A scanned PDF is a picture of text, and has no words to count until it has been through OCR.
Paste the source of a web page or a Markdown file, and the tags, links and symbols are counted along with the words, which is rarely what you want to know. When the counter spots HTML or Markdown, a button appears under the box: Visible text only. Press it, and the counter reads past the code to just the words a visitor would see on the page.
Scripts, styles and image addresses are left out, and so are the hashes, asterisks and link targets of Markdown. The text in the box is left as it is, so you can switch back and forth and compare.
Drop the PDF on the text box, or open it with the Open a file button. Its text appears in the box and every count updates, pages and reading time included. The file is read by your browser and never uploaded. A scanned PDF is a picture of text, so it has no words to count until it has been through OCR, and a PDF locked with a password cannot be read at all.
Yes. Drop a .docx file on the box, or an .odt from LibreOffice or Google Docs. It is counted the way Word counts it: the body text, footnotes, endnotes and text boxes, but not headers and footers. Older .doc files cannot be read here; save them as .docx first, or copy the text and paste it in.
The main count does: it counts everything you paste, spaces, line breaks and punctuation included. The count next to it leaves out spaces and line breaks, for forms and quotes that count characters without spaces.
Different tools treat trailing spaces, line breaks and symbols differently. Emoji are the other usual cause: this counter counts each emoji you see as one character, including ones built from several parts like a family or a flag, while some tools count the parts. Social platforms add their own rules on top: X counts most emoji as two and every link as a fixed length, no matter how long the URL really is.
About two pages single-spaced and four double-spaced. The counter works with 500 words to a single-spaced page and 250 to a double-spaced one, in a 12-point font like Times New Roman or Arial with one-inch margins. A larger font, wider margins or many headings and short paragraphs make the real number of pages higher.
Reading time is the word count divided by 238, the average speed of silent reading for adults in a large 2019 review of reading studies. Speaking time divides by 140, the middle of the 130 to 150 words a minute of a calm talk or presentation. A 1,000-word text takes about four minutes to read and seven to say.
Yes. When you paste HTML or Markdown, a Visible text only button appears under the box. Press it, and tags, scripts, styles and comments are left out of HTML, and hashes, asterisks and link addresses out of Markdown. What is counted is the text a reader would see on the page. The text in the box is not changed, so you can switch back and forth and compare.
Anything between spaces that contains a letter or a digit. A hyphenated word counts as one, a number counts as a word, and a dash or a comma standing on its own does not count. Chinese and Japanese, which have no spaces between words, are split into words by your browser's dictionary.
A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark, but not at the full stop in an abbreviation like Dr. or e.g., in a decimal like 3.50, or after an initial. A blank line ends a sentence too, so a heading counts as one. A paragraph is a block with a blank line after it; Lines counts every line that has text on it.
Every one of them is listed on the character limits page, along with the point at which each platform stops showing your text, which is often thousands of characters before the limit itself. Paste your text there and it is measured against all of them at once.