Word counter

Count words, characters and paragraphs in a text.

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What it is for

Counting words and characters seems trivial until a limit becomes a problem. Application forms, academic abstracts, product descriptions and website tags all come with strict caps, and discovering you have overrun once you have finished means rewriting in a hurry.

The distinction between characters with and without spaces is not a quirk. Translation and proofreading quotes are usually calculated on characters excluding spaces, while form and social-media limits almost always count everything. Confusing the two leads to miscalculations in both directions.

The count updates as you type, so you can adjust the text as you go rather than writing blind and counting at the end.

How it works

  1. Paste or type your text into the box.
  2. The word, character and paragraph counters update in real time as you type.
  3. Use these numbers to fit your text to a character or word limit.

When to use it

Texts with a limit

Abstracts, applications and official forms impose maximums worth watching while you write.

Tags for search engines

A page title works well at around 60 characters and a description at about 155, before Google truncates them.

Quoting translations

Rates are calculated per word or per character, so an exact count is where the price starts.

Practical tips

  • Social and form limits usually count characters including spaces. Check which of the two figures applies to you.
  • Each block separated by a blank line counts as a paragraph.
  • Pasting from a word processor can bring in double spaces that inflate the count. It is worth checking.
  • To estimate how long it takes to read aloud, a useful benchmark is 130 to 150 words per minute.

Frequently asked questions

Does it count spaces as characters?

Both figures are shown separately: total characters, and total characters excluding spaces.

How are paragraphs detected?

Any block of text separated by a blank line is counted as one paragraph.

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