Word Counter

About this tool

A live word counter that updates as you type. Drop in a draft, a transcript, a blog post, a college essay, a tweet — the counter shows words, characters (with and without spaces), sentences, paragraphs, and rough reading and speaking time estimates. It also surfaces the words you use most, which is the part most word counters skip but the part that's actually useful when you're editing your own writing.

It runs entirely in your browser. No signups, no analytics, no telemetry. Your text never leaves the page.

How each count works

• Words — sequences of non-whitespace characters separated by whitespace. Hyphenated compounds (self-driving) count as one word. Em-dash separations without surrounding spaces count as one; with spaces, two.
• Characters — every code point including spaces, line breaks, punctuation, and emoji. Most single-glyph emoji count as one; composite emoji (skin-tone modifiers, family compositions) count as more.
• Characters (no spaces) — the character total with whitespace stripped. This is what some platforms (notably some school assignment portals) use for length minimums.
• Sentences — separated by a period, exclamation mark, or question mark followed by whitespace or end-of-text. Abbreviations like "Dr." or "e.g." can inflate this slightly; treat it as a close approximation.
• Paragraphs — separated by one or more empty lines. A single-line draft counts as one paragraph.
• Reading time — 225 words per minute, the typical adult silent-reading rate for non-technical prose.
• Speaking time — 130 words per minute, a comfortable spoken pace for podcasts, presentations, and natural conversation.

What word counts actually matter

Different contexts have different conventions. A few targets worth knowing:

• Tweet / X post — 280 characters (not words). For posts, the practical writing target is way under the cap; engagement drops off past about 100 characters.
• SMS — 160 characters per message segment. Beyond that, most carriers split into multiple messages.
• SEO blog post — 1,500-2,500 words is the typical floor for ranking on competitive search queries. Below 700 words and search engines tend to read the page as thin.
• College essay — usually 250-650 words for application essays, 1,500-5,000 for term papers, ~10,000 for senior theses.
• Novel — 80,000-100,000 for adult fiction is the typical range agents and publishers expect. Under 50,000 reads as a novella; over 120,000 starts to lose readers.
• Conference talk — 130 wpm × talk length. A 20-minute talk fits about 2,600 spoken words; a 5-minute lightning talk fits about 650.
• Email — under 200 words gets read. Over 500 gets skimmed. Past 1,000 is a document, not an email — attach it as a Google Doc instead.

Why the "most-used words" list matters more than you'd think

Most word counters give you a number. The number is the cheapest piece of information about your draft — it tells you almost nothing about the writing. The list of words you used the most is much more revealing.

Three patterns it surfaces:

• Unconscious tics. Most writers have crutch words they reach for without noticing — basically, really, just, actually. Seeing one appear 14 times in a 600-word draft is the cue to cut most of them.
• Repetition you didn't catch. If the same noun appears 8 times in 4 paragraphs, the writing is asking for synonyms or restructuring.
• Keyword density (for SEO writers). Roughly: target keyword should appear in the top 10 most-used words of an SEO-targeted post. Past that, you're stuffing.

This counter ignores words of 3 characters or fewer (mostly articles, prepositions, and pronouns) so the list is meaningful.

Frequently asked questions