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Word counter

Live counts of words, characters, sentences, paragraphs and lines — plus reading and speaking time estimates as you type.

0Words
0Characters
0Without spaces
0Sentences
0Paragraphs
0Lines
1 secReading time
1 secSpeaking time

How it works

  1. Paste or type. Statistics update on every keystroke; there is nothing to submit.
  2. Watch the limits you care about. Characters for meta descriptions and tweets, words for essays and articles.
  3. Close the tab. Nothing was saved anywhere — the text existed only in this page.

Limits worth memorising

A page title should stay near 60 characters before Google truncates it; a meta description near 155. Bluesky and Mastodon posts cap at 300 and 500 characters. A one-page cover letter is about 400 words, a typical blog post 800 to 1,500, and a conference talk runs roughly 140 words per minute of stage time.

Why reading time varies

Published estimates range from 200 to 300 words per minute because reading speed depends on material and reader. Technical prose with code samples reads far slower than narrative text, so treat the estimate as a floor rather than a promise.

Related: text diff for comparing two drafts, and the JSON formatter when the text is really data.

Frequently asked questions

How is reading time calculated?

From an average silent reading speed of 238 words per minute — the figure from Brysbaert’s 2019 meta-analysis of reading research. Speaking time uses 140 words per minute, a typical presentation pace.

Does it count characters with or without spaces?

Both, side by side. Character counts use graphemes, so an emoji or an accented letter counts as one character rather than two.

Is my text stored or sent anywhere?

No. Counting happens in your browser as you type; nothing is transmitted, logged or saved.

What counts as a sentence?

A run of text ending in a period, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis. Abbreviations like “e.g.” can inflate the count slightly — that is a limitation of counting without full language parsing.

Is the reading-time estimate personalised?

No. It always uses 238 words per minute for silent reading and 140 for speaking. Dense technical prose, a different language or an individual reader can take noticeably more or less time.

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