How the word and character counter works
This tool reads only what is in the text box on your screen. As you type or paste, it splits the text on whitespace to count words, counts every character for characters with spaces, strips whitespace for characters without spaces, looks for sentence-ending punctuation to count sentences, and treats blank-line-separated blocks as paragraphs.
Worked example
Take the sentence "Hello there. How are you?" It contains 5 words, 25 characters with spaces, 21 characters without spaces, 2 sentences (one ending in a period and one in a question mark) and 1 paragraph. Reading time and speaking time are tiny here, but for longer text they matter: at 250 words per minute, a 1,000-word article takes about 4 minutes to read, while at a 130-words-per-minute speaking pace the same text takes nearly 8 minutes to say aloud.
Reading time reference
| Words | Reading time (~250 wpm) | Rough pages (double-spaced) |
|---|---|---|
| 250 | ~1 min | 1 page |
| 500 | ~2 min | 2 pages |
| 1000 | ~4 min | 4 pages |
| 1500 | ~6 min | 6 pages |
Frequently asked questions
- How many words is my text?
- Paste or type your text in the box and the word count updates instantly. A word is any run of characters separated by spaces, tabs or line breaks, so empty gaps are ignored. The big number at the top is your live word count.
- How is reading time calculated?
- Reading time is your word count divided by an average silent reading speed of about 200 to 250 words per minute. This tool uses 250 wpm and shows the result as minutes and seconds. Speaking time uses a slower pace of about 130 wpm.
- What's the difference between characters with and without spaces?
- Characters with spaces counts every character you type, including spaces, tabs and line breaks. Characters without spaces counts only the visible characters and ignores all whitespace. Many forms and Twitter-style limits count characters with spaces.
- How many pages is 500 or 1000 words?
- As a rough guide, a double-spaced page in a standard 12pt font holds about 250 words, so 500 words is roughly 2 pages and 1000 words is roughly 4 pages. Single-spaced, those numbers roughly halve to 1 and 2 pages.
- How many words is a typical essay or tweet?
- A short school essay is often 300 to 500 words, a standard college essay 500 to 1000 words, and a blog post 600 to 1500 words. A single tweet is capped at 280 characters, which is usually around 40 to 70 words.
- Is my text stored or uploaded?
- No. The counter runs entirely in your browser with JavaScript. Nothing you type is uploaded, logged or saved on a server — it stays local to your device.