Word and character counter
Live word, character, sentence and reading-time counts as you type.
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About this tool
Count words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines and unique words, with reading and speaking time estimates and the five words you lean on most. Characters are counted the way a reader counts them, so an emoji or an accented letter is one character, and the UTF-16 count an API length limit actually measures is shown separately. Nothing is uploaded, so drafts, client copy and unpublished writing stay on your machine.
Using this tool
Why are there two character counts?
Because there are two useful answers. “Characters” counts what a reader sees, so a flag emoji or an é is one. “UTF-16 code units” is what most APIs and databases measure, where the same emoji can count as four. If you are checking against a field limit, use the second.
How is reading time calculated?
Words divided by 238 words per minute for silent reading, and by 150 for reading aloud. Those are the usual research averages for adults reading English prose; dense technical writing runs slower.
Does it work for Chinese, Japanese or Thai?
Yes, where your browser supports Intl.Segmenter, which every current browser does. Those languages do not put spaces between words, so a naive counter reports one enormous word; this one uses the browser’s own word segmentation instead.
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