Word Counter

About this word counter

Word limits turn up everywhere: an essay with a maximum, a meta description that gets truncated in search results, a post that will not send if it is one character too long. This counts as you type so you can see the problem before it bites, rather than after a form rejects you.

The counts are deliberate about edge cases. Words are runs of non-whitespace, so "don't" and "well-known" each count once. Characters are counted as code points, so an emoji counts as one character rather than two. Ellipses and "?!" close one sentence, not three.

The limits in the dropdown are the ones that actually reject you, and each of them counts differently from the way it looks. X counts any URL as 23 characters however long it is, because every link is rewritten to a t.co address, and it counts most emoji as two rather than one. A meta description is not truncated at 160 characters but at a pixel width, around 920 pixels on a desktop result, so a line of capitals is cut earlier than a line of lowercase: 160 is the working approximation, here and in the meta tag generator, and Google has never published the real number. An SMS is 160 characters only in GSM-7, and a single emoji or curly apostrophe switches the whole message to UCS-2, at which point the limit drops to 70. The counter here counts plain characters, so if your post carries a link or emoji, read the X figure as the floor rather than the total.

Reading time is the figure most often quoted without a source. The 238 words per minute used here comes from Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 silent reading studies covering 18,573 participants, which is the best evidenced number available. It is an average for adults reading English non-fiction: fiction runs a little faster at about 260, while technical writing, a second language or a page of numbers all read slower. Treat the minute count as a floor rather than a promise.

How to count words and characters

1. Type in the box, or paste text in from anywhere.
2. Read the counts underneath. They update on every keystroke.
3. Pick a Limit if you are writing for a platform, and it will count down the characters you have left.
4. Check Most repeated to catch a word you have leaned on too often.
5. Press Copy counts to put the summary on your clipboard.