Words, characters and what they count
A word count is the number of words. A character count is the number of symbols, and it comes in two kinds: with spaces, which includes spaces, tabs and line breaks, and without spaces, which leaves all whitespace out. Sentences and paragraphs are counted by punctuation and blank lines. The word counter shows all of these as you type, plus lines and the size of the text in bytes.
Whenever you are given a limit, check which count it refers to. “500 characters” for a form field normally includes spaces; an academic limit is almost always in words; a design brief might say “about 40 characters per line”. The same text gives different numbers depending on the rule.
Why counts differ between tools
There is no single official definition of a word. A word processor splits on spaces and then makes decisions about hyphens (“well-known”: one word or two?), numbers, symbols standing alone, and URLs. A website’s counter may split on punctuation as well. Your school’s submission system may count differently from the program you wrote in. If a limit is strict, count with the program the person checking will use, and leave a small margin.
Languages without spaces
Japanese, Chinese and Thai are written without spaces between words, so counting words means finding the boundaries first. Modern browsers include a word segmenter that does this with dictionary-based rules, and the word counter uses it. The result is a good estimate but not a rule, and for these languages limits are usually set in characters instead. Korean uses spaces between phrases, but its words carry endings that make “word” a looser idea too. Emoji and rare characters count as one character in the counter, though some systems store them as two or more units, which is why a field can fill up sooner than the count suggests.
Reading time and speaking time
Reading time is the word count divided by a reading speed. Studies of silent reading by adults put typical non-fiction reading at around 200 to 250 words a minute, and the counter uses about 238. Slow, technical or unfamiliar text takes longer; skimming is faster. For Japanese, Chinese and Korean the counter uses characters per minute (about 500) instead. Speaking time is slower, about 150 words a minute for a comfortable speech, so a five-minute talk is roughly 750 words. Treat these as planning figures, and time yourself reading the text aloud for an important speech.
Common limits
Here are limits that people run into, although services change their rules, so confirm the current figure:
- Text messages (SMS): one message segment holds 160 characters in the basic GSM alphabet, and fewer (70) if the text contains emoji or letters outside that alphabet, which then splits into several segments.
- Search result snippets: descriptions are usually trimmed at roughly 150 to 160 characters, with no fixed rule.
- Social posts and ad headlines: each platform sets its own limit and may count links, emoji or certain scripts differently.
- Essays and abstracts: word limits, normally excluding references, but check the instructions.
The counter has an optional Character limit field that shows how many characters are left, or how many you are over.
Tips for cutting or filling to length
To cut: remove adverbs and repeated phrases, replace long phrases with one word, and delete the introduction that restates the question. To fill: add an example, a definition or a counter-argument rather than padding. The Most used words list in the counter shows repeated words worth varying. After editing, count again, because deleting a sentence also changes the sentence and paragraph numbers.
Counting tokens for AI
If you are writing for an AI model, words are the wrong unit. Models read tokens, and the number of tokens per word varies a lot between languages. Use the token calculator for prompts, and see how many tokens a word or page uses for English rules of thumb. To tidy the text itself, the guide to changing text case covers capitals, and converting text to a Word document covers the next step if you need a file.
Privacy
A browser-based counter analyses the text on your device and does not upload it, which matters for drafts, contracts and personal writing. Close the page when you are done to clear the text.