How the count works
A word is any unbroken run of letters, digits, apostrophes or hyphens. That means don’t is one word, state-of-the-art is one word, and a stray dash on its own is none. It is the same rule most word processors use, so the number here should match what your editor reports to within a word or two.
Sentences are counted at full stops, question marks, exclamation marks and ellipses. Abbreviations such as e.g. will occasionally inflate the count — no sentence splitter gets this perfect without understanding the text.
Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line, which is how paragraphs are marked in plain text.
Reading time defaults to 238 words per minute, around the average adult silent reading speed for non-fiction in English. Change the figure in the toolbar if you are timing something to be read aloud — 150 wpm is a realistic speaking pace.
When a word count actually matters
- Essays and assignments — most briefs allow ±10%, and most also exclude the reference list. Check before you trim.
- Articles — 800–1,500 words covers most useful posts. Longer is fine when the subject earns it.
- Talks — roughly 130 words per spoken minute. A 20-minute slot is about 2,600 words.
- Cover letters — 250–400 words. One page.
There is a fuller breakdown, including the hard character limits platforms enforce, in how long should it be?
Common questions
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. The counting runs in your browser using JavaScript on this page. Nothing is transmitted, stored or logged, and closing the tab discards it.
Does it count words in a different language?
Yes for languages that separate words with spaces, including accented Latin scripts, Cyrillic and Greek. Chinese, Japanese and Thai do not use spaces between words, so the word figure will not be meaningful — use the character count instead.
Why does my count differ slightly from Microsoft Word?
Different tools make different decisions about hyphenated compounds, numbers and text inside footnotes. Differences of a word or two on a long document are normal.