Word counter

How this counter counts

• Words. A word is a run of characters separated by spaces, tabs or line breaks that contains at least one letter or number. “don’t” counts once; a lone dash or full stop does not count.
• Characters. The first figure is the full length of the text. “Without spaces” removes spaces, tabs and line breaks — that is the number most forms mean.
• Sentences. A sentence ends with a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, ellipsis or the Urdu full stop (۔). Abbreviations such as “Dr.” can inflate the count by one, so treat it as a guide.
• Paragraphs and lines. A paragraph is a block of text separated by a blank line. A line is a line that contains at least one character.
• Reading and speaking time. Reading uses 200 words per minute and speaking 130 words per minute — ordinary editorial averages. Dense, technical or non-native text takes longer.
• Keyword density. Each word’s share of all words, after ignoring the most common English and Urdu function words. It is a diagnostic, not a target.

Where a word count is checked

• Essays and applications. Universities and scholarship forms enforce hard limits, often 250, 500 or 1,000 words.
• Meta titles and descriptions. Search results truncate around 60 characters for a title and 155–160 for a description.
• Social posts. Captions and posts have character limits that differ by platform and account type.
• Translation and subtitling. Word and character counts decide quotes, timing and how many lines fit on screen.
• Invoices and legal text. Character counts help keep a description within a printed field.

For the method in more detail, including what counts as a word in different scripts, read the word counter guide.