What the counts mean
Type or paste your text and every count updates as you go. Take this sentence:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
It has 9 words, 44 characters (36 without spaces), 1 sentence, and 1 paragraph. At an average reading pace, it takes a couple of seconds to read.
Words is the main count because most limits are set in words: essays, cover letters, articles. Characters matter when a limit is set in characters, like a text message, a social post, or a form field. Both counts sit at the top of the result, so you don’t have to switch anything.
Common character limits
| Where | Limit | How it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Text message (SMS) | Often 160 GSM-7 or 70 UCS-2 units for a single segment | Encoding and multi-part messages change the available space |
| X (Twitter) post | 280 | Emoji and some scripts count as 2; links count as 23 |
This tool counts visible characters, not SMS segments or X’s weighted character total. Twilio’s SMS length guide explains encoding and multi-part messages; X’s character-counting rules explain its weighting and link handling. Check the destination’s own editor when you are near a limit; account features can have different limits.
How it works
- Words: your browser splits the text at word boundaries using the Unicode text rules. A word joined by a hyphen or an apostrophe counts once, so “well-known” and “don’t” are 1 word each. Numbers count as words. Punctuation on its own doesn’t.
- Characters: every letter, number, space, and symbol you can see counts as 1. Emoji and accented letters count as 1 each. “Without spaces” leaves out spaces, tabs, and line breaks. “Letters and numbers only” also leaves out punctuation, symbols, and emoji.
- Sentences: split at sentence endings like a period, question mark, or exclamation mark. A piece with no words in it isn’t counted.
- Paragraphs: blocks of text with a blank line between them. A single line break doesn’t start a new paragraph.
- Reading level: the Flesch reading ease score (0 to 100, higher is easier) from average sentence length and syllables per word, shown with its band, like “Plain English” for 60 to 70, and the Flesch-Kincaid grade level, the US school grade that can usually read it. Syllables are counted by rule of thumb, which is right for most everyday words. It appears once your text has 30 words, and hovering over it shows both scores.
- Reading time: words divided by 238 words per minute, the average silent reading speed for adults found in a 2019 review of 190 studies (Brysbaert). Under 2 minutes it’s rounded to the nearest 10 seconds; above that, to the nearest minute.
Limits
Counts can differ slightly from Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Those apps have their own rules for things like dashes, web addresses, and abbreviations. Reading time is an average: people read technical text slower and light fiction faster. Reading level formulas were made for English and only measure sentence and word length, not whether the writing is clear; very short texts and lists can score oddly.