Word & character counter

How to Count Words, Characters and Paragraphs as You Type

A lot of writing comes with a limit: an essay of at least a thousand words, an abstract capped at 250, a product description with a character limit, or a social post that cannot go over a set length. This counter shows those numbers live as you type or paste, so you always know where you stand against the target.

It runs inside the page with JavaScript, so your text is not sent to any server. That matters when you are working on a confidential draft or an unpublished document.

How to use it

1. Type in the Text box, or paste from any document or web page.
2. Watch the result line under the box; it updates with every keystroke, with no button to press.
3. Read the figures in order: words, then characters, then paragraphs.
4. Edit until you hit your target, and the numbers change instantly.

How it counts

• Words: any run of characters separated by a space or line break counts as one word, so standalone numbers and symbols count too.
• Characters: every character is counted, including spaces, punctuation, line breaks and Arabic diacritics.
• Paragraphs: a new paragraph is counted when it is separated by a blank line; a single line break does not start a new paragraph.
• An empty box shows zero, and spaces at the very start or end are not counted as words.

Practical examples

• A student checks an essay meets the minimum word count before submitting it.
• A content writer keeps a meta description within a sensible character length for search results.
• A translator counts the words in a source document to quote a price or estimate time.
• A marketer checks the length of ad copy before posting to a platform with a character cap.

Tips and notes

• Arabic diacritics count as characters, so heavily vowelled text can push a character count up; remove them first if the destination does not count them.
• Some emoji count as two characters because of how they are encoded, and platforms may count them differently.
• If the paragraph count looks low, make sure there is a truly empty line between paragraphs, not one containing spaces.
• The counter does not save your text, so copy it somewhere safe before closing the page.

Need characters without spaces? Try the character counter. To estimate how long your text takes to read, use the reading time calculator, and to find your most repeated words, try the word density counter.