Essays, articles, social posts and meta descriptions all have limits. Counting is not always as simple as it looks, and two programs can show different numbers for the same text. Knowing the rules helps you trust the number that matters.

What counts as a word

Most counters treat a word as a run of characters between spaces or line breaks. A few details cause the differences:

  • Hyphens. "Well-known" is usually one word. "Well - known" with spaces may be counted as three, unless a lone dash is ignored.
  • Numbers and symbols. "42" is normally a word. A lone "&" or "-" is often skipped.
  • Slashes. "and/or" is one word to some programs and two to others.
  • Languages without spaces. Chinese, Japanese and Thai are written without gaps between words, so a space-based counter cannot split them into words. For those languages, characters are the usual measure.

If a teacher or publisher gives you a limit, use the program they will use to check it.

Characters with and without spaces

Character counts are used for short fields such as meta descriptions, text messages and some forms. "With spaces" counts everything. "Without spaces" ignores spaces, tabs and line breaks. Letters with accents and emoji should count as one visible character, even though they take more storage internally. Some platforms apply their own rules, so check the one you are posting to.

Sentences and paragraphs

A sentence count is an estimate based on full stops, question marks and exclamation marks. Abbreviations like "Dr." or "e.g." can add one. A paragraph is a block of text separated by an empty line.

Reading time and speaking time

The usual method is simple: divide the number of words by a reading speed. Many tools use about 200 to 250 words per minute for silent reading by an adult. Reading aloud and speeches are slower, often around 130 words per minute, because of pauses and pronunciation. These are averages. A technical article, a small screen, or a reader who is not fluent in the language will all take longer, so treat the figure as a guide.

For example, an article of 1,000 words is about five minutes of reading at 200 words per minute, and about eight minutes spoken at 130.

Useful targets

  • A page title: about 60 characters or fewer, so it is less likely to be cut off in search results.
  • A meta description: roughly 120 to 155 characters.
  • A short blog post: 600 to 1,000 words. A guide that covers a topic fully can be longer. Length is not a goal in itself, and padding does not help readers.

Using the most-used words

A list of the most used words, with common words such as "the" and "and" left out, is a quick way to check a draft. If one word fills a large share of a short text, you may be repeating yourself.

Try it

Paste your text to see the totals update as you type, plus reading and speaking time and the top words. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere. If you also need to change capital letters, the Text Case Converter works the same way.