Word Count

Words are counted by splitting text on whitespace (spaces, tabs, newlines) and counting the resulting non-empty tokens. Hyphenated words like 'well-being' count as one word. Numbers, contractions, and abbreviations each count as one word. The algorithm matches the behavior of most major word processors.

Reading time is estimated based on an average adult silent reading speed of approximately 200–250 words per minute (wpm). The tool divides the word count by this rate to estimate minutes. The actual reading time varies significantly by text complexity, technical content, and individual reading speed.

Characters with spaces counts every character including whitespace. Characters without spaces counts only visible characters (letters, numbers, punctuation), excluding spaces and newlines. Character counts matter for social media posts (Twitter/X: 280 chars), SMS (160 chars), and SEO meta descriptions (155 chars).

Sentences are counted by detecting sentence-ending punctuation marks (periods, exclamation points, question marks) followed by whitespace or end of text. This heuristic works well for standard prose but may miscount in texts with abbreviations (e.g., 'Dr.', 'U.S.') or in code and technical content.

The word count tool works correctly with any Unicode text, including accented characters and non-ASCII letters. For languages that do not use spaces between words (such as Chinese, Japanese, and Thai), the whitespace-splitting approach counts whole sentences or phrases as single 'words' rather than individual linguistic words.