Word Counter for Essays and Assignments
Paste or type your text and the counts update as you go: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences, paragraphs, lines, reading and speaking time. Set a minimum and maximum to see how many words you have left or are over, check how often a keyword appears, and spot repeated words and phrases that may need rewording. Your text never leaves your browser, so it is safe for drafts and unpublished work.
Runs in your browser. Your text is not uploaded or saved.
How it works
- Type or paste your text. Use Paste, Select all or Clear to manage it.
- Read the live counts in the side panel.
- Optionally set a target minimum and maximum to see your progress.
- Type a keyword or phrase to see how many times it appears and its share of all words.
- Review the most repeated words and phrases, and copy the results.
Options explained
- Target range
- Shows how many words remain to reach your minimum, or how many you are over your maximum.
- Keyword density
- Whole-word, case-insensitive matches of your keyword or phrase, as a percentage of all words.
- Include common words
- Turns on words such as the, and and of in the repeated-words list. They are hidden by default.
- Reading speed
- Sets the words-per-minute used for reading time. Speaking time uses 130 words per minute.
How the result is worked out
- A word is a run of letters or digits. Hyphens and apostrophes inside a word keep it together (well-known and don't count as one word), and numbers such as 3.14 or 1,000 count as one.
- A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis (including the full-width 。！？). A full stop inside a number or web address, such as 3.14 or example.com, does not end one. Abbreviations such as Dr. or e.g. are counted as ending a sentence, so the figure can run a little high in text that uses many of them. A paragraph is a block separated by a blank line.
- Characters are counted as Unicode characters, so an accented letter or an emoji counts once.
Example
The text “Climate change affects climate policy. Climate policy matters because climate action needs policy. Global warming is real.” has 17 words. “climate” appears 4 times, so its density is about 23.5%. With a minimum of 30 words, 13 more are needed.
Tips for better results
- Paste only the body text if your limit excludes the title, references or footnotes.
- Counts can differ slightly from your word processor. Follow the counter your instructor names, and leave a margin.
- Use the sentence and paragraph counts to spot very long sentences or one-sentence paragraphs.
Limitations
- Word counts differ slightly between applications because of how hyphens, numbers and symbols are treated. Check how your assignment counts words.
- Very long texts (over about 400,000 characters) keep the basic counts but switch off the detailed analysis to stay responsive.
- Repeated-phrase detection looks at two- and three-word phrases only.
Guides that go with this tool
Frequently asked questions
Does it count hyphenated words as one?
Yes. A word joined by hyphens or an apostrophe counts once, as do numbers with decimal or thousands separators.
Is my text stored?
No. It stays in your browser and is not uploaded or saved.
Why is my count different from Word or Google Docs?
Each program has its own rules for symbols, hyphens and numbers. The counting rules used here are written on this page.
What is keyword density?
The share of all words made up by your keyword or phrase. For a phrase, each occurrence counts all of its words.
Can it handle other languages?
It counts letters and digits in any script. Languages written without spaces between words, such as Chinese, are not split into words.