About
Monitor your writing progress by calculating the total number of words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and lines in your text document. You can disable word wrapping to view the entire document without breaking it into lines.
Count words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and lines as you edit. Track the size of an essay, message, or article draft.
How to use
Replace the sample with your text and read the live totals. Use the full or whitespace excluded character count according to the receiving form's rules.
Example
Hello world! has two words and 12 characters including the space and exclamation mark.
FAQ
Why does another editor disagree?
Word and sentence boundaries are calculated by rules. Abbreviations, compound words, and languages without spaces can produce different totals across tools.
A practical task
Replace the sample completely before checking a submission limit. A copied title, footnote, or caption can be included in the total even if a publisher excludes it. Define the counted passage first, then compare the appropriate word and character totals.
Another useful question
Are paragraphs the same as lines?
No. A wrapped visual line is not necessarily a stored line break, and several stored lines can belong to one paragraph. Review the labels before interpreting the totals.
Details for interpreting the result
| Detail | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Words and tokens | A word count depends on token rules. Punctuation, apostrophes, digits, and languages without spaces create edge cases. Use the receiving editor's definition when a formal limit must match its own counter exactly. |
| Counts and percentages | A frequency count tells how often an item occurs. Its percentage depends on the chosen denominator: all words, all characters, or another set. Read the unit before comparing two frequency reports. |
| Case sensitivity | Case sensitive matching distinguishes capital and lowercase letters. Ignoring case merges some of those distinctions, but it does not turn different spellings or word forms into the same term. |
| Code points | A Unicode code point identifies a character or a component of one. A letter followed by a combining accent contains two code points even when the screen displays one accented letter. |
| Visible symbols | What looks like one symbol can contain several Unicode components. Emoji sequences can include a base symbol, a skin tone, and joining characters. Counting or splitting them by bytes changes their structure. |
| Similar looking text | Two strings can look identical but use different Unicode sequences. An accented letter can be stored directly or as a letter plus an accent. Visual similarity alone does not establish byte equality. |
