Word Counter Online
Word Counter Online is a free tool to count words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs in real-time. This tool works as a word counter online for writers and students. It also functions as a letter counter, sentence counter, and paragraph counter.
Type or paste your text below to start counting.
Statistics
Word Counter – Count Words Instantly
A Word Counter is an online tool that helps you count the total number of words in your text instantly. It is widely used in writing, academic assignments, and content creation where word limits are required.
Whether you are writing an essay, a blog post, or a social media update, knowing your word count is essential. Our tool provides accurate counts for words, characters, and more.
Letter Counter
The Letter Counter counts only alphabetic characters (A–Z, a–z), excluding spaces, numbers, and punctuation. This is useful for tasks that require a specific letter count, such as meta descriptions or ad copy.
Understanding the difference between character count (which usually includes everything) and letter count is important for precise editing.
Sentence Counter
The Sentence Counter identifies sentences based on punctuation marks like periods, exclamation marks, and question marks. Counting sentences helps you analyze the readability and flow of your text.
Paragraph Counter
The Paragraph Counter counts paragraphs based on line breaks. Proper paragraph structure is crucial for readability, especially in essays and blog posts.
Features
- Real-time Counting: Automatically calculates as you type, no clicks needed.
- Multi-dimensional Stats: Counts total characters, Chinese/English characters, punctuation, numbers, and more.
- Text Processing: Includes tools to clear trailing spaces, organize paragraphs, and convert punctuation.
- Cross-platform: Works on desktop, mobile, and tablets directly in your browser.
Use Cases
- Students: Count words for essays and assignments to meet requirements.
- Writers: Track word counts for articles, books, and manuscripts.
- Content Creators: Optimize blog posts and SEO content length.
- Translators: Estimate workload based on character/word counts.
- Social Media: Ensure posts fit within character limits (Twitter, etc.).
How to Use
- Enter or paste your text into the text area.
- View the statistics updating in real-time below the text box.
- Use the toolbar buttons to format or clean up your text if needed.
- Copy the text or clear it to start over.
Privacy Policy
We prioritize your privacy. All text processing is done locally in your browser. Your text is never uploaded to our servers. You can safely use this tool for sensitive documents.
No data is saved or stored. Once you refresh or close the page, your text is cleared.
User Feedback & Support
We value your feedback and suggestions. If you encounter any issues or have feature requests, please contact us. We are committed to continuously improving this tool based on user input.
This tool is built with modern web technologies and supports all major browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge). If you experience technical issues, try clearing your browser cache or using Incognito/Private mode.
FAQ
How many bytes does a character take in web encoding?
In GBK encoding, a Chinese character takes 2 bytes.
In UTF-16, most characters take 2 bytes, but some extended characters (like emoji or rare Hanzi) take 4 bytes. (Standard Unicode U+0000 to U+FFFF takes 2 bytes, others take 4).
In UTF-8 (variable length), a Chinese character usually takes 3 bytes, extended characters take 4 bytes, while standard ASCII characters take 1 byte.
How to indent two characters in Word?
Does pressing space twice equal two Chinese characters? Not exactly.
Standard indentation is 2 character widths (1 Chinese character = 2 standard characters width in some contexts, but usually indentation refers to 2 ems).
In Word, you can right-click Paragraph -> Indentation -> Special: First line -> By: 2 ch.
What are standard word counts for novels?
Short Stories: Typically 5,000 – 15,000 words.
Novellas: Typically 30,000 – 70,000 words.
Novels: Generally 80,000+ words. For publishing, 60k-100k is a common standard range depending on genre.
Micro-fiction: Usually under 1,500 words.
What are the character limits for SMS and Social Media?
SMS: A single SMS is limited to 140 English characters or 70 Chinese characters. Messages exceeding this limit are split and billed as multiple texts. For very long messages (e.g., 1000+ characters), MMS is recommended as it's more cost-effective (1 MMS can hold ~1000 Chinese characters).
Twitter (X): 280 characters.
Weibo: Originally 140 characters (derived from the SMS limit for mobile posting convenience), now relaxed.
How should I count words for submissions?
Word Count: Usually excludes punctuation.
Character Count (no spaces): Includes punctuation but excludes spaces.
Character Count (with spaces): Includes everything (punctuation and spaces).
Exam Essays: Typically count words/characters without spaces or punctuation.
Publisher/Media Submissions: Usually use "Character Count (with spaces)" including punctuation.
Standard punctuation includes: period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, pause mark, semicolon, colon, quotation marks, parentheses, dash, ellipsis, emphasis mark, connector, interval mark, book title mark, and proper name mark. Spaces are not punctuation.
Tip: Forum Signature Length
Forum signatures often have strict character limits. To maximize your content:
Omit the closing tags of BBCode (like [/url], [/size], [/color], [/b]).
You can also omit the "http://" prefix from URLs.
Systems often auto-complete these tags upon saving, allowing you to squeeze in more text within the limit.
Mobile Data Usage for Messaging
English/Numbers: 1 byte per character.
Chinese Characters: 2 bytes per character.
Unit Conversion: 1 Byte (B) = 8 bits (b). 512 Chinese characters = 1024 bytes = 1KB.
Need more specific tools? Check out our Character Counter for detailed analysis.