What is counted
- Words: groups of letters or numbers. “don’t” and “well-known” count as one word each. Works for any alphabet, including Arabic and Urdu.
- Characters: every letter, number, space and symbol; and separately without spaces.
- Sentences: text ending in . ! ? or …
- Paragraphs: blocks separated by a blank line.
Reading and speaking time
Times are worked out from the speeds you set. The defaults – 200 words a minute for reading and 130 for speaking – are round figures for an average adult; change them to match yourself or your audience. A 1,000-word article is then about 5 minutes to read, and a 650-word speech about 5 minutes to give.
Common limits to check
- Google search snippets: page titles around 50–60 characters and meta descriptions around 150–160 characters usually show in full.
- University essays and job applications: limits are usually in words; check whether the title and references count.
- Text messages: one SMS holds 160 plain characters (fewer with emoji or non-Latin letters).
Worked example: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” is 9 words, 44 characters, 36 without spaces, 1 sentence – about 3 seconds to read at 200 words a minute.
Privacy
Your text stays on your device. Nothing is uploaded or saved, so you can safely check private documents.
Writing tips
- Short sentences are easier to read. If your average sentence is over 25 words, try splitting some in two.
- Check repeated words. The “most used words” line (common words such as “the” and “and” are left out) shows if you lean on the same word too often.
- Paragraphs help on phones. Online, two to four sentences per paragraph is easier to read on a small screen.
For a meta description or a social post, aim for the character count; for essays and applications, aim for the word count.
Pasting from Word or a PDF can bring in extra line breaks; the paragraph count uses blank lines, so tidy those first if the number looks too high.