How to count words
Understand your text length, character count, and estimated reading time before you publish.
Start with the text you actually want to count
Paste your draft into the Word Counter. The numbers update as you type, so there is no submit button. If a word limit applies only to the body of a piece, leave out the title, notes, and references unless the instructions say otherwise.
For a quick test, try this sentence:
Small tools make writing easier.
This example contains 5 words and 32 characters, including spaces and the final full stop.
What counts as a word?
BrightToolkit uses your browser’s word segmentation to identify words and numbers. Punctuation on its own is not a word. An apostrophe inside an English contraction, such as “don’t,” is normally kept with the word. Hyphenated phrases may be split into separate words.
Word boundaries can differ between languages and between applications. If you are submitting an essay, application, or article to a system with a strict limit, its own counter is the final reference. Check there before you submit.
Characters include more than letters
The character count includes spaces, punctuation, and line breaks. It counts Unicode code points rather than storage bytes. Some emoji and accented characters combine several code points, so one visible symbol can count as more than one character. Other websites may use a different definition.
Reading time is an estimate
The estimate uses 200 words per minute. Text shorter than 200 words is shown as “< 1 min”; longer estimates are rounded up to whole minutes. At that pace, a 600-word draft is about three minutes of reading.
Technical language, unfamiliar terms, tables, and pauses all change the time someone needs. This is a planning aid, not a measurement of any individual reader.
A useful editing routine
- Check the length of the first draft without interrupting your writing.
- Remove repeated ideas and unnecessary phrases.
- Check the revised count and read the text aloud.
- Copy the result into your final document.