Word Counter

What counts as a word

It sounds like it should be settled, and it is not. Every word counter draws the boundaries slightly differently, which is why the number here may not match the one at the bottom of your document editor.

This tool splits on whitespace: any run of non-space characters is one word. That means "state-of-the-art" counts as one, an em dash with spaces around it counts as one, and "3.14" counts as one. Editors that split on punctuation instead will count the first as four.

The usual culprits behind a mismatch are hyphenated compounds, numbers and dates, URLs, and whether headings, captions, footnotes and bibliography entries are included at all. A word processor counts everything in the document body; pasting only your essay text here counts only your essay.

If you have a hard limit to hit, the number that matters is your marker's, not ours. Check which one they use before you spend an evening cutting 200 words you did not need to cut.

Reading time and speaking time are not the same number

Reading time here assumes 225 words per minute, which is a reasonable average for an adult reading non-technical prose silently. Speaking time assumes 130 words per minute, roughly the pace of clear, unhurried delivery to an audience.

The gap between them is large and it catches people out. A 1,500-word piece takes about seven minutes to read and about twelve to say aloud. If you have written a conference talk against a reading-time estimate, you will overrun.

Both figures are estimates over averages. Dense academic prose, unfamiliar terminology, and text you have to stop and re-read all slow silent reading well below 225 words a minute. Speaking rate varies even more between individuals than reading rate does.

Reading the readability score

The reading level shown is a Flesch-Kincaid style grade estimate, computed from average sentence length and average syllables per word. Shorter sentences and shorter words produce a lower grade.

Treat it as a rough signal, not a verdict. Because it only measures length, it can be fooled in both directions: a passage of short sentences full of technical jargon scores as easy, and a clear, well-constructed long sentence scores as hard. It has no idea whether your writing makes sense.

It is most useful as a relative measure. Run two drafts of the same piece through it and the direction of the change tells you something real. Chasing a specific number usually just produces choppy prose.

Counting part of a document

Select any portion of your text and the statistics update to cover just the selection. This is the fastest way to check whether one section is pulling its weight, whether an abstract fits its limit, or how long a single paragraph will take to read aloud.

Nothing you paste is uploaded. The counting happens in your browser as you type, which is why it updates instantly and why you can safely paste unpublished work into it.

Common questions