🔤 Word Counter
Paste your essay, article or speech to count words, sentences and paragraphs instantly — with reading time, speaking time and your most-used words.
How to use the word counter
- Paste or type your text. The tiles at the top update instantly. The page opens with a sample — press clear to start fresh.
- Pick a reading speed to adjust the reading-time estimate. For a talk or presentation, look at speaking time instead.
- Scroll to Top 10 most-used words to spot repetition and check keyword density. copy puts a tab-separated table on your clipboard that pastes straight into Excel or Google Sheets.
How words are counted
A word is any group of characters separated by spaces, tabs or line breaks that contains at least one letter or digit — the same basic rule Microsoft Word and Google Docs use. So don't, e-mail and 2026 are one word each. Pieces that are only punctuation, such as a lone dash — or an ellipsis …, are not counted, which is why this counter can come out a few words lower than Word.
- Sentences end at
.?!or…followed by a space or line break. A heading or list item without punctuation counts as one sentence. Abbreviations likeMr. Smithmay be counted as two sentences;3.14is not split. - Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line. A single line break stays in the same paragraph.
- Average word length is letters and digits (no punctuation) divided by words. Everyday English averages about 4.5–5 letters per word; academic writing runs higher.
- Pages uses the common rule of thumb of about 500 words per single-spaced page (about 250 double-spaced) in 12-pt Times New Roman.
Reading time and speaking time
Reading time assumes an adult silent-reading speed of 230 words per minute: reading time = words ÷ 230. "Slow" and "Fast" multiply the speed by 0.75 and 1.3. Speaking time uses a comfortable presentation pace of 150 words per minute. If your text contains Korean, Korean characters are timed at 500 (reading) and 300 (speaking) characters per minute.
Typical word counts
| Type of writing | Typical length | Reading time |
|---|---|---|
| Common App personal essay | max 650 words | about 3 min |
| Cover letter | 250–400 words | 1–2 min |
| Blog post (SEO) | 1,200–2,500 words | 5–11 min |
| News article | 600–1,200 words | 3–5 min |
| 2-minute speech | about 300 words | — |
| 5-minute speech | about 750 words | — |
Using the top-words list
Repeating the same word too often makes writing feel flat. With Ignore stop words on, filler words like "the", "and" and "is" are skipped so you only see content words. For SEO, the density column shows how much of the text each keyword takes up: a focus keyword at roughly 0.5–2% usually reads naturally, while much higher numbers tend to sound stuffed.
Everything is calculated in your browser; your text is never uploaded or stored. Reading time is an estimate based on average speeds.