Word Counter

Word counting splits text on whitespace (spaces, tabs, line breaks) and counts the resulting segments. A word is any unbroken sequence of non-whitespace characters.

Character count includes every character including spaces and punctuation. Character count without spaces excludes all whitespace. Characters are counted the way you see them: a flag, a skin-toned emoji or a joined family emoji counts as one. Browsers without Intl.Segmenter count Unicode code points instead, and there such emoji count 2 or more. X allows 280 characters for most accounts but counts every link as 23 characters and each emoji or Chinese, Japanese or Korean character as 2, so its count can differ from this one.

Reading time is estimated at 238 words per minute (the average silent reading speed for English non-fiction in Marc Brysbaert's 2019 review; fiction is read at about 260). A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark followed by a space or the end of the text, so abbreviations such as "e.g." count as sentence ends.

Use this for: checking essay or assignment word limits, fitting content within social media character limits, estimating reading time, and tracking writing progress toward daily or project goals.

Academic word limits differ on whether the bibliography, footnotes and headings count. Check your institution's or publication's rule.

Confusing words and characters. Most social media platforms limit by characters, not words. A 280-character tweet is roughly 45-55 words, but varies with word length.

Using word count as a proxy for quality. Word count is a production metric, not a quality metric. Editing usually reduces word count while improving quality.

Not accounting for formatting. HTML tags, markdown syntax, and formatting characters add to character counts in raw text but may not appear in rendered output.

Common platform limits:

Twitter/X: 280 characters

Instagram caption: 2,200 characters

LinkedIn post: 3,000 characters

Meta description and page title (SEO): Google sets no length limit and shortens them in results to fit the screen

Reading time at 238 words per minute: 800 words = 3.4 min. 2,000 words = 8.4 min. 4,200 words = 17.6 min.