Words: Count of whitespace-delimited tokens. Contractions (don't) and hyphenated words (mother-in-law) count as one word each.
Characters (with spaces): Total text length including all spaces, punctuation, and line breaks.
Characters (no spaces): Total letter and punctuation count excluding whitespace. Useful for platform character limits that don't count spaces.
Sentences: Count of periods, exclamation marks, and question marks. May over- or undercount for abbreviations or ellipses.
Reading Time (at 200 wpm): Minutes to read aloud at an average adult reading pace of 200 words per minute.
Speaking Time (at 130 wpm): Minutes to speak aloud at an average speech rate of 130 words per minute (slower, more deliberate than reading).
How This Calculator Works
This tool splits text on whitespace to count words, counts punctuation marks (. ! ?) to estimate sentences, calculates characters with and without spaces, and divides word count by standard reading (200 wpm) and speaking (130 wpm) rates to estimate time.
Quick Questions
How is reading time calculated?
Reading time = word count ÷ 200 words per minute (wpm). This is the average adult silent reading speed. Adjust manually if you read slower or faster.
Why 200 wpm for reading?
Research (including Brysbaert 2019) shows average adult reading speed is 200-250 wpm. 200 wpm is a conservative middle estimate; children and non-native readers average lower.
How are sentences counted?
The counter tallies periods, exclamation marks, and question marks. It may miscount abbreviations (Dr., U.S.A.) or ellipses (...) as sentence boundaries.
Does it count hyphenated words as one or two?
Hyphenated words (well-being, mother-in-law) count as one word because they're not separated by spaces. The counter treats all whitespace as word boundaries.
Is my text sent anywhere?
No. All counting runs locally in your browser. Your text is never sent to any server and remains completely private.