How to count words and clean up text
Essays, applications and social posts often come with a word or character limit. Text copied from PDFs and emails also arrives with odd line breaks and inconsistent capitals. A few small tools fix both quickly.
Check your length
Paste your text into the Word Counter to see the number of words and characters. Check which one your limit uses, since some forms count characters including spaces and others count words.
The Sentence Counter is handy for checking how long your sentences run.
Fix text copied from a PDF or email
- Broken lines in the middle of sentences: Remove Line Breaks.
- Wrong capitals, such as ALL CAPS: Case Converter.
- A name or term spelled differently in many places: Find and Replace.
Your text stays private
These tools work in your browser, so what you paste is not sent to a server. Even so, avoid pasting passwords or other secrets into any web page.
A good order for cleaning text
- Remove stray line breaks first with Remove Line Breaks, keeping paragraph breaks.
- Fix repeated mistakes with Find and Replace, such as a name spelled two ways.
- Correct the capitals with the Case Converter.
- Count last with the Word Counter, when the text is in its final form.
Counting at the end avoids a surprise, because removing line breaks and fixing spaces can change the numbers.
Why counts differ between programs
Programs disagree about hyphenated words, numbers, symbols and what counts as a space. The Word Counter treats anything separated by spaces or line breaks as one word, so a hyphenated word counts once. If a limit is strict, count in the same program that will enforce it, and leave yourself a small margin.
Reading time and speaking time
The Word Counter also shows reading time at 200 words a minute and speaking time at 130 words a minute. These are averages, so use them to plan a talk or a post and then read it aloud once to check. A speech of five minutes is roughly 650 words.
Common clean-up jobs
- An email that was pasted with a hard line break on every line.
- A heading typed in all capitals that should be in title case.
- A list that needs the same wording changed everywhere.
- A block of text copied from a PDF that has hyphens at the line ends.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my count differ from Word or Google Docs?
Programs treat hyphens, numbers and symbols differently, so counts can differ by a few words.
Does the Word Counter save my text?
No. It counts in your browser and does not store or send what you paste.
Can I fix several problems at once?
Yes. Run the text through each tool in turn, copying the result from one into the next.
What is the best order to run the tools?
Remove line breaks, then find and replace, then fix the case, and count last. Counting at the end gives the figure that matters.
Why does the counter show fewer words than my word processor?
Programs treat hyphens, numbers and symbols differently. Count in the program that will enforce your limit.
Is there a limit on the amount of text?
The limit depends on your device, not on the site.