Word counter: words, characters with and without spaces, sentences and paragraphs, plus reading time at 238 wpm and speaking time at 150 wpm.
By AdminDrafted with AI writing toolsUpdated Checked examples: 4
41 words take about 10 s to read at 238 words a minute and 16 s to say aloud at 150. Sentences average 10.3 words.
A word is any run of characters between spaces that contains a letter or digit, so “well-known” is one word and a lone dash is none. Characters with spaces exclude line breaks. A sentence ends at . ! ? or … followed by a space. Each non-empty line is a paragraph.
10.33 s
16.4 s
The counter splits the text at spaces, and any run that contains a letter or digit is a word, so "well-known" counts once and a lone dash not at all. Characters are counted with and without spaces, a sentence ends at . ! ? or …, and each non-empty line is a paragraph. Reading and speaking times are the word count divided by a words-per-minute rate.
The default rates are 238 words a minute for silent reading, the average for English non-fiction in Brysbaert's 2019 review of 190 studies, and 150 words a minute for speech, the US average given by the National Center for Voice and Speech. The sample text has 41 words: about 10 seconds to read and 16 seconds to say aloud.
Other tools treat dashes, slashes and web addresses differently, so their totals can differ by a few words. The chart marks sentences longer than 25 words.
The text is split at spaces, tabs and line breaks, and every piece that contains a letter or digit counts as one word. So well-known don't 2026 is 3 words, and A / B — C is also 3, because a slash or dash standing alone is not a word.
Characters are counted two ways: with spaces includes spaces and tabs but not line breaks, and without spaces leaves out all whitespace. A / B — C is 9 characters with spaces and 5 without, so check which one a limit means.
Divide the word count by a words-per-minute rate. At 238 wpm for silent reading (Brysbaert, 2019) and 150 wpm for speech (National Center for Voice and Speech):
Set your own rate for a different reader or speaker: at 300 wpm, 1,000 words take 3 min 20 s to read.
Multiply the minutes by the speaking rate. At 150 wpm, a 3-minute talk is about 450 words, 5 minutes is 750, 10 minutes is 1,500 and 20 minutes is 3,000.
Reading a script aloud runs faster: Brysbaert's review puts it at 183 wpm, so 5 minutes of script holds about 915 words. Pauses for slides, questions or laughter come out of the same time, so plan a little under the total.
| Text sample | Words | With spaces | Without spaces | Sentences | Paragraphs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hello world | 2 | 11 | 10 | 1 | 1 |
| well-known don't 2026 | 3 | 21 | 19 | 1 | 1 |
| Café au lait — a well-known drink! | 6 | 34 | 28 | 1 | 1 |
| one ↵ two | 2 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 |
| one ↵ two | 2 | 6 | 6 | 1 | 2 |
| one ⇥ two | 2 | 8 | 6 | 1 | 1 |
| three...words | 1 | 13 | 13 | 1 | 1 |
| 😀 👩💻 hello | 1 | 11 | 9 | 1 | 1 |
| é | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 你好世界 | 1 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| She said "Stop." Then she left… Really?! (Yes.) End | 9 | 51 | 43 | 5 | 1 |
| Dr. Rao left. Next sentence. | 5 | 28 | 24 | 3 | 1 |
| First line ↵ Second line ↵ ↵ Third line | 6 | 31 | 28 | 1 | 3 |
| A / B — C | 3 | 9 | 5 | 1 | 1 |
↵ marks a line break and ⇥ a tab. The two one ↵ two rows use a Unix line feed and a Windows carriage return plus line feed; neither break counts as a character, so both total 6.
Character totals count Unicode code points, so one visible symbol can count more than once. The é sample is an e plus a combining accent: 2 code points. 👩💻 is 3 (woman, zero-width joiner, laptop), so 😀 👩💻 hello has 11 characters with spaces.
A sentence ends at ., !, ? or … followed by a space or line break, even with a closing quote or bracket in between. That is why the "Stop." sample has 5 sentences, and why Dr. Rao left. Next sentence. has 3.
three...words, and/or and a web address each count as one word.你好世界 shows. Use the character count for those languages.Dr., e.g. and U.S. followed by a space each end a sentence, which lowers the average sentence length.To change capitalization, or convert text to camelCase or snake_case, use the case converter.
Checked against: re/str implementation of the same counting rules: 41 words; 41/238 × 60 s
Checked against: Hand count; 2/120 min = 1 s, 2/60 min = 2 s
Checked against: Independent calculation
Checked against: Independent calculation
About 4 minutes 12 seconds at 238 words a minute, the average adult silent reading rate for English non-fiction in Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies. Most adults read non-fiction at 175–300 words a minute, so the same text takes between 3 minutes 20 seconds and 5 minutes 43 seconds; fiction averages 260 words a minute.
About 750 words at 150 words a minute, the average speaking rate for US English given by the National Center for Voice and Speech. Reading a script aloud averages 183 words a minute (Brysbaert, 2019), so 5 minutes of reading aloud covers about 915 words. Pauses for slides, questions or applause reduce the word budget.
In "characters with spaces", yes: every letter, digit, punctuation mark and space counts, but line breaks do not. "Characters without spaces" leaves out all whitespace. The default text has 234 characters with spaces and 195 without, so check which of the two a length limit refers to before trimming.
Any run of characters between spaces that contains at least one letter or digit. "Well-known" and "don't" are one word each, "2026" is one word, and a standalone dash or bullet is none. "Café au lait — a well-known drink!" therefore counts as 6 words. Word processors can differ by a few words on dashes, slashes and web addresses.
This calculator includes 4 worked examples with independently sourced answers. They run in the test suite, and you can run them here too.