Word & Character Counter

What "sentence" actually means here — and why it overcounts

This tool makes no separate API service call — all counting runs directly in the Blazor Server circuit, so the only round trip is the standard Blazor Server heartbeat between your browser and the server. The sentence count specifically is worth understanding before you rely on it: it splits text on period, exclamation mark, and question mark characters (Split('.', '!', '?')), which means any period counts as a sentence boundary regardless of context. "Dr. Smith went to Washington." registers as 2 sentences — one ending at "Dr." and one at "Washington." The same happens with decimal numbers ("3.14 is pi."), ellipses ("and so on... but then"), URLs, and file extensions. We ran the exact algorithm from the source code to verify: the sentence count will always be at least one too high for any text that contains an abbreviation, decimal, or ellipsis. Use it as a rough guide for very long documents — not as a precise editorial metric for short pieces where every count matters.

Two other counting quirks worth knowing

Lines are counted after normalizing line endings: both CRLF (\r\n, the Windows convention) and lone CR (\r, the old Mac-style convention) are converted to a plain \n before splitting, so the line count comes out the same regardless of which line-ending style your source text or editor used.

Word splitting uses four specific whitespace separators: space, tab, newline, and carriage return. It does not split on em dashes or en dashes, so "well—constructed" is counted as one word. Hyphenated compounds like "state-of-the-art" are also one word, consistent with how most word processors count them.

What is a word counter?

A word counter analyses a block of text and reports key statistics: word count, character count (with and without spaces), line count, and sentence count. These metrics are used across writing, content marketing, SEO, software development, and academic work. This tool updates all statistics in real time as you type or paste — no button click needed.

Character limits on major platforms

Every major platform has content length limits that affect how you write and edit:

• X (Twitter): 280 characters per post; URLs count as 23 characters regardless of actual length
• LinkedIn posts: 3,000 characters for personal posts; 700 characters before the "see more" truncation
• LinkedIn articles: 125,000 characters (effectively unlimited)
• Meta description (SEO): 150–160 characters — longer descriptions are truncated in Google search results
• Page title (SEO): 50–60 characters recommended to avoid truncation in search results
• Email subject line: 40–60 characters for optimal mobile display
• SMS messages: 160 characters per segment in standard GSM encoding; 153 characters per segment in multi-part messages

Reading time calculation

Average adult reading speed is approximately 200–250 words per minute for general content, and 150–200 words per minute for technical content. A 1,000-word blog post takes the average reader about 4–5 minutes. This matters for content strategy: studies consistently show that articles of 1,500–2,500 words receive more backlinks, rank better in search engines, and have higher engagement than shorter pieces, while articles over 4,000 words see diminishing returns in most topics unless they serve as definitive reference guides.

Word count targets for different content types

• Tweet / social post: under 280 characters (roughly 40–50 words)
• Email: 50–200 words for transactional; 200–500 words for newsletters
• Blog post (basic): 600–1,000 words — enough for a focused topic
• Blog post (SEO-optimised): 1,500–2,500 words for competitive keywords
• Long-form guide: 3,000–5,000 words for comprehensive reference content
• Academic essay (undergraduate): 1,500–3,000 words typically
• README file: 200–800 words — clear and concise documentation

How to use this tool

1. Type or paste your text into the input area.
2. Statistics update live — no button click needed.
3. Check the Characters count for platform limits, Words for content targets, and Lines for code or structured content.
4. Click Clear to start with fresh text.