Count characters, words, lines, paragraphs, sentences, whitespace and non-ASCII characters as you type.
What the character counter measures
Beyond the word and character counts you get from the word counter, this tool also counts lines, paragraphs, sentences, whitespace characters and non-ASCII characters. It is useful for checking length limits, encoding issues and reading time.
Frequently asked questions
What counts as a sentence?
Any run ending in a period, exclamation mark or question mark followed by whitespace or the end of the text.
What is the non-ASCII count for?
It flags characters outside the basic Latin range, which is handy when a system rejects accented or CJK text.
Is my text uploaded?
No. Counting happens in the page as you type.
How to use it
- Paste or type your text into the input box.
- Watch the counters update in real time as you add or delete characters.
- Check the individual breakdowns for words, lines, paragraphs, sentences, whitespace and non-ASCII characters to see exactly how each category is measured.
- Clear the input to reset all counts when you have finished reviewing a piece of text.
Where it comes in handy
A Twitter/X post allows 280 characters, which works out to roughly 50 to 60 words at average length. Use this tool to verify your draft before pasting it into the compose box instead of guessing by eye.
API responses and CSV exports sometimes impose byte limits such as 512 bytes or 4,096 bytes. Checking the non-ASCII count here helps you spot accented letters, CJK characters or emoji that will inflate the byte size past whatever limit you are working against.
Reading time can be estimated from the word count alone. At a standard speaking rate of about 200 words per minute, a 1,000-word passage takes roughly five minutes. This tool gives you the word total fast enough to do that math on the page.
Worth knowing
- Paragraphs are counted by blank-line separators, not by line breaks inside a paragraph. A block with four lines but no empty line between them counts as one paragraph.
- Sentence boundaries are detected from punctuation followed by whitespace or end-of-text. Quotation marks, brackets and abbreviations like “e.g.” do not split a sentence on their own.
- Windows line endings count as two whitespace characters each because both the carriage return and the line feed are counted separately, which can shift the whitespace total compared with plain Unix-style text.