Word Counter

Character limits across platforms

Every platform has its own limits: a post on X tops out at 280 characters, an Instagram caption at 2,200, a YouTube title at 100, and the ideal meta description for Google stays under 160. Keeping an eye on the count saves you from cut-off, truncated text.

Characters are counted one per symbol, so 😀 is 1; a composed emoji, like a flag or a hand with a skin tone, is worth the symbols it is made of. Some platforms count an emoji as two characters: close to the limit, keep a little margin.

How is reading time calculated?

The estimate is based on an average reading speed of 200 words per minute, the standard that blogs and online publications use to show how long an article takes to read. Under a minute you see seconds, from one minute up you see minutes, always rounded up: they are the same seconds as Reading time, which also gives the time to read it out loud.

What counts as a word, a sentence and a paragraph

A word is a piece of text between two spaces that contains at least one letter or digit: digits, acronyms, «e-mail» and «12:30» count as one word each, while an emoji or a dash on its own doesn't count. An apostrophe before a vowel splits two words (French «l'eau» and Italian «c'è» are two), before a consonant it doesn't («don't» stays one); long dashes separate like spaces, and every Chinese or Japanese character counts as one word. By the same rule surnames with an apostrophe count as they are written: «D'Amico» and «O'Hara» make two words, «O'Neill» one.

A sentence ends where there's a full stop, an exclamation mark, a question mark or an ellipsis, even when followed by closing quotes or a closing bracket, before a space or the end of the text, or where there's a Chinese or Japanese full stop (。！？), which needs no space after it; the last sentence counts even without a full stop. A paragraph is a block separated from the others by a blank line and with at least one word in it (a block of emoji alone doesn't count): if you break the line just once, for the count it's still the same paragraph.

From this comes the only difference you really notice: abbreviations close a sentence. In a text full of «etc.», «Dr.» and «p.» the sentence count comes out higher than it should. That's the price of a simple rule, and knowing it is worth more than a number that looks exact and isn't.

The same rule is used by Reading time, Editorial pages, Word frequency and Unique words: the same text gives the same word count on all five pages. How readable is a text instead counts the way its index formula wants, with its own rules on apostrophes, long dashes and spaces, so there the number can differ.

Why the number may not match Word's

Two programs counting words almost always give slightly different numbers, and neither is wrong: the conventions differ on hyphens, apostrophes, numbers and symbols. If you have to respect a limit written into a contract or a call for entries, the count that matters is the one from the program used by whoever reads it. For a safety margin, stay a few words under the limit instead of hitting it exactly. Here, for example, «l'eau» counts as two words, while Word counts one because it only looks at the spaces.

Nearby tools

For each social network's limits, with the count already set per platform, there is Social character counter. Whoever works in cartelle finds that count in Editorial pages, and for reading time alone, silent and out loud, Reading time. If the text is long and you want to know whether it's clear, the measure is How readable is a text; for the list of different words, Unique words.