Technology
How to Count Words and Characters
AllinOne Editorial · Published 2026-09-16
A word counter is only as useful as its rules. This one is explicit: hyphens split, reading time is 200 wpm, nothing is uploaded.
Essay limits, meta descriptions and social captions all care about count — but Word, Google Docs and a website rarely agree to the last token. You need to know the rule set.
Rules on this site
- Words are Unicode letters or numbers, including simple apostrophes.
- Hyphen-separated tokens count as separate words.
- Sentences split on . ! ? …
- Reading minutes = words ÷ 200 (typical silent-reading estimate).
A 400-word blog post is about 2 minutes. Use the Word Counter for totals and the Character Counter when a form caps UTF-16 length (many “160 character” SMS tools still think in that unit).
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Frequently asked questions
Are hyphenated words one word?+
This counter treats hyphen-separated tokens as separate words.
Do emojis count as one character?+
The character counter uses JavaScript string length (UTF-16 code units). Some emojis count as 2.
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