How Do Word Counters Count Words?
How do word counters count words? Differently, and almost none of them say how. These text tools print their rules so you can see the disagreements.
How do word counters count words? Differently from each other, which is the problem. I checked five of them while building ours and not one says how it counts. A hyphenated word, a decimal number, an em dash with no spaces around it: each is a judgement call, every tool makes it silently, and the answers do not match.
That sounds like a detail until the number matters. A 500-word cap on an application, a brief a client will hold you to, a submission marked in Word. Then you need to know whether the tool you wrote in and the person checking are counting the same way, and almost nothing online will tell you. So the rules are printed on the page here, with the six awkward cases written out. The rest of these text tools work the same way: take text you already have, tell you something true about it, show the working.
Two rules cause most of the disagreement, and they are worth knowing whichever tool you end up using. A hyphenated compound like well-known is one word here, because splitting on whitespace is the only rule that stays predictable once you allow for numbers, apostrophes and dashes. And an abbreviation ends a sentence: Dr. Smith left. counts as two, because telling a full stop from an abbreviation needs a dictionary and still fails on surnames. Both are arguably wrong. Both are stated, which is the part that matters when a limit is being enforced by somebody else.
Everything here runs as JavaScript in the page you already loaded. That is a design constraint rather than a feature: it rules out anything needing a server or saved history, and in exchange nothing you paste is transmitted, logged or retained. Drafts, cover letters, client work and messages all get pasted into tools like these, which is reason enough.
The Word Counter is live. A character counter, case converter and text cleaner are planned, and each will document its rules the same way.
Text Tools
Character Counter, Case Converter and Text Cleaner are in development.
Frequently asked questions
Are these text tools really free?
Yes. There is no account, no trial, no credit system and no export fee. The tools run as JavaScript in the page you have already loaded, so serving one costs the same whether you use it once or a thousand times. The site is funded by advertising placed around the tools rather than inside them.
Is my text sent to a server?
No. Every text tool on this site processes what you type in your own browser. Nothing is uploaded, logged or stored, and closing the tab is enough to get rid of it. That matters more than it sounds for text tools specifically, because people paste drafts, cover letters, client work and messages into them.
Do these work on a phone?
Yes. I build every tool for a narrow screen first and test it at 375 pixels wide, which is the width of a standard iPhone. Controls are sized for a fingertip rather than a mouse pointer, and text inputs use a font size large enough that iOS does not zoom in when you tap them.
Why does your word count differ from Microsoft Word?
Because the two make different judgement calls, and neither is wrong. Word treats some hyphenated compounds and some punctuation differently from a plain whitespace split. The important thing is knowing which rules a tool applies, which is why ours are printed on the tool page rather than left for you to reverse-engineer.