From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds (usually in words per minute). When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for English.[1]
Details and variations of definition[edit]
Variations in the operational definitions of how to count the words can occur (namely, what «counts as» a word, and which words «don’t count» toward the total). However, especially since the advent of widespread word processing, there is a broad consensus on these operational definitions (and hence the bottom-line integer result). The consensus is to accept the text segmentation rules generally found in most word processing software (including how word boundaries are determined, which depends on how word dividers are defined). The first trait of that definition is that a space (any of various whitespace characters, such as a «regular» word space, an em space, or a tab character) is a word divider. Usually a hyphen or a slash is, too. Different word counting programs may give varying results, depending on the text segmentation rule details, and on whether words outside the main text (such as footnotes, endnotes, or hidden text) are counted. But the behavior of most major word processing applications is broadly similar.
However, during the era when school assignments were done in handwriting or with typewriters, the rules for these definitions often differed from today’s consensus. Most importantly, many students were drilled on the rule that «certain words don’t count», usually articles (namely, «a», «an», «the»), but sometimes also others, such as conjunctions (for example, «and», «or», «but») and some prepositions (usually «to», «of»). Hyphenated permanent compounds such as «follow-up» (noun) or «long-term» (adjective) were counted as one word. To save the time and effort of counting word-by-word, often a rule of thumb for the average number of words per line was used, such as 10 words per line. These «rules» have fallen by the wayside in the word processing era; the «word count» feature of such software (which follows the text segmentation rules mentioned earlier) is now the standard arbiter, because it is largely consistent (across documents and applications) and because it is fast, effortless, and costless (already included with the application).
As for which sections of a document «count» toward the total (such as footnotes, endnotes, abstracts, reference lists and bibliographies, tables, figure captions, hidden text), the person in charge (teacher, client) can define their choice, and users (students, workers) can simply select (or exclude) the elements accordingly, and watch the word count automatically update.
Software[edit]
Modern web browsers support word counting via extensions, via a JavaScript bookmarklet, or a script that is hosted in a website. Most word processors can also count words. Unix-like systems include a program, wc, specifically for word counting. There are a wide variety of word counting tools available online.
Different word counting programs may give varying results, depending on the text segmentation rule details. The exact number of words often is not a strict requirement, thus the variation is acceptable.
In fiction[edit]
Novelist Jane Smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel.[2] However, novels can vary tremendously in length; Smiley lists novels as typically being between 100,000 and 175,000 words,[3] while National Novel Writing Month requires its novels to be at least 50,000 words. There are no firm rules: for example, the boundary between a novella and a novel is arbitrary and a literary work may be difficult to categorise.[4] But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer,[5] lengths may also vary by subgenre; many chapter books for children start at a length of about 16,000 words,[6] and a typical mystery novel might be in the 60,000 to 80,000 word range while a thriller could be well over 100,000 words.[7]
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula Award categories:[8]
| Classification | Word count |
|---|---|
| Novel | 40,000 words or over |
| Novella | 17,500 to 39,999 words |
| Novelette | 7,500 to 17,499 words |
| Short story | up to 7,500 words |
In non-fiction[edit]
The acceptable length of an academic dissertation varies greatly, dependent predominantly on the subject. Numerous American universities limit Ph.D. dissertations to 100,000 words, barring special permission for exceeding this limit.[9]
See also[edit]
- Flash fiction
- Twitterature
- Word lists by frequency
References[edit]
- ^ The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America suggest 6 chars to a word
- ^ Smiley, Jane. 2005. Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 14.
- ^ Smiley, 2005, p. 15.
- ^ Edge, Tom, «Does Size Matter?» The Guardian (UK), Booksblog, Nov. 2, 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2006/nov/02/doessizematter
- ^ Quindlen, Anna (September 23, 2002), «Writers on Writing: The Eye of the Reporter, the Heart of the Novelist», New York Times,
A novelist doesn’t write to space, of course; 80,000 words, 100,000, it is up to the writer to say when the story is done.
. - ^ Lamb, Nancy, Crafting Stories for Children. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, p. 24
- ^ Thurston, Carol (August 3, 1997), «Agents give writers the book on what’s hot and what’s not», Austin American-Statesman,
no one wants more than 60-80,000 words in a mystery, 110,000 for a thriller
. - ^ SFWA Awards FAQ, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as follows:
- ^ Dunleavy, Patrick (2003), Authoring a PhD, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 46, ISBN 978-1-4039-1191-9.
Sources[edit]
- DeRocher, James E.; Miron, Murray S.; Patten, Sam M.; Pratt, Charles C. (1973), The Counting of Words: A Review of the History, Techniques and Theory of Word Counts with Annotated Bibliography (PDF), Syracuse University Research Corporation, p. 302, ED098814.
- Rothman, Chuck (2005), Word Counts: What Is a Word?, Science Fiction Writers of America. An article on various word count methods in fiction publishing.
- Michaels, Melisa (2005), Focusing on the Wrong Things, Science Fiction Writers of America, archived from the original on April 17, 2009 An article on the relative importance of various word count methods in fiction publishing.
Updated: 04/30/2020 by
A word count is a numerical count of the number of words in a document, file, or string of text. Below are different methods on how to get a word count on a computer.
Word count example
Below is an example of a sentence containing several words. If you had this sentence in a program capable of counting words, it would return «9» as the word count.
In this example sentence, the word count is nine.
Keep in mind that most programs count words by looking for any text separated by spaces in the line. If you had the following example of text, it would also return «9» as the word count.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Getting a word count in a program
There are many programs you may already have installed or can install on your computer to get a word count.
- Microsoft Word
- Google Docs
- Word Perfect
- Notepad++
- TextPad
Getting a word count in Microsoft Word
In Microsoft Word, the word count feature is found in the Tools menu or on the Review tab.
Tip
The word count feature in Microsoft Word also displays the number of pages, characters (with and without spaces), paragraphs, and lines in the document.
Note
If the Microsoft Word status bar is shown at the bottom, it also shows the document’s word count. If the status bar is shown but does not show the word count, right-click the status bar, and make sure that the Word count option has a checkmark.
Count the words in Google Docs
In Google Docs, you can find the word count feature by clicking Tools in the menu bar and select Word count. You can also press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+C.
Count the words in WordPerfect
In Corel WordPerfect for Windows, the word count feature is found under Document information in the File menu.
Viewing the word count in Notepad++
In Notepad++, you can find the word count feature by clicking View in the menu bar and selecting Summary.
Viewing word count in TextPad
In TextPad, you can find the word count feature by clicking View in the menu bar and selecting Document Properties. You can also press the keyboard shortcut Alt+Enter.
An example of getting a word count in programming
In computer programming, there are several ways to get a word count of a variable or other text. Below is one example of how you could get a word count of a variable using Perl.
Tip
Some programming languages may have a function that calculates and shows a word count.
use strict; my $example = "Hello, this is an example"; my @example = split(/ /, $example);
my $countwords = $#example + 1; print "There are $countwords words in '$example'.n";
In the example above, we first define the «$example» variable with some generic text as an example. Next, we split that variable by spaces and add each word in to an array. Once the words are loaded to an array, we can count the elements and add one because the count starts as «0» and not «1».
There are five words in 'Hello, this is an example'.
As mentioned earlier, this is one of several ways you could count the words in a file, variable, or other text. The example above, or any other method, could also be made into a subroutine, allowing you to call it throughout the script.
How to View the word count of any text with online tools
There are many online tools to count the number of words in your document. To use an online service, copy any text, and then paste the text into the online tool.
- How to copy and paste text to a document or another program.
Online services
- Use our free online text tool to get a word count of any text.
- Wordcounter
How to get a word count in Linux
In Linux, and other Unix-like operating systems such as macOS, BSD, or WSL, use the wc command to count words.
You can pipe any text to wc (with no options) to view a count of lines, words, and characters in the text:
echo -e "One two three fourn five"
One two three four five
echo -e "One two three fourn five" | wc
2 5 25
Use the -w option to count words only:
echo -e "One two three fourn five" | wc -w
5
Provide one or more file names to wc to get a count for each file, and display a grand total:
wc -w words.txt words2.txt
5 words.txt
5 words2.txt
10 total
- For more information, see Linux wc command help and examples.
How to do a word count in HTML
Counting the words in HTML can be difficult because of the HTML tags and their contained attributes. For example, counting the words on this page with HTML gives us 3,112 words. However, if we were to remove the HTML, it would reduce the word count to 1,212. Unfortunately, removing HTML tags can also still include text you may not want to be counted.
To count HTML words, open the web page in a browser, highlight and copy the text, and then paste it into a program or online service capable of counting words. With the same text we used above, using this method gave us a word count of 1,082 on this page.
- Getting a word count in a program.
- Viewing the word count of any text with online tools.
- How to copy and paste text to a document or another program.
If you need to get the word count of a web page or text on a web page frequently, you can also install a browser add-on designed to get the word count.
- How to add extensions or add-ons to your browser.
Why would someone need to do a word count?
A word count is often needed because a writing project or assignment has a minimum length. For example, when writing a report for school or an article for a web page, it may have a minimum word count of 1,000. Using the word count helps verify you’re meeting or exceeding the requirement.
Software terms, Tally, Word
So you need to get a word count for the latest chapter of your novel or an essay assignment for school? Don’t worry, here are three easy-to-use tools to count your words.
Need to get a word count on your latest writing project?
Here are three tools that can help.
Why Count Words?
If you’re an experienced writer, this might already be obvious to you. However, if you’re new to writing, you need to know that keeping track of your word count is a central habit of a writer.
You count words for two main reasons.
1. Because Publishers Count Words
In school, writing assignments are usually measured by page length (e.g. please turn in a three-page essay on Jane Austen’s use of satire in Emma by Friday).
However, measuring by page-length is inaccurate and, in many cases, unhelpful. Font, spacing, and formatting changes can alter the number of pages, and if you’re writing a newspaper, magazine, or book, the pages will be in a variety of different sizes anyway. Measuring by word count, on the other hand, is consistent.
Furthermore, publishers often pay on a per-word basis, and so it makes sense for professional writers to keep track of how many words they write.
But what if you’re not a professional writer? Why should you count words then?
2. Counting Words Can Motivate You
Many famous writers have kept daily word count goals. Ernest Hemingway is reported to have written 500 words per day. Stephen King writes 2,000 words per day, even on holidays. Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope wrote 3,000 words per day.
Setting a daily word count goal can inspire you.
One of the best known word count goals is NaNoWriMo (or National Novel Writing Month). Every November, thousands of writers challenge themselves to write 50,000 words in a month (that’s 1,667 words per day, by the way).
Another resource for writers is my friend Jeff Goins’ 500 Words a Day Challenge, which is a 31-day writing challenge that over a thousand writers have participated in.
3 Tools to Count Words
How do you keep an accurate word count?
1. Count Words With Microsoft Word
The most-widely used word processor makes it easy to count your words.
On Windows, there are two ways to see the word count. On the Review tab, just next to Spelling and Grammar Check, and on the home ribbon beside the page number.
On Mac, you can find the word count under Tools -> Word Count.
Pro Tip: I add a shortcut to word count, ⌘ + W, to access my word count on the fly. To add the keyboard shortcut, go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts. Then select App Shortcuts, and add the menu command “Word Count…” to the list (The menu command has to be exact, so don’t forget the true ellipsis, alt + semi-colon).
2. Take Word Counts to the Next Level With Scrivener
While Microsoft Word is a decent word processor for writing essays and articles, if you’re writing a novel or book, you need a more powerful tool.
Scrivener is a perfect tool for finding your word count because it not only keeps your word count visible, it allows you to track your daily word count and the word count for your entire project. You can learn more about Scrivener on our review here.
To track your daily word count on Scrivener, go to Project > Show Project Targets (⌘+
+T, on Mac). This will open a popup that updates automatically as you type. Isn’t that cool?
In Scrivener, you can set the project targets to your daily word count and track your progress. Also, notice the word count visible at the bottom of the application.
3. A Fast, Online Word Counter
If you don’t have access to either of these tools, you can find, free online word counters. One of the best, in my opinion, is WordCounter.net.
Word Counter is a free, online word count tool.
Challenge Yourself to Write 1,000 Words Today
These tools can change your life.
How would your life be different if you challenged yourself to write 1,000 words a day? (Share that challenge on Twitter)
Even if you took the weekends off, in just a month, you would have 22,000 words. In six months, you would have written 132,000 words, easily enough for a long novel. After the first year, you could have written two books.
It starts by taking just a few seconds to track your words.
Do you have a daily word count goal? What is it?
PRACTICE
Write 1,000 words today. Keep track using one of the tools above.
When you’re finished, share your best 250 words in the comments section below. And if you share, please be sure to give feedback on a few practices by other writers.
Have fun!
Joe Bunting
Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris, a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).
Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.
Use Word Counter to Count Number of Words, Sentences, Characters, and Paragraphs
{{ $filters.digit(word_counts.characters) }}
characters (without spaces)
{{ $filters.digit(word_counts.all) }}
characters (with spaces)
{{ $filters.digit(word_counts.words) }}
words
{{ $filters.digit(word_counts.sentences) }}
sentences
{{ $filters.digit(word_counts.paragraphs) }}
paragraphs
Word Counter Tool: Free, Quick, And With No Limits!
Word Counter Tool is a free online word count tool to help you count and calculate the number of words in a text. This online tool can also calculate the total character or letter count, sentences, and paragraphs for the text entered in the input box. The best part? The number of words and characters you can count with this tool is unlimited!Z
Word count is an important metric for writing, especially in publishing, advertising, academia, and legal proceedings. By using this tool, you will be able to determine how many words there are in your text. You can then check to see if there are enough number of words or it has exceeded a certain limit.
This free online word counter can also help to check how many characters your text contains, especially if your text is meant for use on social media, Google Ads, app, and website headlines or Google meta description.
Why Is Word Count Important?
Whether it is for a website, a blog, an e-book or a corporate document, different types of writing requires a certain amount of word count length. Some platforms have limits as to how many words or letters can be used, for example, Google Ads search ads or Facebook banner ads.
Social media platforms are created for easy reading and quick consumption. Each platform has its own prescribed amount of viewable character count that can be posted. This is why knowing the character limits for social media platforms is important, especially if you are a digital marketer or social media manager.
If you are creating or managing social media content, it is useful to know the exact character limits for the platform you are working on. Here are the different character limits for popular social media platforms:
- Twitter — Up to 280 characters (increased from the previous 140 characters).
- Facebook — No more than 63,206 characters for posts and a maximum of 8,000 characters for comments.
- Instagram — Limited to 30 hashtags and 2,200 characters for a caption (where only the first 125 characters will be displayed while the rest will be truncated).
- LinkedIn — Headline text is limited to 120 characters, the summary section has a character limit of 2,000, position title has a limit of 100 characters, and the description box is limited to 1,000 characters.
Word Count For SEO (And How It Can Improve Your Rankings)
If you are writing for SEO, word count plays an important role. The majority of high ranking content that appears on page 1 on SERP are long-form articles. A lot of them exceed 2,000 words, while most of them are at least 1,500 words.
You will notice that a lot of long-form articles have evergreen content — the best type of content for SEO. Evergreen content receives more clicks over a long period of time, as opposed to content that is based on current news or viral trends.
Longer articles are also seen to be more authoritative. When you need to write longer content, you have the opportunity to insert more data and information into your article and make it more valuable.
As a result, your content will carry more value which increases the potential for the article being shared and linked to. The more social shares and backlinks you receive, the better your website or page rankings will be.
By using the Word Count Tool, you will be able to make sure that your article has the minimum amount of word count for SEO best practices. Having an ideal number of word count will not guarantee good search rankings but it will surely help in the long run.
How To Use An Online Word Counter And Character Counter Tool
Word Count Tool is incredibly easy to use and can give you almost instantaneous results. It will show you the word count for the number of words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs.
It also works as a character count tool and can be used to perform word count for Google Docs, PDF files, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint, Adobe InDesign, and many more. All you need to do is copy the text from any file types or websites and paste it into the Word Counter Tool input box.
Word Counter Tool can calculate how many words in a paragraph and even calculate the total word count for a novel, essay, or books. There is no limit to how many words you would like to count. It can also be useful if you have a maximum limit to the number of words allowed for an article or blog post you are working on.
Unlike most other word counter tools, our Word Counter Tool does not set any limit to the amount of text you wish to count. It is completely free to use with no limits to the number of times you would like to use it.
Why Use Word Counter Tool To Calculate Words And Character Count?
If you are familiar with Microsoft apps, you would know that there is also a feature that enables word count in Word. On top of that, there is also a word counter in Google Docs that can also count the number of characters.
Although software like Microsoft Word and Google Docs have their own built-in word counters, there is a clear advantage to using a free online tool like Word Counter Tool instead.
With Word Counter Tool, you are not limited to any particular file formats like Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Instead, you can copy and paste any type of text to find how many words or characters it contains.
You can perform a word count for your Microsoft Word file, Google Docs document, Microsoft Excel sheet, academic essays, or also a character count for your Google Ads search ad, Facebook posts, Instagram caption, and many more, all on Word Counter Tool.
It is easy to use and gives you results within the blink of an eye. Since it is free to use, you can perform word count checks with Word Counter Tool as many times as you would like. Whether you are a digital marketer, SEO specialist, writer, blogger, or student, Word Counter Tool will be a valuable addition to your workflow.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes! You can use word counter free without seeing any ads or annoying limits.
Never! The tool is free and we will not restrict your usage of it.
There is NO LIMIT! You can paste any number of words to see the results!
Yes, you will see the number of sentences and paragraphs in your text.
Absolutely! Word counter will show you both — the number of characters with and without the spaces!
What Is Meant by Word Count?
The term word count means the number of words contained within a document or passage of text. Checking your word count can ensure your text reaches or stays within a certain limit.
There are lots of reasons why a word count may be required for a passage of text, including readability and reliability reasons. Different word counts may be set depending on the audience of the text, its purpose, or both.
For example, a word count for a college essay may be set at 10,000 words to ensure the text contains significant research and is considered a reliable, in-depth paper. Whereas a journalist may have a 1,000-word count target to ensure the text is a short, easy-to-read summary for their target audience.
Professionals, students, authors, journalists, or anyone that needs to write a passage of text will usually find it important to know the word count.
How to Check Word Count
There are numerous ways you can check your word count. You can use Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or an online Word Counter Tool.
How to check word count using Microsoft Word
To check your word count using Microsoft Word, you can:
- Select the text you want to check
- You’ll find the word count in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen
How to check word count using Google Docs
To check your word count using Google Docs, you can:
- Select Tools
- Select Word Count
- View your word count
What Is the Word Counter Tool?
The Word Counter Tool is an online website that tells you the word count of a passage of text. The tool instantly counts the number of words and shows you the results. It can be used to make sure your text is of a certain length.
The Word Counter Tool can be used on a computer, laptop, or mobile device.
How Does the Word Counter Work?
The Word Counter Tool works by calculating the total number of words contained within a passage of text in real time.
It will count the words as you write, or it will show you the total number of words within text that you have copied and pasted into the box.
Using the tool, you can check the following information:
- Word count
- Unique word count
- Character count (with and without spaces)
- Sentence count
- Paragraph count
- Reading time
The Word Counter Tool is especially helpful if you are working on a mobile device and need to quickly check your word count.
How to Use the Word Counter
It’s easy to check your word count using the Word Counter.
To use the tool, simply:
- Start typing or copy and paste your text into the box
- Check your word count