How are words counted?

A word is any run of characters between spaces or line breaks. So well-known counts as one word and so does 2026.

Do spaces count as characters?

The Characters figure includes spaces and line breaks. The figure below it leaves them out. Check which one your limit refers to.

No. The counting happens in your browser, and the text is gone when you close or reload the page.

Count words, characters, sentences and paragraphs as you type, with reading and speaking time. Free word and character counter.

Paste your text into the box. The results show:

Words: the text is split wherever there is a space, tab or line break.
Characters: every letter, digit, space, punctuation mark and emoji counts as one.
Sentences: counted by full stops, question marks and exclamation marks that end a run of text.
Paragraphs: blocks of text separated by an empty line.
Reading time: words ÷ 200. Speaking time: words ÷ 130. These are typical speeds for adults reading silently and speaking in a presentation. Your own speed may differ.

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” has 9 words, 44 characters with spaces, 36 without, and 1 sentence.

Abbreviations such as “e.g.” add to the sentence count, because each full stop is counted.
Some sites count characters differently. X (Twitter), for example, counts every link as 23 characters whatever its length.
Languages written without spaces between words, such as Chinese and Japanese, will show a low word count. Use the character count for those.