Transparency & conventions
How TextWordCount Counts — Methodology
Counting words sounds trivial until you ask: do hyphenated words count as one or two? What about contractions? URLs? Emoji? Different tools give different numbers. Here are ours.
Our Counting Conventions
Word Counting Rules
What counts as a word
Words are sequences of non-whitespace characters separated by spaces, tabs, or line breaks — consistent with Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
Hyphenated compound words
Hyphenated compound words (e.g., “mother-in-law”, “well-being”) count as one word. The hyphen is treated as part of the word, not a separator.
Contractions
Contractions (e.g., “don't”, “I've”, “they're”) count as one word. The apostrophe is part of the word.
URLs and email addresses
A full URL (e.g., “https://textwordcount.com”) counts as one word. An email address counts as one word.
Numbers
Standalone numbers count as words. “42”, “3.14”, and “2026” each count as one word.
Emoji
Emoji do not count as words. They are excluded from the word count.
Character Counting Rules
Characters with spaces vs. without spaces
We provide both counts. “Characters with spaces” includes every character including spaces, tabs, and line breaks. “Characters without spaces” excludes all whitespace.
Unicode and non-Latin scripts
We count Unicode characters accurately, including Turkish, Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and all other scripts. Each Unicode code point counts as one character.
Whitespace definition
Whitespace includes regular spaces, non-breaking spaces, tabs, and newline characters.
Sentence Counting Rules
Sentence boundaries
Sentences are detected by terminal punctuation: periods (.), exclamation marks (!), and question marks (?).
Abbreviations and decimals
Periods after common abbreviations (Dr., Mr., e.g., etc.) and decimal points in numbers do not trigger a new sentence count.
Paragraph Counting Rules
What counts as a paragraph
A paragraph is a block of text separated from adjacent blocks by one or more blank lines (double line breaks). A single line break within a block does not start a new paragraph.
Reading Time Calculation
Reading speed used
The main word counter uses 200 words per minute — a conservative average adult silent reading speed. The Reading Time tool offers adjustable presets (150 / 200 / 300 / 400 WPM).
Speaking time
Speaking time uses 130 words per minute, consistent with typical presentation delivery pace.
Note: TODO: Verify exact WPM values against Brysbaert (2019) and update if the implementation changes.
Keyword Density Calculation
Density formula
Density = (occurrences of keyword ÷ total words) × 100, rounded to one decimal place.
Stop words
Common stop words (the, a, of, and, in, to, etc.) are excluded from the top-keyword list but are still counted in total word count.
Case sensitivity
Matching is case-insensitive. “SEO”, “seo”, and “Seo” are counted as the same keyword.
Privacy Architecture
All text analysis — including word counting, character counting, sentence detection, and the AI writing tools (paraphrase, grammar fix) — runs in JavaScript inside your browser tab.
We never send your text to a server. The only data that reaches our servers is anonymous page-view analytics (no text content, no user identification).
Browser localStorage is used to autosave your work so you don't lose it on refresh. You can clear this at any time by clearing your browser's local storage for this site.
There is no account system, no login wall, and no data collection that requires your text.
How We Test Before Shipping
- We cross-check our counting output against Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Grammarly on a fixed test corpus before each release.
- Multilingual test corpus covers: English, Turkish, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Russian.
- Edge cases tested: empty input, 100,000+ word documents, mixed scripts, emoji-heavy text, right-to-left languages, text with only punctuation.
- Performance budget: word count and statistics update within 50ms on a mid-range mobile device for documents up to 50,000 words.
How We Update Counting Logic
We update counting conventions only when there is a confirmed bug or a documented change in industry standards. We do not change conventions arbitrarily.
Changes that affect count output are documented. Major methodology changes will be noted at the top of this page with a date.
If you notice a discrepancy between TextWordCount and another tool, email ismailgnydn28@gmail.com with the test case. We investigate and respond.
Also on TextWordCount
Last reviewed and updated on 2026-04-25 by İsmail Günaydın.