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Convertitive

Word & Character Counter

Words, characters, reading time — eight metrics, updated live.

Whether you’re trimming a tweet, fitting a meta description, hitting an essay’s word-count target, or estimating how long a talk will take, the counter below tracks eight metrics from the same text in real time. Everything runs locally — your draft never leaves the browser.

Words
17
Characters
85
No spaces
69
Sentences
2
Paragraphs
1
Lines
1
Reading time
5s
Speaking time
7s

Reading speed assumes 225 wpm (average adult silent reading); speaking time uses a 150 wpm pace.

How to use

  1. Paste or type your text

    Any size — there's no upper limit. The page handles tens of thousands of words without lag.

  2. Read the eight metrics

    Words and characters are the obvious ones. Sentences (any period, !, or ?), paragraphs (separated by blank lines), and lines (any newline) round out the structural counts. Reading and speaking times are derived from average paces.

  3. Hit your limit exactly

    Trim or expand as needed; numbers update on every keystroke. Reading time turns from seconds into minutes around 225 words and into hours past 13,500 words.

Frequently asked questions

What counts as a word?
Any run of non-whitespace characters separated by whitespace. Punctuation attached to a word is considered part of it ("don't" is one word). Em-dashes between words count as separators.
Are hyphenated words one or two?
One. "State-of-the-art" is counted as a single word. This matches Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and most CMS counters.
Why are 'characters with spaces' and 'without spaces' both shown?
Different platforms count differently. Twitter counts characters with spaces. Some CMS limits and SMS billing systems exclude spaces. Showing both removes the guesswork.
How accurate is the reading time?
Approximate. 225 wpm is the average for native-English silent reading on screen. Speed varies by reader (160–280 wpm is the typical adult range) and by content complexity (technical writing is slower).
What about speaking time?
Calculated at 150 wpm — a deliberate, audience-friendly pace. Stand-up comedians average 175 wpm, news anchors 180–200, conference talks 100–150 if there are pauses for slides and questions.
Does this count syllables for poetry?
Not yet. A syllable counter is on the roadmap; estimating syllables in English needs a small dictionary plus a fallback heuristic.
Is my text uploaded anywhere?
No. The counter is pure client-side JavaScript. Convertitive's server never receives the input.

About

Common word-count targets

Tweet: 280 characters. SMS: 160 characters per segment. Meta description: 155–160 characters. Slack status: 100 characters. Standard short blog post: 600 words. SEO long-form: 1,200–2,500 words. Standard novel: 60,000–110,000 words.

Methodology notes

Sentence detection uses '[.!?]+' followed by whitespace or end of input. Paragraph detection requires at least one blank line between text blocks. Line counting includes every newline, including blank ones (mirroring how a programming-style line count would behave).