Just paste your text to see characters, words, lines, paragraphs, bytes, and 400-character pages in real time
English text averages about five letters per word plus one separating space. A common rule of thumb is therefore words ≈ characters ÷ 6 when the character count includes spaces, or ÷ 5 when it excludes them. These figures are estimates based on average word length — the exact word count depends on your text, so paste it above to get the real number. A words-to-characters table for the opposite direction follows below.
| Characters | ≈ Words (spaces included, 6 chars/word) | ≈ Words (spaces excluded, 5 chars/word) | Where this length comes up |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60 | about 10 words | about 12 words | Page title in search results (common guideline) |
| 100 | about 17 words | about 20 words | Short headline or summary line |
| 140 | about 23 words | about 28 words | Former X (Twitter) limit |
| 160 | about 27 words | about 32 words | Meta description (common guideline); one GSM-7 SMS |
| 280 | about 47 words | about 56 words | X (Twitter) post limit |
| 400 | about 67 words | about 80 words | One Japanese manuscript page (400 characters) |
| 500 | about 83 words | about 100 words | Short abstract or bio |
| 1,000 | about 167 words | about 200 words | A short article section |
| Words | ≈ Characters (with spaces, 6 chars/word) | ≈ Characters (without spaces, 5 chars/word) |
|---|---|---|
| 50 | about 300 characters | about 250 characters |
| 100 | about 600 characters | about 500 characters |
| 250 | about 1,500 characters | about 1,250 characters |
| 500 | about 3,000 characters | about 2,500 characters |
| 1,000 | about 6,000 characters | about 5,000 characters |
To convert any other number of characters to words (or change the characters-per-word ratio), use the Characters to Words Converter. To estimate how long a text takes to read, see the Reading Time Calculator.
This tool shows "characters including spaces", "characters excluding spaces", and "characters excluding line breaks" at the same time. You can see at a glance both the count that includes spaces, tabs, and line breaks and the count with those removed.
No. Counting characters, words, lines, and so on all happens entirely within your browser (JavaScript). The text you enter is never uploaded to a server.
Emoji and characters made of surrogate pairs are counted as a single character, just as they appear. The UTF-8 byte count is shown separately, so you can also gauge the data size at the same time.
Divide the character count by the average number of characters per word. English averages about five letters per word plus one separating space, so divide by 6 when spaces are included in the count, or by 5 when they are excluded. Both are approximations based on average word length; for other ratios, use the Characters to Words Converter.
About 167 words if the 1,000 characters include spaces (6 characters per word), or about 200 words if spaces are excluded (5 characters per word). This is an estimate; paste your text above to get the exact word count. The conversion table on this page also lists 60, 100, 140, 160, 280, 400, 500, and 1,000 characters, and a second table converts words back to characters.