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How to Count Words and Characters (English & Thai)

4 min readUpdated 5 October 2026

To count words and characters, paste or type your text into Word Counter. The Words, Characters and No spaces counts update with every key, along with sentences, paragraphs, reading time and speaking time. It works for Thai too, even though Thai has no spaces between words.

It is free, needs no sign-up and runs in any browser on a phone or computer, so you can check an essay, a caption or a meta description in seconds.

Do it now with Word CounterFree, no sign-up, works on any device.

Step by step

  1. 1Open Word CounterGo to the Word Counter tool. The text box is ready to type into straight away; press Sample if you want to see it with example text first.
  2. 2Paste or type your textPaste with Ctrl/⌘ + V or the paste button above the box, or simply start typing. English, Thai and a mix of both are all fine.
  3. 3Read the countsThe strip at the top shows Words, Characters, No spaces, Sentences, Paragraphs, Reading and Speaking time. The line count sits next to the box, and unique words and average word length appear underneath.
  4. 4Check the length limitsUnder Length limits, bars for X / Twitter post (280), Meta description (160), SMS (160) and Instagram caption (2,200) show how many characters are left. They turn amber when you are close and red, with the number over, when you pass.
  5. 5Look at keyword densityKeyword density lists your 10 most-used words with how often each appears and its share of all words, so you can spot a word you repeat too often.

How the tool counts words and characters

Characters counts everything you typed, including spaces and line breaks; No spaces leaves all whitespace out. Many forms and assignments mean the first when they say “characters”, so check which one is asked for.

Words are found by your browser's built-in word splitter. For English, that means words between spaces and punctuation. For Thai, the browser splits text using its Thai dictionary, so ภาษาไทยไม่มีการเว้นวรรค is counted word by word even with no spaces.

Tip: Thai vowels and tone marks written above or below a letter count as characters of their own: สวัสดี is 6 characters, not 4.

Counting Thai text

Thai word counts depend on where the dictionary draws the line, so a compound word such as ภาษาไทย may count as two words (ภาษา + ไทย). Different browsers can differ by a word or two on long texts. For a word limit on Thai work, treat the count as a close guide and leave a little room.

Sentence counts end a sentence at a full stop, ? or ! — and at a line break. Thai rarely uses full stops, so for Thai text the Sentences figure mostly follows your line breaks. Paragraphs are blocks separated by an empty line, in any language.

Hitting length limits for X, Google and SMS

The length bars count characters including spaces. A few things to know about each limit:

  • Meta description — 160 characters is a common target. Google actually cuts snippets by width on screen, so very wide text can be cut a little sooner; put the important words first.
  • X / Twitter post — 280 characters. X counts every link as a fixed length, so a long URL uses fewer characters than the bar shows.
  • SMS — 160 characters applies to plain English text. A message with Thai characters or emoji fits about 70 characters per SMS, so Thai texts split into more parts.
  • Instagram caption — up to 2,200 characters, but only the first line or two show before “more”.

Reading time, speaking time and tidy-up tools

Reading time assumes 238 words a minute and Speaking time 150 words a minute. That makes speaking time handy for speeches and presentations: a 5-minute talk is roughly 750 words.

Keyword density skips common English words such as “the” and “and”, numbers and single letters, so the list shows the words that actually carry your topic. These tools help once the count is right:

  • Text Cleaner — remove double spaces, empty lines and stray formatting before you count.
  • Case Converter — switch a heading to Title Case or a shouty draft to lower case.
  • Notepad — draft longer texts with autosave in your browser.
  • Diff Checker — see exactly what changed between two versions.

Questions people ask

Does the character count include spaces?
Characters includes spaces and line breaks. No spaces shows the same text with every space, tab and line break left out. Both are shown side by side.
Can it count Thai words?
Yes. Your browser splits Thai into words with its built-in dictionary, so text without spaces is counted correctly in most cases. Compound words may count as two, so treat Thai word counts as a close estimate.
How many words is a 5-minute speech?
At the tool's speaking pace of 150 words a minute, about 750 words. Paste your script and check the Speaking time; slow down or trim if it runs long.
Do it now with Word CounterFree, no sign-up, works on any device.

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