Paragraph Counter

Paste your text and the counter returns paragraph, sentence, line, word, and character counts in one shot. A paragraph is defined as a block separated by one or more blank lines (or a double newline) — the standard convention in most editors and formats.

Sentences are counted by terminal punctuation (.!?), with abbreviation handling so that 'Dr. Smith' isn't read as two sentences. The accuracy is around 95% on typical prose; legal text, scientific notation, and bulleted lists are where the heuristic struggles.

For word and character counts that match Microsoft Word or Google Docs precisely, expect tiny discrepancies — every tool defines 'word' slightly differently when it comes to hyphenated terms, contractions, and embedded numbers. The variance is usually under 1%.

The counting rules: paragraphs split on one or more blank lines (regex /\n\s*\n+/). Lines split on every newline. Sentences split on .!? followed by whitespace or end-of-string, with a small abbreviation list (Mr., Mrs., Dr., Prof., Inc., Ltd., e.g., i.e., etc., vs.) that prevents false positives. Words split on whitespace and trim trailing punctuation. Characters count code points (not bytes) and include or exclude whitespace based on a toggle. Reading time uses 250 words per minute as an average adult silent-reading rate.

Worked example: paste a 3-paragraph blog post. The counter returns paragraphs: 3. Lines: 28 (with line-wraps preserved as separate lines if pasted from a wrapped editor). Sentences: 19. Words: 412. Characters with spaces: 2,344. Without spaces: 1,932. Reading time: ~1:39. Average sentence length: 21.7 words (a touch high — readability targets 15-20). Average paragraph length: 137 words (in range; 100-200 is typical for blog prose). Run on a Hemingway-style draft with 5-word sentences and the average-sentence metric collapses dramatically — same word count, very different reading rhythm.

Where the counter disagrees with other tools: Microsoft Word counts hyphenated words as single units ('mother-in-law' = 1 word). Google Docs counts each hyphenated component separately (3 words). The browser-based counter sits in the middle (configurable). For author contracts that pay by word, this 1-3% disagreement matters; for everyday writing, it doesn't. Code, structured text (JSON, YAML), and bulleted lists confuse sentence detection — a JSON object has no sentences but the heuristic might count keys ending in punctuation. Run plain prose through the counter for the most reliable numbers.

For authors paid by the word, the count discrepancy across tools matters. Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, and Hemingway each count slightly differently — typically 1-3% spread. The convention in publishing contracts is to specify which tool's count is authoritative, or to count manuscript pages instead (250 words per page convention). For technical writing and SEO, the differences are noise. For paid prose, lock the convention before you sign.