What this sentence counter does
This tool counts the sentences in any text you paste or type. It updates as you write, so you can watch the numbers change while you edit. Next to the sentence count you get the word count, characters with and without spaces, paragraphs, the average sentence length, how many sentences run over 25 words, and an estimate of reading and speaking time.
Below the counts there are two extra panels. Longest sentence and Shortest sentence show the two extremes with their word counts. Every sentence lists each sentence on its own line with its length, and long ones are highlighted. That list is the quickest way to find the sentence that makes a paragraph hard to follow.
How to use it
- Paste your text into the Your text box, or start typing.
- Read the counts in the panel beside it. They refresh on every keystroke.
- Scroll down to Every sentence to see the breakdown.
- Press Try sample text to see how it works with an example, or Clear to start again.
Nothing needs to be submitted. There is no limit on length, and very long texts are counted after a short pause in typing so the page stays responsive.
How sentences are counted
Counting sentences sounds simple: count the full stops. In practice, full stops appear in many places that are not the end of a sentence. The counter uses these rules:
- A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis, when it is followed by a space or the end of a line. Closing quotation marks and brackets after the mark stay with the sentence.
- A line break also ends a sentence. Headings, list items and lines of a poem each count as one.
- Common abbreviations such as Mr., Mrs., Dr., Prof., St., e.g. and i.e. do not end a sentence.
- A single capital letter followed by a full stop, as in J. K. Rowling, is treated as an initial.
- A full stop followed by a lowercase word, as in “5 p.m. on Friday”, does not end a sentence.
- Decimals and web addresses contain no space after the dot, so 3.50 and www.example.com never split a sentence.
- A piece of text with no letters or numbers, such as a line of dots, is ignored.
Words are runs of characters between spaces that contain at least one letter or digit. A lone dash or symbol is not a word.
Examples
These results come straight from the tool.
| Text | Sentences | Words |
|---|---|---|
| Hi there. How are you? (new line) I am fine. | 3 | 8 |
| Mr. Smith arrived at 3.30 p.m. on Friday. He was late. | 2 | 11 |
| Visit www.example.com today. It is free | 2 | 6 |
The sample text on the page has 5 sentences and 68 words. Its average sentence length is 13.6 words, but one sentence has 42 words while another has only 3. The longest sentence is flagged in the breakdown, and the reading time comes out at 17 seconds.
Reading time and speaking time
Reading time uses 238 words per minute. That figure comes from Marc Brysbaert’s 2019 review of studies on silent reading speed in English. Speaking time uses 150 words per minute, a common estimate for a talk or a presentation.
| Words | Reading time | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| 500 | 2 min | 3 min |
| 1,000 | 4 min | 7 min |
| 2,500 | 11 min | 17 min |
Use these as rough guides. Technical writing is read more slowly, and most people speak more slowly when they are nervous.
Why sentence length matters
Long sentences are not wrong, but a page full of them is tiring. Readers have to hold several ideas in mind before they reach the full stop. Very short sentences, one after another, can feel choppy. Good writing mixes the two.
The average tells you the overall feel of a piece, and the list tells you where to look. If one sentence is twice as long as the rest, try splitting it at a conjunction such as “but” or “and”, or turn a list inside it into bullet points.
Tips and limits
- Text from PDFs often has a line break at the end of every line, and each break counts as a sentence end. Clean it first with the line break remover.
- Abbreviations not on the list, such as some company or legal abbreviations, may split a sentence in two. Check the breakdown if the count looks high.
- Dialogue that ends in a question mark or exclamation mark inside quotes, such as “Stop!” she said, counts as two sentences. Most style guides would call it one, so expect a small overcount in fiction.
- Languages without spaces, such as Chinese or Japanese, are not counted reliably, because words are found by spaces.
To see which words you use most, try the word frequency counter. To catch accidental repeats such as “the the”, use the duplicate word finder.
Other ways to count sentences
Microsoft Word shows a sentence count in its Readability Statistics, which you can turn on in the proofing options and which appear after a spelling and grammar check. Google Docs shows words and characters under Tools, then Word count, but not sentences. In Python, a quick estimate is len(re.split(r'[.!?]+\s', text)), although it will miscount abbreviations. For a fast answer that handles the common cases, pasting here is simpler.