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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.
| Characters | ≈ Words (spaces included, 6 chars/word) | ≈ Words (spaces excluded, 5 chars/word) |
|---|---|---|
| 100 | about 17 words | about 20 words |
| 140 | about 23 words | about 28 words |
| 280 | about 47 words | about 56 words |
| 400 | about 67 words | about 80 words |
| 500 | about 83 words | about 100 words |
| 1000 | about 167 words | about 200 words |
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 100, 140, 280, 400, and 500 characters.