Guide

How Microsoft Word Counts Words

Microsoft Word counts a word as any string of characters separated by spaces. That simple rule explains most of its behaviour, from hyphenated words counting once to a lone dash or ampersand counting as a word. These notes reflect widely documented behaviour; versions can differ slightly.

Updated

Short answer: Word counts space-delimited strings. Hyphenated words and text joined by an unspaced em dash count as one word; a standalone symbol with spaces around it counts as a word too.

The space-delimited rule

Word treats a word as a run of non-space characters. Punctuation attached to a word is part of that token, so “Hello,” is one word. Because it does not look inside the token, “U.S.A.”, “www.example.com” and “3.14” each count once. A free-standing “&”, “–” or “—” also counts, since it is a token between spaces. This differs from counters that require a letter or digit, such as ours, which skips symbols that stand alone.

Hyphens, dashes and slashes

A hyphenated word is one word. Text joined by a slash, such as “and/or”, is one word. An em dash without spaces joins the words on either side into one token, so “word—word” counts as one in Word. With spaces on both sides, “word — word” counts as three tokens. These dash rules are the biggest source of differences from other programs; see Do Hyphenated Words Count as One or Two?.

What Word includes and excludes

  • Body text, headings, tables and lists are counted.
  • Headers and footers are not.
  • Footnotes, endnotes and text boxes can be included or excluded with a checkbox in the Word Count dialog.
  • Comments and tracked-change deleted text are not part of the final-view count, depending on view settings.

If your institution says that footnotes count, tick the option; if it says they do not, clear it. For the rules on references, see Does Word Count Include References and Citations?.

Selecting text

If you select text, the status bar shows the count for the selection, for example “120 of 1,500 words”. That is the quickest way to count just one section. The Word Count dialog also reports pages, characters with and without spaces, paragraphs and lines. How to open it is covered in How to Count Words in Microsoft Word.

Comparing with this counter

For ordinary prose, Word and WordCounter.pk agree to within a few words per thousand. Differences arise from standalone symbols, unspaced em dashes and abbreviations containing periods. If you must match Word exactly, paste your text into Word and use its figure; for planning and editing the difference is immaterial. See How Word Count Is Calculated for our method and How Google Docs Counts Words for Google’s.

Try it yourself

Put the numbers above to work with these free tools:

Word CounterThe main free word counter for English, Urdu and Roman Urdu.Find and ReplaceFind and replace words or patterns, with regex and case options.

Frequently asked questions

Does Word count hyphenated words as one?

Yes.

Does Word count footnotes?

Optionally; there is a checkbox in the dialog.

Does Word count headers and footers?

No.

Does Word count a lone dash?

Yes if spaces surround it.