The practical definition
A word is a unit of text separated from other units by spaces or line breaks, containing at least one letter or digit. Punctuation attached to a word, such as a full stop, comma or bracket, is not part of the count. The rule is easy for a computer to apply and matches what most people would count by hand.
Quick reference
| Case | Counts as | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Contractions (can’t, it’s) | 1 word | Apostrophe stays inside the word |
| Hyphenated compounds (well-known) | 1 word | Some systems count 2; see Do Hyphenated Words Count as One or Two? |
| Numbers (2026, 1,250, 3.14) | 1 word | See Do Numbers Count as Words? |
| Abbreviations (U.S.A., e.g.) | 1 word | |
| Web addresses and emails | 1 word | Provided no spaces |
| Dates (15/10/2026) | 1 word | Slashes join the digits |
| Standalone dash or bullet | 0 words in this counter | Word counts a spaced dash as a word |
| Emoji | 0 words | Counted separately; see Emoji Counter |
| Em dash joining words | 2 words here | Word counts it as 1 |
| Words in a foreign script | 1 word each | Unicode letters of any script |
Words you cannot see
Headings, captions, quotations, footnotes, headers and footers raise a different question: do they count? That is a property of the document and the rules you are following, not of the tokenizer. Most institutions count body text, headings and quotations, and exclude the title page, reference list and appendices; see Does Word Count Include References and Citations?. Paste only the text you want counted.
Why definitions differ
No standard defines a word for counting. Word processors make pragmatic choices: Microsoft Word counts any space-separated string, including a lone “&” or “–”. Google Docs treats some punctuation as a separator. Publishers sometimes use a flat character-based formula, six characters per word, to estimate length. This site documents its choices in How Word Count Is Calculated so that results are reproducible.
Counting in other languages
Languages written without spaces, such as Chinese and Japanese, need dictionary-based segmentation, which this counter does not do; for those, character counts are more meaningful. Urdu, Arabic-script languages and Roman Urdu use spaces and work well; see How to Count Words in Urdu.
Try it yourself
Put the numbers above to work with these free tools:
Frequently asked questions
Is “e-mail” one word or two?
One word in most counters; the hyphen joins the letters.
Does a number count as a word?
Yes.
Is “&” a word?
In Microsoft Word yes; here no, because it has no letters or digits.
Do I count words in the title?
Only if your rules say so.