Word Counter
Count words, characters and lines as you type — with correct handling of Chinese and Japanese. Nothing is uploaded or saved.
How to Use
- Paste or type your text into the box.
- Counts update live as you type: words, characters with and without spaces, and lines.
- Chinese and Japanese characters each count as one word — mixed-language text just works.
- Close or refresh the page and the text is gone; nothing is stored or uploaded.
Features
- Live counts for words, characters and lines
- Characters shown both with and without spaces
- CJK-aware: Chinese and Japanese count per character, even mixed with English
- Nothing uploaded, nothing saved — text stays in the page
- Runs as a Win98-style desktop window on BytePlay
- Free, no signup
About This Tool
Most word counters on the web share a quiet assumption: that words are things separated by spaces. That works for English and fails completely for Chinese and Japanese, which don't use spaces at all — paste a 200-character Chinese paragraph into a typical English-only counter and it will cheerfully report "one word". This counter was built with CJK text as a first-class citizen. Every Chinese character, kanji, hiragana and katakana counts as one; runs of Latin letters count as one word each, the way you'd expect; and mixed text — a Chinese sentence quoting an English product name, a Japanese email with API terms sprinkled in — is simply the sum of both, which matches how word limits are actually enforced in Chinese and Japanese writing. Alongside the word count you get three more numbers, live on every keystroke: characters including spaces, characters excluding spaces (whitespace and line breaks stripped), and the number of non-empty lines. Together they cover the classic real-world limits: a 500-character application field, a 155-character meta description, a social post that has to fit, an abstract that must not run a single word over its cap. Writers checking essay length, translators comparing source against target, marketers trimming ad copy and students inching toward a minimum all need the same four numbers, and there is no button to press — type, and they move. The other thing this tool deliberately doesn't do is remember. Your text is processed entirely inside the page: nothing is uploaded to any server, nothing is written to your device, and refreshing or closing the window erases it completely. That makes it safe for the drafts you wouldn't paste into a random website — performance reviews, resignation letters, contract clauses. On BytePlay's Windows 98-style desktop the counter opens as a small window you can keep beside your editor, one glance away. No signup, no length limits, no stored history: type, read the numbers, close the window, and it's as if you were never here.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How does it count Chinese or Japanese characters?
- Each CJK character — Chinese characters, kanji, hiragana and katakana — counts as one word and one character. There's no space-splitting involved, so a 200-character Chinese paragraph counts as 200, matching how character limits actually work in Chinese and Japanese writing.
- Is my text uploaded or saved anywhere?
- No. Counting happens entirely in the page as you type; the text never leaves your browser and is not written to disk. Refresh or close the window and it's gone completely, which makes the tool safe for confidential drafts.
- Does the character count include spaces?
- You get both numbers side by side: 'Characters' counts everything including spaces, while 'Characters (no spaces)' strips out spaces, tabs and line breaks. Punctuation is included in both.
- How are words counted in mixed Chinese-English text?
- Each Chinese character counts as one word, and each run of Latin letters counts as one word. So a sentence of four Chinese characters plus the word 'Excel' counts as five. Japanese-English text works the same way.
