Who runs this site
CountWords.net (countwords.net) is operated by Anderson Gomes Ferreira. contato@countwords.net
How it works
Words are runs of letters or digits; an apostrophe, hyphen or dot between two letters keeps them in one word (don’t, e-mail, 3.5), and so does a comma or colon between two digits (1,000, 10:30). Each Chinese, Japanese or Korean character counts as one word. The rule is the same as on WordCount.tools.
Word (.docx) and OpenDocument (.odt) files are zips of XML parts; the body, notes, headers and footers are read as separate parts, and headings come from the paragraph styles. PDFs are read with PDF.js, and headings, running headers, page numbers and footnotes are told apart by their position and type size.
In-text citations are matched by their shape only: an author and a year in brackets, a year after a name, a name and a page, or a number in square brackets. The reference list and appendices start at a heading with that name.
Page estimates lay the text out with the character widths of Times New Roman, Arial or Calibri on Letter or A4 with 1-inch margins. They are estimates: word processors also kern, hyphenate and keep lines together.
Files and text are read in your browser. Nothing is uploaded to our servers or stored.
Where the data and rules come from
- Google Docs Editors Help: See word count & page count — Word count leaves out headers, footers and footnotes
- Microsoft Support: Word count — Text boxes and footnotes can be included in the total
- University of Hull Library: Is my list of references included in my word count? — Reference list not included; in-text citations included
- Lancaster University Library: How do I exclude the in-text citations? — Citations usually not excluded
- Ecma International: ECMA-376 Office Open XML — Structure of .docx files
- Brysbaert (2019), Journal of Memory and Language — Average reading rates
How we keep the content up to date
Each outside fact shows the page it comes from and the day we opened it. The counting rules are covered by tests built from real Word, OpenDocument and PDF files.
What this site is not
Course and publisher rules differ on what counts toward a word limit; the switches let you follow yours, and your handbook has the last word. PDF structure is rebuilt from the layout and can be wrong for unusual layouts. Page counts are estimates.
Get in touch
Found a mistake, have a question or a suggestion? See the channels on the contact.
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