Word count on a Mac

Pages

1. Click View in the toolbar, then choose Show Word Count.
2. The counter appears at the bottom of the page. Click its arrows to switch to characters, paragraphs or pages.
3. Select some text to count just that part.

More detail is in our guide to word count in Pages.

Microsoft Word for Mac

1. Look at the status bar at the bottom of the window for the number of words.
2. Click it to open the Word Count box with characters, paragraphs and lines.
3. To count part of the document, select the text, then choose Tools > Word Count.

See the Word guide if the count is missing.

Google Docs in Safari or Chrome

1. Press ⌘ + Shift + C, or choose Tools > Word count.
2. Tick Display word count while typing to keep a live count in the bottom left.

Google Docs leaves headers, footers and footnotes out of the count unless you select them.

Is there a shortcut?

Google Docs has one: ⌘ + Shift + C. Pages and Word don't need one, because once you've turned on the counter it stays on screen and updates as you type.

Anywhere else

Notes, Mail, TextEdit and most web forms don't show a word count. Copy the text with ⌘ + C, paste it into the counter on this page with ⌘ + V, and you see words, characters, sentences and reading time at once.

If you use Terminal, wc -w essay.txt prints the number of words in a plain text file.