Sentence counter
Paste your text to count its sentences and see how many words each one carries on average. The longest sentence is shown below the counts, so you know where to cut first.
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At a glance
- Where a sentence ends
- At a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark followed by a space, or at a line break, using Unicode's sentence-boundary rules (UAX #29)
- Source: unicode.org, checked 2026-11
- How the rules are applied
- Your browser's built-in text segmenter (Intl.Segmenter), so nothing is sent anywhere
- Source: developer.mozilla.org, checked 2026-11
- Words in a sentence
- Counted the same way as the word count: hyphenated words and contractions count as one word
- Abbreviations
- "Dr. Patel" is read as two sentences, because a full stop, a space and a capital letter look like a sentence break
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Sentence counter: what to know
This page starts the word counter for this case. For every option and how to use it, see the word counter.
How to count the words in a sentence
Count each group of letters or digits between spaces as one word. A hyphenated word such as "well-known" counts once, and so does a contraction such as "isn't". Numbers like 2026 count as one word each. Punctuation doesn't count.
To do it here, paste just that sentence into the box. The word count is the length of the sentence, and the words-per-sentence figure equals it.
Reading the results
Words per sentence is your word count divided by your sentence count. A high average usually means a few very long sentences rather than many medium ones, so check the longest sentence first and split it where a new idea starts.
A line break also ends a sentence. If you paste a list or a set of headings, each line counts as a sentence, even without a full stop, and the average words per sentence drops. Paste only the running text for a fair average.
Questions
How do I count the words in a sentence?
Paste the sentence into the counter. Each group of letters or digits between spaces is one word; hyphenated words and contractions count once.
What counts as a sentence?
Text that ends with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark followed by a space, or at a line break. The counter follows Unicode's sentence-boundary rules.
Why is my sentence count higher than expected?
Abbreviations followed by a capital letter, such as "Dr. Patel" or "St. Ives", look like the end of a sentence. Each one adds a sentence to the count.