Line Counter Tool

How it is calculated

The text is first normalised so that Windows (\r\n) and old Mac (\r) line endings count as one break each. Lines = number of pieces after splitting on line breaks, so a blank line counts and so does a trailing newline at the end (it creates one extra, empty last line). Non-empty lines skips lines that are blank or contain only spaces or tabs. Words are runs of characters separated by any whitespace. Characters counts Unicode characters, not bytes, with line breaks included; the no-spaces figure removes every whitespace character, including line breaks. An empty box gives no result.

Common mistakes

• Pasting text that ends with a newline and expecting the line count to match what you see: the final line break adds one empty line to the total, while the non-empty count is unaffected.
• Comparing the characters figure with a limit that is stated without spaces (or the other way round); the two figures differ by every space and line break.
• Treating the line count as a paragraph count. A paragraph separated by a blank line counts as at least two lines here, so use the non-empty figure, and even that counts each wrapped sentence on its own line.
• Expecting hyphenated or slashed items such as well-known or and/or to be split: only whitespace separates words.