. ! ?; paragraphs on blank lines. Reading time assumes 200 words per minute, rounding up, or “< 1 min” when that would be zero.
Character count is simply the string length, shown alongside a second count with whitespace stripped out so you can see both figures at a glance. Words are counted by splitting on whitespace, sentences by splitting on . ! ?, and paragraphs by blank lines.
Reading time assumes an average pace of 200 words per minute and always rounds up, showing "< 1 min" for anything short enough to round to zero — useful for gauging how long a blog post, essay, or script will take to read aloud or silently.
Because sentence and paragraph counts rely on punctuation and line breaks rather than genuine language understanding, unusual formatting (like text with no punctuation, or code pasted in) can throw off those two figures specifically — character and word counts stay accurate regardless.
At 200 words per minute, rounded up to the nearest minute, showing "< 1 min" when the total would round to zero. It's a general average — actual reading speed varies by person and content.
Text is split wherever a period, exclamation mark, or question mark appears. Abbreviations or unusual punctuation can occasionally cause a slightly higher sentence count than a human reader would give.
One counts every character including spaces, the other strips whitespace first — useful when a form or platform limit specifically excludes spaces.
Character and word counts work for any language using whitespace-separated words. Sentence detection, which relies on Latin-script punctuation (. ! ?), is most reliable for English and similar languages.