How to use the word frequency counter
- Paste or type your text into the box. Text up to 300,000 characters is accepted.
- Choose how many words to list, and the shortest word counted. Set it to 4 to skip short words such as "the", "and" and "of".
- Untick Treat Word and word as the same if capital letters should count as different words. Tick Skip words that are only numbers to leave numbers out.
- Read the most used word, the totals, and the ranked table with each word's count and share. Use Copy or CSV to keep the table.
Formula
Words = runs of letters and digits, with a single apostrophe or hyphen allowed between letters or digits
Share of a word = count / total words counted x 100
Different words as a share of all words = different words / total words counted x 100
Words are listed by count, highest first. Words with the same count are listed in alphabetical order, so the table is the same every time.
A short sample
Take the text: The cat and the hat. The CAT's hat -- don't stop; well-known 42 42 cats! Don’t go. It has 16 words and 11 different ones when capitals are ignored. "The" appears 3 times, which is 18.75% of the words, ahead of "42", "don't" and "hat" with 2 each.
Note that "don't" and "Don’t" with a curly apostrophe count as one word, "well-known" is one word, and "CAT's" is separate from "cat" and "cats". Seven different words appear only once. Setting the shortest word to 4 leaves 6 words: "don't" twice, then "cat's", "cats", "stop" and "well-known" once each.
What a word is
The counter treats a word as a run of letters and digits. An apostrophe or a hyphen between two letters stays inside the word, so contractions and compound words are not split. Punctuation, spaces and symbols separate words. Letters with accents and letters from other alphabets count as letters, so the tool works for many languages.
Counting is simple string matching. It does not know that "run" and "running" are related, and it does not remove common words unless you raise the shortest word length. That keeps the result predictable.
Ways to use the counts
Writers use word counts to spot overused words, to check that a keyword they care about appears as often as they meant, or to compare drafts. Teachers use them to look at vocabulary, and researchers use them for a first look at a text. A high share for one ordinary word often means the text can be varied.
To find words repeated close together, use the repeated word finder. To see the counts as a picture, try the word cloud generator. The readability score calculator estimates how easy the text is to read, and the text line tools clean up lists of lines.
Assumptions and limits
- Words are counted as described above. Numbers count as words unless you skip them.
- Case folding uses the standard lower-casing of your browser, and curly apostrophes are treated as straight ones.
- No words are removed from the count except by the shortest word and number options.
- Your text stays in the browser and is not sent anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
How do I count how many times each word appears?
Paste the text into the box and the table ranks the words by count. The share column shows each word as a percent of all words counted.
Does it ignore common words like the and of?
Not by default. Raise the shortest word counted to skip the shortest words, which removes most of them along with other short words.
Are Word and word counted separately?
Only if you untick the same-word box. By default capitals are ignored so both count together.
Is my text uploaded?
No. The counting is done in your browser on your device.