Count the sentences
Paste your text, upload a Word, PDF or text file, or load the example. Every sentence is listed, measured and graded, and nothing leaves your browser.
Paste or type and the sentence count updates as you go, along with paragraphs, words and the average sentence length. Then every sentence is listed on its own, measured, and graded against a threshold you set — so the long ones are not something you have to hunt for. It is free, there is no sign-up, and your text is never sent anywhere.
Three steps, and the first two are optional.
Type, paste, or drop a .docx, .pdf or .txt file onto the editor. Files are read in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Sentences, paragraphs, words and average sentence length appear immediately and update on every keystroke.
Every sentence is listed with its word count. Click one to jump straight to it in your text and fix it.
Most sentence counters break at every full stop. That is wrong often enough to matter, so here is the exact rule, with worked examples you can paste into the box above and check for yourself.
| Input | Counts as | Why |
|---|---|---|
Dr. Smith went home. She was tired. | 2 sentences | The stop after Dr. belongs to a title, not to a sentence |
The design height is 3.5 metres. | 1 sentence | A decimal point is not a full stop |
We ship to the U.S. and to Canada. | 1 sentence | An initialism written with internal dots never ends a sentence on its own |
J. R. R. Tolkien wrote it. | 1 sentence | A single capital letter followed by a stop is an initial |
Call me at 9 a.m. tomorrow. | 1 sentence | Same rule as U.S., applied to lower case |
See fig. 3 and Vol. 2, ch. 4. | 1 sentence | Reference abbreviations are on the list |
The argument is buried around p. 40. | 1 sentence | A one-letter reference abbreviation counts as one only when a number follows it — He left. 40 people came. is still two |
Is it ready? Yes! Finally. | 3 sentences | Question and exclamation marks end sentences |
He said "stop." Then he left. | 2 sentences | A closing quote after the stop stays with the sentence it closes |
Wait... are you sure? | 2 sentences | An ellipsis ends a sentence |
Notes↵One per line↵No full stops | 3 sentences | A line break ends a sentence even without punctuation |
今天天气很好。明天会下雨。 | 2 sentences | The Chinese and Japanese full stop is recognised |
I work at Acme Inc. Then I went home. | 1 sentence | The known limitation. A sentence that genuinely ends in an abbreviation is not split, because nothing in the text distinguishes it from Acme Inc. filed the report. |
Every row above was run through this tool before it was published. The last row is the price of the first six: an abbreviation list gets the common cases right and the rare case wrong, and we would rather say so than pretend the problem does not exist.
A real run, recorded on 19 September 2026. It is the text behind the “Try an example” button, so you can reproduce every number on this page in about four seconds.
It contains Dr., Sept., U.S., p. 40, 11,000, 6,200 and 3.5-metre — seven full stops and commas that a splitter breaking at every full stop reads as the end of a sentence.
Four readings, and what each one is actually for.
Every writer repeats their sentence openings and no writer notices. It is the most reliable small improvement available to a second draft, and it is the reason this tool has a tab for it.
How many sentences start with each word, and what share of the whole that is. Past roughly a fifth on one word and a reader starts to hear it even if they cannot name it.
The same two words opening more than one sentence — This means, It is, There are. Two is coincidence. Five is a tic.
Runs of three or more consecutive sentences with the same opening word, called out with their numbers so you can go straight to them.
Same count, three different reasons to want it.
Some assignments set a sentence limit rather than a word limit — a 250-word abstract in no more than eight sentences, a reflective piece of exactly twenty. This gives the number the marker will get, and the list makes it obvious which sentence to merge or split.
The length chart shows in one glance whether a draft moves at one speed. The longest-five list is usually where the muddle is: a sentence carrying three ideas is nearly always a paragraph that has not been written yet.
Scripts, speeches, voice-overs and podcast notes live or die on sentence rhythm. A speaker needs somewhere to breathe, and variation is the number that tells you whether you left them one.
They answer different questions, and you will probably want both.
A paragraph reads as heavy and you cannot see why. A marker asked for shorter sentences. A script does not sound right out loud. You need every sentence listed, measured and clickable, and you need to know which words you keep starting with.
A word or character limit to hit, reading time to estimate, six readability formulas, word and phrase frequency, and 35 platform character limits checked at once. It counts sentences too — this page is what you open when that number is not enough.
The questions people actually ask about counting sentences.
Paste the text into the box above, or drop in a .docx, .pdf or .txt file. The sentence count appears in the header and updates on every keystroke. Every individual sentence is listed on the right with its own word count, and clicking one jumps to it in your text.
Yes, with no sign-up and nothing held back for a paid plan. The counting is arithmetic done in your browser, so it costs us nothing to run and there is no reason to charge for it or to meter it.
A sentence ends at a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark, ellipsis or their Chinese and Japanese equivalents, or at a line break. A full stop is ignored when it belongs to an abbreviation such as Dr. or e.g., to an initial such as J., or to a decimal number such as 3.5. The full rule, with worked examples, is in the table above.
Because most tools break at every full stop. On a text containing Dr., U.S., e.g., Vol. or a decimal point, that produces sentences that are not sentences. On the example loaded by the button above, the simple rule returns 15 sentences and ours returns 10. Ten is the right answer.
Yes. Paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line, and the count sits beside sentences and words on the first tab, along with the average number of sentences per paragraph.
There is no rule, only conventions. Plain-English guidance generally suggests an average around 15 to 20 words, and readability formulas start penalising text as the average climbs past about 25. This tool flags anything over 25 words by default and lets you move that threshold to 20, 30, 35 or 40 — because the right number for a legal clause is not the right number for a text message.
It is the standard deviation of your sentence lengths: how much they differ from each other. A low number means every sentence is roughly the same length, which reads as monotonous however good the words are. Variation is the difference between prose that can be read aloud and prose that cannot.
Because repeated openings are the single most common thing a writer cannot hear in their own draft. Three sentences in a row beginning with the same word is a pattern a reader notices even when they cannot say why the paragraph feels flat. The Openings tab counts them so you do not have to.
The sentence splitting works for any language that ends sentences with a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark, and it understands the Chinese and Japanese full stop and marks. The abbreviation list is English, so an abbreviation in another language may end a sentence early. Word counts in Chinese, Japanese and Korean count each character as one word, as those languages do not put spaces between words.
No. There is no server call carrying your text anywhere in this tool. The analysis runs in your browser, and your draft is kept in your own browser storage so a refresh does not lose it. Clearing your browser data removes it.
Yes — drop a .docx, .pdf or .txt file onto the editor and the text is extracted in your browser. Old .doc files are not supported, so save as .docx first, and a scanned PDF with no text layer will come through empty because there is nothing to extract without OCR.
A block of text that ends at a line break rather than at punctuation — a heading, a list item, a note. The tool counts these as sentences, because they are units of text you wrote, and reports them separately on the Types tab so the number is never hidden from you.
The word counter answers how much you wrote: words, characters, reading time, readability, platform limits. This answers how you wrote it, sentence by sentence. If you need a total, use the word counter. If a paragraph feels heavy and you cannot see why, use this.
Counting tells you the shape. These change what it says.
Everything on this page is free and unmetered, because it runs in your browser. Plan allowances apply only to the AI tools, and they are on the pricing page.
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