How to Count Characters in Word and Google Docs
2 min read
Short answer
Microsoft Word
Shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + G on Windows, ⌘ + Shift + G on Mac.
Menu: Review → Word Count.
The dialog lists pages, words, characters (no spaces), characters (with spaces), paragraphs and lines. Clicking the word count in the status bar at the bottom of the window opens the same dialog.
To count part of a document, select it first. The dialog then shows the count for the selection only.
The “Include textboxes, footnotes and endnotes” box changes the character count as well as the word count. If a form or an application counts only the body text, untick it.
Google Docs
Shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + C on Windows, ⌘ + Shift + C on Mac.
Menu: Tools → Word count.
The dialog shows pages, words, characters and characters excluding spaces. Select text first to see the count for the selection alongside the document total.
Tick “Display word count while typing” to keep a live count in the corner of the screen. Click the live counter to switch it between words, characters and characters excluding spaces, which is handy if you are writing to a character limit.
Apple Pages
Menu: View → Show Word Count, then click the counter at the bottom of the page and choose characters with or without spaces.
Without opening the document
Copy the text and paste it into the character counter. It shows characters with and without spaces, letters only, and whether the text fits common limits such as an X post, an Instagram caption or a meta description. It runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded.
Why the counts sometimes differ
- Spaces. “With spaces” includes every space, tab and line break. Check which one your limit means. Application forms, including UCAS, count spaces.
- Line breaks. Most tools count a paragraph break as a character; some forms do not. A long document with many short paragraphs can differ by dozens of characters.
- Emoji and symbols. Word, Google Docs and our counter each count an emoji as one character, but some websites and databases count it as two or more.
- Footnotes and text boxes. Word can include or exclude them; a pasted copy leaves them out.
Frequently asked questions
How many words is my character count? Divide by about 6 for ordinary English prose. The characters to words guide has a table.
Does the character count include punctuation? Yes, in Word, Google Docs and here. Every full stop, comma and quotation mark is a character.