Text Analyzer

Count words, characters, and lines. Spot invisible characters and homoglyph look-alikes on a live minimap. Search and replace with regex. Optional in-depth readability and word-frequency analysis on the server.

How to Use

Paste your text into the editor below — word, character, line, special-character and homoglyph counts update instantly. Use the settings panel below the editor to switch how full-width (CJK) characters, spaces, and blank lines are counted.

0 / 500,000

special homoglyph match

Find

0 matches

Replace

Character weight

Spaces

Blank lines

Counting, search, minimap, special character and homoglyph detection all run locally in your browser. Your text never leaves this page.

Characters

No spaces

Words

Lines

Paragraphs

Bytes (UTF-8)

Special chars

Homoglyphs

Reading time

Server Detailed Analysis

Optional. Press the button to send your text to our server for in-depth analysis: readability scores, per-paragraph language detection, top words, sentence statistics, and repeated phrases. Up to 100,000 characters per request.

Press only when ready: your text will be sent to our server. The text is processed in memory and the results returned immediately. Nothing is written to disk; nothing is logged.

Tips

Word Counts at a Glance: Essays, Articles, and Novels

Common App college essays cap out at 650 words; UCAS personal statements at 4,000 characters. Short stories typically run 1,000-7,500 words; novelettes 7,500-17,500; novellas 17,500-40,000; full-length novels 50,000-110,000 (debut novels usually land in the 80,000-100,000 sweet spot). Knowing the convention for your genre helps you pace your writing and meet what agents and editors actually expect.

Why Some Platforms Count Two for One Character

CJK ideographs (kanji, kana, hangul, fullwidth Latin) take roughly twice the visual width of a Latin letter, and several platforms count them that way too. X (Twitter) for example weights CJK characters as 2x toward its 280-character limit, so a tweet that looks short can quietly be over the cap. If you write in or quote any CJK language, switch on the "Full-width = 2" mode to see what the platform will actually count.

Invisible Characters That Sneak Into Pasted Text

When you copy text from PDFs, web pages, chat apps, or AI assistants, hidden characters often hitch a ride: zero-width spaces, smart quotes that confuse plain-text validators, non-breaking spaces that break URL handling, and look-alike letters from other writing systems (a Cyrillic "а" instead of Latin "a"). These can defeat search, fail email-address validators, mangle code, and embarrass you in formal documents. Spotting them is the first step.

Read Your Readability Score Like a Compass

A readability score does not judge your writing — it tells you who can comfortably read it. A high reading-ease score means short words and short sentences, suitable for general audiences. A low score means complex vocabulary or long sentences, appropriate for academic or technical readers. Match your score to your audience, not to a fixed target.

Catastrophic Backtracking — Why Some Patterns Hang Your Browser

Certain regular expression patterns can take exponentially long to evaluate on certain inputs. The classic culprits are nested repetitions like (a+)+ or (.*)*, which force the engine to try every possible split. With unlucky input, what should take milliseconds runs for minutes. This tool detects the most common dangerous patterns before running them and warns you, so a runaway pattern can not freeze your work.

Common Use Cases

📖

Novels and Long-Form Fiction

Track per-chapter word counts, monitor pacing, and compare against genre conventions for short stories, novellas, and full-length novels — debut novels typically land in the 80,000-100,000-word sweet spot agents look for.

📝

Essays and Academic Papers

Stay within strict character or word limits required by universities, journals, scholarship applications, and writing competitions. Spot accidental over- or under-runs while you still have time to revise.

🌐

Blog Posts and SEO

Hit the sweet spot for search-friendly article length. Use top word frequency to balance keyword density without sounding repetitive.

💬

Social Media Posts

Verify your post fits within X (280), Bluesky (300), Threads (500), or LinkedIn (3,000) character limits before publishing — including the platforms that weight CJK characters as 2x.

🔁

Translation Work

Compare source and target lengths side by side to spot expansion or compression. Detect mixed-language paragraphs in working drafts.

🛠️

Proofreading and Cleanup

Find invisible characters, look-alike letters, repeated phrases, and overly long sentences. Use search-and-replace with regex to normalize spacing and punctuation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between half-width and full-width characters, and how does it affect counting?

Half-width characters occupy one column in monospaced fonts; full-width characters (most kana, kanji, fullwidth Latin) occupy two columns. By default this tool counts every codepoint as 1, but you can switch to "full-width = 2" mode to match traditional Japanese manuscript counting and the way some social platforms enforce limits.

How are spaces, line breaks, and tabs counted?

You can choose three modes for spaces: count all (default), ignore all, or merge consecutive spaces into one. Line breaks count as separate characters. Tabs count as single characters by default. Blank lines (lines containing only whitespace) can be counted or ignored independently.

What counts as a "special character" or "homoglyph"?

Special characters include zero-width spaces, full-width spaces, non-breaking spaces, control characters, and other invisible characters that often sneak into pasted text. Homoglyphs are characters from one writing system that look like characters from another — for example, the Cyrillic letter "а" (U+0430) is visually identical to the Latin "a" (U+0061) but is a completely different character. The tool flags both kinds in the editor minimap and in the stats panel.

Can I use regular expressions for search and replace?

Yes. Toggle the regex flag in the search bar to use full pattern matching: character classes (\\w, \\d, \\s), quantifiers (+, *, ?, {n,m}), groups, alternation (|), anchors (^, $), and backreferences in replacement ($1, $2). Replacement supports literal text and capture-group references.

Are basic counting and search done in my browser?

Yes. Counting, search, replace, special character detection, homoglyph detection, the minimap, and reading time — all of these run entirely in your browser using JavaScript. Your text never leaves the page. You can verify by disconnecting from the internet — the tool keeps working.

What does the "Server Detailed Analysis" button do, and is my text saved?

The button is opt-in. When you press it, your text is sent to our server only for the requested analysis (readability scores, per-paragraph language detection, top words, sentence statistics, repetition detection). The text is processed in memory and the result is returned immediately. Nothing is written to disk, no log records the text, and no database stores it.

How long can the input text be?

Browser-side features handle up to about 500,000 characters comfortably; a soft warning appears at 200,000 characters when stat updates start to slow down. The opt-in server analysis accepts up to 100,000 characters per request to keep response time fast. For larger documents, analyze a section at a time.