Word counter.

What it does. Counts the words in your text instantly, including how it treats contractions, hyphenated words and apostrophes.

How to use it. Paste or type your text into the box. The word and character counts update live, so you can trim to a target length as you write. Use it to hit a publication's word limit, a blog post length, or a word-count goal for a session.

Why it matters. Word count is one of the few concrete, enforceable limits in writing. Editors and guidelines state a range; a word counter lets you meet it exactly instead of counting manually.