100% free · Runs 100% in your browser · Sentences, words & paragraphs · No signup needed
Worked check: “Hello world. How are you? I am fine!” = 3 sentences, 8 words, 1 paragraph. A sentence ends at . ! or ? (with quote and bracket handling), and paragraphs are blocks separated by a blank line. The count is an estimate on plain text — abbreviations like “Mr.” or “e.g.” can fool a simple split, so treat the sentence count as a guide, not a certified figure.
Try an example: “Hello world. How are you? I am fine!”
How long is your writing, really? Word counts tell you part of the story, but sentences tell you how your writing reads. Short sentences feel punchy and direct. Long sentences feel flowing and detailed. A piece with twenty sentences of forty words each reads very differently from a piece with forty sentences of twenty words each, even though the word count is the same. The Sentence Counter from FistHost counts the sentences in your text, along with the words and paragraphs, so you can see the shape of your writing at a glance.
Writers, students, teachers, editors and bloggers all need sentence counts for different reasons. A student checks that an essay has enough sentences per paragraph. A blogger checks that sentences are short enough to read easily on a phone. An editor checks that a piece does not drift into long, tangled sentences that lose the reader. Whatever your reason, counting sentences by hand is slow and error-prone, and this tool does it instantly, with the words and paragraphs counted at the same time.
The counter works from a simple rule: a sentence ends at a full stop, an exclamation mark or a question mark. That covers the three ways English sentences end: a statement ends with a full stop, an exclamation ends with an exclamation mark, and a question ends with a question mark. The tool also handles quotes and brackets, so a sentence that ends inside quotation marks, such as She said, "Hello." is still counted as one sentence, not split by the closing quote.
Paragraphs are counted as blocks of text separated by a blank line, which is how paragraphs work in almost every editor and word processor. A single block of text with no blank lines is one paragraph, however long it is. The word count follows the usual rule: words are groups of letters separated by spaces, and the tool counts them the same way a word processor does. From the sentence and word counts, the tool also works out the average words per sentence, which is the single most useful number for judging how readable your writing is.
You paste your text into the box and the counts appear instantly, with no sign-up and no file upload. The tool also gives you a reading-time note, an estimate of how long it takes an average reader to read your text, so you can tell at a glance whether a piece is a two-minute read or a twenty-minute read. Everything runs in your browser, so your text is never sent to a server.
Here is the worked check the counter is built around, so you can test it yourself. Take the text "Hello world. How are you? I am fine!" The first sentence is "Hello world." and it has two words. The second sentence is "How are you?" and it has three words. The third sentence is "I am fine!" and it has three words. Add them up and you get 3 sentences and 8 words in total, and because there are no blank lines, the whole thing is 1 paragraph.
The average words per sentence is the word count divided by the sentence count: 8 words divided by 3 sentences is about 2.7 words per sentence, which is very short, as you would expect from three tiny sentences. Try your own text and watch the average move. A news article usually averages fifteen to twenty words per sentence. Academic writing often averages twenty-five or more. If your average is above thirty, your sentences are probably too long for comfortable reading, and breaking a few of them in two will help your readers.
Your result shows four numbers. Sentences is the count of sentences, found by looking for full stops, exclamation marks and question marks. Words is the count of words, counted the same way a word processor counts them. Paragraphs is the count of blocks separated by blank lines. Average words per sentence is the word count divided by the sentence count, and it tells you more about your writing style than any of the raw counts on their own.
The reading-time note is based on an average reading speed of around two hundred words per minute, which is a common planning figure for adult readers. A 400-word piece takes about two minutes to read, and a 2,000-word piece takes about ten minutes. Use it to set expectations for your readers: a blog post labelled as a five-minute read should be about a thousand words, and a ten-minute read should be about two thousand.
Here is the honest label. Abbreviations can fool a naive split, because "Mr." contains a full stop that is not the end of a sentence, and the same is true of "Dr.", "Mrs.", "e.g." and "U.S.A." The tool makes a sensible effort to handle the common cases, but it cannot know every abbreviation in every language, so its count is an estimate on plain text, not a perfect grammatical analysis. If your text is full of abbreviations, initials or decimal numbers such as 3.5, check the count by eye before you rely on it.
The counter also counts sentences, not ideas. A sentence can contain two ideas joined by "and", and two sentences can express a single idea split in half. The tool tells you how many sentences you have written, not whether they are good sentences. That judgement is yours, and the average words per sentence is a guide to it, not a verdict.
Sentence counts are one measure of a piece of writing, and the same free tools can measure the rest of it. The character counter counts every character, including spaces, which is what you need when a form or a social post has a character limit. The word counter gives you the word total on its own, with a reading-time estimate, when you do not need the sentence breakdown. And the reading level calculator takes your text further, turning your words, sentences and syllables into a Flesch-Kincaid grade level, so you can see how easy your writing is to read.
FistHost believes useful tools should be free, fast and honest, with no sign-up and no download standing between you and the answer. The Sentence Counter runs entirely in your browser, your text is never sent to a server, and the result is yours to keep or share however you like. If this counter helped you polish your writing, the same practical thinking applies to getting your ideas online: FistHost shared hosting starts from $0.99/month, and an annual plan includes a free domain, so you can launch a blog, a portfolio or a small business website for less than the cost of a coffee each month.
If you are ready to put your writing on the internet, FistHost shared hosting starts from $0.99/month, and an annual plan includes a free domain, so your website, your email and your first domain name are all covered from day one. Fast, reliable hosting with friendly support is the simplest way to turn a plan into something real on the internet, and your first domain is on the house when you choose an annual plan.
How many sentences are in "Hello world. How are you? I am fine!"? There are 3 sentences and 8 words in 1 paragraph. The full stop, the question mark and the exclamation mark each end one sentence.
Why does "Mr." confuse a sentence counter? Because abbreviations such as "Mr." contain a full stop that is not the end of a sentence. The count is an estimate on plain text, so check it by eye if your text has many abbreviations.
What is a good average sentence length? Fifteen to twenty words per sentence suits most readers. Above thirty words, sentences get hard to follow, and breaking a few in two usually helps.
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