Sentence Counter
Paste or type your text to count its sentences and see how long each one is. Sentence count describes structure; it isn't a quality score. Your text never leaves your browser.
Results update as you type. Leave a blank line between paragraphs.
Sentence structure
No sentences yet
What should I do next?
You have counted the sentences. Now look at paragraphs and readability.
Paragraph Counter
Counts paragraphs and shows how many words each has, with the average, shortest and longest.
Readability Checker
Estimates how hard your text is to read with five established formulas, and explains what each one measures.
Sentence Structure and Counting
How sentences are built from clauses, the four sentence types, why length and variety matter in academic writing, common problems such as fragments and run-ons, and how the Sentence Counter decides where a sentence ends.
How sentences are found
- A sentence ends with a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis, or a combination such as ?!, followed by a space or the end of a paragraph. Closing quotation marks and brackets stay with the sentence.
- Full stops inside numbers, web addresses and email addresses, as in 3.14, 2.5% or example.com, never end a sentence.
- End punctuation doesn't end a sentence when the next word starts with a lowercase letter, as after “e.g. the”, an ellipsis that continues, or a quoted question followed by “she asked”.
- A full stop doesn't end a sentence after these abbreviations: Dr., Mr., Mrs., Ms., Prof., St., e.g., i.e., cf., vs., viz., approx., ca.; after Fig., Figs., Eq., Eqs., No., Nos., Vol., Vols., p., pp., Ch., Sec., Para. when a number follows; after a single initial, as in J. Smith; or after an initialism such as U.S.
- A sentence never runs across a paragraph break. A single line break inside a paragraph is read as a space, so a sentence wrapped across lines stays whole.
- Words are counted exactly as the Word Counter counts them. The average is rounded to one decimal place; when sentences tie for shortest or longest, the first is shown. Each sentence in the list is identified by its first 8 words.
What the counter can't get right
- A sentence that starts with a lowercase letter, such as “pH was 7.”, is joined to the sentence before it.
- A sentence that ends with an abbreviation, initial or initialism, as in “…in the U.K. Results…”, is joined to the next sentence. “Etc.” and “et al.” end a sentence when the next word starts with a capital.
- Headings, captions and list items without end punctuation are counted as sentences when they stand alone, and joined to the next line otherwise.
- Sentence endings in scripts with their own marks, such as the Devanagari danda (।), aren't recognised. The Word Counter and Text Statistics use a simpler sentence rule, so their counts can differ.
Reading the results
- Sentence count and length describe structure; they don't measure quality. Good academic writing varies sentence length on purpose, and typical lengths differ between disciplines and kinds of writing.
- There is no correct number of words for a sentence. A very long sentence may be worth rereading for clarity, and a run of very short ones for flow, but neither is wrong in itself.
- Use the list to find sentences that stand out from the rest of your text, then judge them in context.
Privacy
Your text is analysed entirely in your browser. It is never sent to ResearchKit or anyone else, and it isn't stored: closing or reloading the page clears it.