Word counting
Why word counters disagree, and how reading-time estimates actually work
"Word count" isn't as standardized as it feels — different tools tokenize text differently. A naive counter splits on whitespace; a language-aware one handles hyphenated compounds, contractions (counting "don't" as one word, not two), and scripts like Chinese or Japanese that don't use spaces between words at all, which naive whitespace-splitting handles badly or not at all. That's usually why pasting the same paragraph into two different counters gives two slightly different totals — it's a tokenization difference, not an error in either tool.
Character count is tracked separately because it matters for its own reasons — platforms with hard character limits (SMS segments, X/Twitter posts) care about characters, not words, and character count is unambiguous in a way word count isn't (though multi-byte characters and emoji can still complicate exact counting depending on how a tool counts them).
Estimated reading time is typically derived from an average adult silent-reading speed, commonly cited in a range around 200-250 words per minute for straightforward prose — it's an estimate, not a precise measurement, since actual reading speed varies with content difficulty, familiarity with the subject, and the individual reader. Lexitally counts words, characters, sentences, and paragraphs live as you type, using Apple's on-device language tokenizer rather than a simple whitespace split, so counts hold up across contractions, hyphenation, and multilingual text.
The app
How it compares to other tools
Frequently asked questions
Why do two word counters give different totals for the same text?
It usually comes down to tokenization — how a tool decides what counts as one "word." A simple whitespace-splitting counter handles hyphenated words, contractions, and languages without spaces (like Chinese or Japanese) differently than a language-aware tokenizer does, which produces slightly different totals for the same text.
How is estimated reading time calculated?
It's typically based on an average adult silent-reading speed, commonly cited around 200-250 words per minute for straightforward text — divide the word count by that rate. It's an estimate: actual reading speed varies with content difficulty and the individual reader, not a precise measurement of how long any specific person will take.
Why does character count matter separately from word count?
Some platforms enforce hard character limits rather than word limits — SMS message segments and social posts are the common examples — so character count answers a different, more literal question than word count does, and it's less ambiguous since it doesn't depend on how words are tokenized.