Welcome to our Online Sentence Counter!
To begin, enter some text into the text box above. You can either add text by typing manually or paste in some text from another source.
As you enter your text, the sentence count will be updating in real-time!
The sentence count will be displayed in the top left of your screen above the text box.
In the top right of your screen, the average number of words per sentence, abbreviated Words/Sent., will be displayed.
Below that, the size of your longest sentence in words will be displayed.
How to find the sentence count of text in Microsoft Word
Unfortunately, Microsoft Word does not give a count of sentences. It does give a count for pages, words, lines, paragraphs and characters with and without spaces.
Additionally, Google Docs, a widely popular internet based document editor also does not give its users a sentence count.
That being said Microsoft Word can count the number of words in a specific sentence. To do this select the sentence you want counted and then click on the Word Count. This will show you the number of words in that specific sentence.
Again, there is no way to count the number of sentences in Microsoft Word, so you will need to visit a site like ours for all your sentence counting needs.
Alternatives Ways to Count Sentences
The easiest and most accurate way to count sentences is to use our sentence counter above. That being said, here are a few additional ways you can count sentences.
Estimate the sentence count based on word count
To use this method you will need to first determine the word count of your essay. Both Microsoft Word and Google Docs have a word count feature.
If you don't know how to find the word count in Microsoft Word read this. And for Google Docs you can read our guide to find the word and character count.
Once you have the word count, find a calculator and divide it by 15 which is the average sentence length.
For example, if your essay is 900 words you would divide 900 by 15 to get 60. In this example your sentence count would be 60. Keep in mind this is just an estimate and to get a more accurate count you would need to either use our sentence counter above or count your sentences manually.
Manually Counting Sentences
This is the old fashioned way. To count sentences manually, scan your text visually for sentence ending punctuation like a period, exclamation point, question mark or in some cases, an ellipsis. Create a tally updating it every time you encounter a new sentence. Keep in mind that not every period signifies the end of a sentence, sometimes it can just be an abbreviation.
How to avoid a run-on sentence
In writing, a common mistake is using a run-on sentence. A run-on sentence is a sentence that goes on and on. It often contains multiple ideas within that single sentence.
Run-on sentence example
"Harry, who is a professional bull rider is so good at riding bulls that he rides a bull instead of a car into town because he wants to save money on gas, however instead of buying gas he feeds it grass."
Run-on example fixed
"Harry is a professional bull rider who is very good at riding bulls. So good in fact, that he rides it into town instead of a car. This allows him to save money on gas, though he still has to feed it grass."
Here we fixed the run on sentence by breaking it up into three sentences.
How to identify a run-on sentence
A run-on sentence can be identified by several ways.
One is if it has multiple ideas within that sentence. If it does contain multiple ideas, it is best to break it up into multiple sentences.
If a sentence contains a lot of words like "because", "or", "but", "and" and "however". These types of words are often times used to connect ideas together. In the previous run-on sentence example, the sentence contained both "however" and "because".
Also watch out if a sentence contains too many commas. Again, commas can be used to combine sentences together. If you suspect a sentence is running on too long you can often times end a sentence where one of the commas is.
A final way to determine if a sentence is a run-on is to read the sentence out loud. Us humans typically pause after a sentence for a breath. If you find yourself pausing in the middle of a sentence for a breath or are otherwise unable to read the entire sentence out loud, it might be a run-on.
How many sentences should be in a paragraph?
The answer is it depends on what you are writing.
If you are writing a blog post, your paragraphs can be as short as one sentence each.
Kind of like this.
However, if you are writing an academic paper you will need to expand on your ideas more which will mean more sentences per paragraph.
Our sentence counter will help you become a better writer
As you become more proficient in identifying run-on sentences from our tool, your writing will improve.
Condensing big ideas into smaller sentences is a skill and will be hard at first. Stick with it because practice makes perfect.
We hope you enjoy using our Sentence Counter tool!
Thanks for using our tool! If you need a counter with additional features like space count, paragraph count etc. please feel free to use the main character counter on our home page.