Paragraph counter
Count paragraphs by blank line. A single line break stays inside its paragraph.
Keep a blank line between paragraphs if you want them counted separately.
Processed in your browser. The text is not uploaded.Read the privacy policy.
How to use the paragraph counter
- Paste the draft with the blank lines you actually use between paragraphs. Soft wraps from a narrow window do not matter if they are single line breaks.
- Read the large paragraph total. If it is 1 and you expected more, look for the note about missing blank lines.
- Check words per paragraph if a section feels like a wall. Then look at sentences if the problem is length inside the block rather than the number of blocks.
- When the paste came from a PDF or an email, run Remove line breaks with paragraph breaks kept, then count again.
Blank line, not every return
Two blocks separated by an empty line are two paragraphs. A single newline is not. “Hello” and “world” on consecutive lines, with no empty line between them, are one paragraph that happens to contain a line break. Windows line endings (CRLF) are treated the same as Unix line endings after the text is normalized for the split. A draft with words and no blank line at all is one paragraph, not zero. An empty box is zero.
That definition is strict on purpose. If every visual line became a paragraph, a hard-wrapped article would report dozens of paragraphs and the words-per-paragraph figure would collapse. Thesentence counter is the tool for boundaries inside the block. Theword counter is the tool for the assignment total. This page is only the block count.
Words per paragraph uses the same word rule as the rest of the site: tokens separated by whitespace that contain a letter or a number. A heading, a caption, and a body paragraph all enter the average if they are separated by blank lines. If you want the average of body paragraphs only, delete the headings from the box. The original stays in your editor. This site does not keep a copy.
Hard wraps versus real breaks
People paste from PDFs because the paragraph count in the PDF viewer is not something you can reuse. The viewer wrapped the line at the margin. Those wraps are not paragraphs, and they also confuse sentence averages when a line ends with a hyphen. Remove line breaks turns single breaks into spaces and can leave blank lines alone. Remove extra spaces does the opposite kind of cleanup: it collapses double spaces and extra blank lines, and it does not join wrapped sentences. Use the cleaner that matches the mess, then come back here.
Limitations
- Indentation without a blank line does not start a paragraph. First-line indents from a word processor are lost in plain text unless a blank line was saved too.
- The counter does not detect headings from font size. Plain text has no font size. A heading counts as its own paragraph only when blank lines surround it.
- Lists, poems, and addresses that use single line breaks will look like one paragraph. Add blank lines if you need them separated.
- The page does not recommend a “correct” number of paragraphs. It counts the ones you marked.
Questions people ask
Why is my pasted PDF one paragraph?
PDFs and many emails wrap lines with a single line break and only use a blank line, or nothing, between real paragraphs. This counter requires a blank line. If you see the note about line breaks without a blank line, open Remove line breaks, keep paragraph breaks on, and count again if you still have blank lines.
Do bullet lists count as separate paragraphs?
Only when a blank line separates them. A list that uses a single line break per item is one paragraph. That matches the rule used for prose. Add blank lines if you want each item counted alone.
What is “words per paragraph”?
It is the word total divided by the paragraph total, using the same word rule as the word counter. A one-line heading and a long body paragraph average together. The figure is a shape check, not a target you must hit.
Should every paragraph be about the same length?
No. The count will not tell you that. A short paragraph after a long one is often how a point lands. Use the number to notice a wall of text, then edit in your own editor. Nothing here rewrites the draft.
Is the paragraph count uploaded?
No. The split happens in the browser. The text in the box is not sent to TextStats to be counted.