How the counts are defined
Oak Tally uses a small set of rules you can check by hand. It does not check grammar, and it does not try to detect AI writing.
Words
A word is a stretch of text separated by whitespace. Spaces, tabs, line breaks, and other Unicode spaces all count as separators. Several spaces in a row still make one break, so they do not create an empty word. A straight apostrophe in “don't” and a curly apostrophe in “don’t” each stay inside the word, and so does “well-known”. “hello,” is one word too: the comma rides along. An em dash without spaces, as in “word—word”, also stays one word. A zero-width space is not whitespace, so it does not split a word. Chinese and other writing that does not put spaces between words is counted as one word per whitespace-separated run. That is a visible rule, not a dictionary.
Characters
Characters are Unicode grapheme clusters, the marks a person usually sees as one. An emoji such as 😀 counts as one, and the letter e followed by a combining accent counts as one. The character total includes every grapheme in the box, including line breaks. “Without spaces” removes graphemes that are only whitespace. The small note under the box reports JavaScript’s storage length, which can differ for emoji. The stat uses the grapheme count.
Sentences
The counter looks for periods, exclamation marks, and question marks. A run such as “?!” or “...” counts once. A period between ASCII digits, as in 3.14, does not end a sentence. If there is text but no ending mark, the text counts as one sentence. Abbreviations such as “Dr.” can add an extra sentence. A period or question mark inside a URL can too, as in example.com, because the counter does not guess which marks are titles or addresses.
Paragraphs
A paragraph is a block separated by a blank line. A single line break stays inside the same paragraph. Empty text has zero paragraphs. Text with no blank line is one paragraph.
Reading time
The estimate uses 200 words per minute, a common planning figure for silent reading of English prose by adults. It is not a measurement of your speed. Under 200 words, the label says “Less than 1 min”. At 200 words or more, it rounds to the nearest minute. Two hundred words is “1 min”, and 300 words is “2 min”.
Limits
A paste longer than 1,000,000 stored characters is refused, and the previous text stays in the box. That cap keeps a huge paste from freezing the tab. Clearing the box removes the text from the page. Reloading the tab removes it as well, because Oak Tally does not store a draft.
Privacy
Oak Tally runs in your browser. The text you paste is counted on this device. It is not uploaded, not stored on a server, and not sent to an analytics service. This site does not set tracking cookies, does not load advertising scripts, and does not ask for an account. Copying uses your browser’s clipboard and nothing else. Fonts are included in the page files, so reading the definitions does not call a font service.