Sentence Counter with a Numbered Sentence List
This sentence counter tells you how many sentences a text contains and lists each one on its own numbered line. Seeing the split makes it easy to spot run-on sentences and check that the count is right. Word, character and paragraph counts are shown alongside.
Example
Sentences: 4
Average sentence length: 8.3 words
1. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
2. It was a sunny day, and the fox felt playful!
3. Meanwhile, the dog kept sleeping.
4. Nothing could wake it up — not even the fox.How sentences are detected
A new sentence starts after a period, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis (…) when it is followed by whitespace and then a capital letter, a digit, a quotation mark or an opening parenthesis. Line breaks are treated like spaces, so a sentence that wraps across lines still counts once.
These rules handle many tricky cases correctly:
- Decimals such as 3.5 do not end a sentence, because no space follows the period.
- Lowercase continuations such as “at 3 p.m. on Monday” or “e.g. this one” stay in one sentence.
- Combined marks such as “Really?!” end one sentence, not two.
Known limitations
- Abbreviations before a name. “Dr. Smith arrived.” is counted as two sentences, because “Dr.” is followed by a capital letter. The same happens with “Mr.”, “St.” and similar titles.
- Headings without punctuation. A heading such as “Introduction” on its own line joins the sentence below it. Add a period, or remove headings before counting.
- Bullet lists. List items without end punctuation merge into one long sentence.
Check the numbered list when accuracy matters; it shows exactly where each break was made.
Why sentence length matters
Average sentence length is one of the strongest signals of how easy a text is to read. Many plain-language guides suggest an average of roughly 15 to 20 words, with a mix of short and longer sentences to keep a natural rhythm. Very long sentences are the first thing to split when editing for clarity.
For a full readability score based on sentence length and syllables per word, use the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level calculator. To count words and reading time in more detail, the Word Counter shows the same statistics with words first. The Paragraph Counter focuses on how the text is divided into blocks.
Privacy
Your text is analyzed in the browser and is not uploaded.