Tamil Word Counter

There is no single “character count” for Tamil. A written letter may be one code point, two code points, or a consonant plus a vowel sign that a font draws as one shape. Each count below answers a different question, and the counter shows them together so you can pick the one your task needs.

The last row is not Tamil, but it shows why the units matter. The family emoji is one visible character, seven code points joined by invisible joiners, and eleven UTF-16 units. Tamil rarely uses joiners in ordinary words, but the same gap between what you see and what is stored appears in கா (2 code points, 1 visible character) and ஸ்ரீ (4 code points, 2 letters).

Words

A word here is a group of Tamil or Latin letters, or digits, separated by whitespace. Punctuation stays with the word it touches, as in வணக்கம்,. This matches what Google Docs, Microsoft Word and most word counters do. It is a writing aid, not a grammar parser: Tamil compounds and case endings can make a linguistically “correct” word count differ.

Tamil Letters

The letter count follows written Tamil. Independent vowels (உயிர்) count once. A bare consonant or a consonant with a pulli (மெய்) counts once. A consonant with a vowel sign (உயிர்மெய்) counts once. ஃ is the aytham. Grantha letters such asஜ, ஶ, ஷ, ஸ and ஹ are counted in their own row because the traditional 247-letter alphabet does not include them.

This is why வணக்கம் is 5: வ, ண,க், க, ம். The pulli is not a separate letter; it changes the consonant before it.

Visible Characters and Code Points

A visible character is a Unicode grapheme cluster, the smallest unit a reader sees as one shape. The counter uses the browser’s Intl.Segmenter for this. A code point is the underlying Unicode number. Tamil letters in the main block use one code point each; a vowel sign adds a second. UTF-16 units are what JavaScript and many messaging apps count. Tamil letters outside the basic multilingual plane are rare, so most Tamil letters use one UTF-16 unit, while an emoji uses two.

Sentences and Paragraphs

Sentences end at a full stop, question mark, exclamation mark or ellipsis. Paragraphs are separated by a blank line. A heading or a line with no punctuation still counts as one sentence, because it carries words.

Reading Time

Reading time assumes a calm 180 Tamil words per minute. It is a rough estimate for checking whether a message or article is the right length, not a promise about how long a particular reader will take.

Messaging limits are not letter counts. SMS counts UTF-16 units once a message leaves the GSM character set, and any Tamil letter does that. A single Unicode SMS holds 70 units. Longer messages are split, and each segment after the first carries a small header, so only 67 units of text fit in each later segment. The counter reports both the unit count and the number of segments.

X uses a weighted count. Most Tamil characters weigh 1, emoji weigh 2, and a link counts as 23 no matter how long it is. The limit is 280 weighted units. A Tamil post can therefore be much longer than 280 visible characters if it contains no links or emoji, but the composer is the final judge.

For a formal document, use the word and letter counts. For a text message, watch the SMS line. For a social post, watch the X line. The same paragraph can pass one limit and fail another.