Paragraphs versus lines
The two numbers answer different questions. Lines are what your editor shows: every line break starts a new one, including blank lines. Paragraphs are blocks of text separated by at least one blank line.
If your text contains no blank lines at all (common when copying from a word processor, where each paragraph is a single long line) every non-empty line is treated as a paragraph instead. That matches how Word and Google Docs count.
When this is useful
- Assignments and submissions that specify a number of paragraphs.
- Checking pasted text: lots of short “paragraphs” of one line usually means hard-wrapped text from an email or PDF. Use Remove Line Breaks or the PDF Text Cleaner to rejoin it.
- Code and data: the line count, blank-line count and longest line are handy for configuration files, CSV exports and logs.
The bar chart shows the length of each paragraph in words, which makes very long blocks easy to spot. Online readers skim; paragraphs over about 100 words are worth breaking up.
Worked example
Here is what the Line & Paragraph Counter returns for its built-in example. Click Try an example in the tool above to load it, then change it as you like.
First paragraph, line one.
Still the first paragraph.
Second paragraph.
Third paragraph after two blank lines.| Result | Value |
|---|---|
| Paragraphs | 3 |
| Lines | 7 |
| Non-empty lines | 4 |
| Blank lines | 3 |
| Longest line | 38 chars |
| Words | 16 |
Questions
How do you count a paragraph?
A paragraph is a block of text separated from the next by a blank line. If there are no blank lines anywhere, each non-empty line is a paragraph.
Are blank lines counted as lines?
Yes. “Lines” includes blank ones; “Non-empty lines” excludes them; “Blank lines” is the difference.
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