Every vowel, marked where it sits
Most vowel counters return a bare number. This one colours each vowel in your text as you type, so if the count looks wrong you can see immediately which letter it disagreed with you about. The A–Z comb below the editor shows how often each vowel turns up, which is the quickest way to spot an unusually vowel-heavy or vowel-starved passage.
The letter Y
Y is the reason vowel counts differ between tools, and the honest answer is that it depends on the word. In yes, beyond and canyon it behaves as a consonant. In rhythm, happy, my and type it is doing a vowel's job.
By default this counter decides per word: Y is a consonant when a vowel follows it, and a vowel otherwise. That rule gets the overwhelming majority of English words right. If your teacher, textbook or word game uses a fixed rule instead, switch it to "always a vowel" or "always a consonant" in the panel above and every count on the page updates.
Accented vowels
Accents are stripped before matching, so café has two vowels, naïve has three, and résumé has three. A vowel with an accent is still that vowel.
Letters, not sounds
This counts written vowels, not vowel sounds — an important distinction if you are working on phonics. Queue contains five letters, four of which are vowels, but only one vowel sound. Beautiful has five vowel letters and three vowel sounds. If sounds are what you need, the syllable estimate in the panel above is a closer proxy, since English syllables are built around vowel sounds.
How many vowels should a text have?
In ordinary English prose, vowels make up roughly 38 to 40 percent of all letters. E is the most common letter in the language by a wide margin, followed by A, O and I. If your text sits far outside that range, it is usually a sign of something specific: heavy use of abbreviations and acronyms pushes the vowel share down, while text with many short function words pushes it up. The ratio bar under the counts shows where your text falls.
How each count is defined
Most counters give you a number and never tell you what they measured, which is why three tools can disagree about the same paragraph. Here are our rules, in full.
- Characters
- Grapheme clusters — what a human would point at and call one character. An emoji like 👨👩👧 counts as 1, not 5. Accented letters count as 1 whether they were typed as a single character or as a letter plus a combining accent.
- Words
- A run of letters or digits, held together by apostrophes, hyphens and internal
periods.
don't,state-of-the-art,3.14andU.S.A.are each one word. Links and email addresses count as one word each. - Sentences
- Text ending in
.!?or…, followed by a space or the end of the text. Titles like Dr. and Mt. never end a sentence, initials like J. R. R. are held together, and decimals such as 3.14 are left alone. A line break also ends a sentence, so headings and bullet points are counted properly. - Vowels
- A, E, I, O, U, plus their accented forms — café has two vowels, naïve has three. Y is handled by whichever rule you pick above.
- Consonants
- Every other letter. Digits, spaces and punctuation are neither vowels nor consonants, which is why vowels plus consonants is smaller than your character count.
One thing worth being clear about: this counts letters, not sounds. Queue has four vowel letters and one vowel sound. If you need phonetic syllables rather than written vowels, the syllable estimate in the panel above is closer to what you want.
Common questions
How do I count the vowels in a word?
Type or paste the word into the box on this page. The vowel count appears instantly, and every vowel is highlighted in amber inside your text so you can see exactly which letters were counted.
Is Y a vowel?
It depends on the word. Y acts as a consonant in yes, beyond and canyon, and as a vowel in rhythm, happy, my and type. By default this counter decides per word — Y is a consonant when a vowel follows it and a vowel otherwise — and you can override that with a fixed rule if you need to.
How many vowels are there in English?
There are five vowel letters — A, E, I, O and U — with Y acting as a sixth in some words. Spoken English has far more vowel sounds than that, around 15 to 20 depending on the accent and how you count diphthongs.
Do accented letters like é and ï count as vowels?
Yes. Accents are removed before matching, so café has two vowels and naïve has three.
What percentage of English letters are vowels?
Around 38 to 40 percent in ordinary prose. E is the most frequent letter in English, followed by A, O and I. The ratio bar on this page shows where your own text falls.
Does it count vowel sounds or vowel letters?
Vowel letters. Queue has four vowel letters but only one vowel sound. For a sound-based figure, use the syllable count instead, since English syllables are organised around vowel sounds.