Count letters and nothing else
This counter looks at your text and keeps only the letters. Digits, spaces, punctuation marks, symbols, emoji and line breaks are ignored, and the number of ignored characters is shown, so you can see exactly what was left out.
Two ways to define a letter
- All alphabets (default): any letter counts, including é, ü, ç, and letters from Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew and other scripts.
- A to Z only: tick the option to count only the 26 basic Latin letters. Accented letters and other alphabets are then treated as ignored characters. This matches puzzles and ciphers that use the plain English alphabet.
The letters only text
Below the counts you find the text with only the letters left. Tick Keep spaces and line breaks if you want the words to stay separated. Use Copy to put the result on your clipboard. This is helpful when you clean a code, a serial number or a messy list before you compare or analyze it.
Example
| Text | Letters | Letters only text | Ignored |
|---|---|---|---|
| R2-D2 & C-3PO! | 5 | RDCPO | 9 (3 digits, 2 spaces, 4 punctuation marks) |
When it is useful
- Cipher and code puzzles, where the length of the message is counted without spaces and punctuation. Try the Caesar cipher tool on the cleaned text.
- Anagram and palindrome checks, which ignore everything except the letters.
- Crossword and word game answers, where hyphens and spaces do not count.
- Cleaning text copied from a PDF or a web page.
For a full breakdown including capitals, see the letter counter, or use the letter frequency counter to rank each letter. If you also need digits and symbols in the total, use the character counter. The letter count guide explains how this works in spreadsheets and code, and the regex find and replace tool can strip characters in your own way.