About the Split Text into Words
A list with one word per line is the starting point for many text jobs: counting, sorting, removing repeats, building a vocabulary list or feeding words into a spreadsheet. This tool splits any text into words and puts each on its own line. It can strip the punctuation around words, make everything lowercase, remove repeated words, sort the list from A to Z or by length and ignore words shorter than a length you set. The note under the result tells you how many words were in the text and how many remain. Everything is done in your browser.
Updated October 2026
How to use the Split Text into Words
- 1Paste your text into the left box.
- 2Choose whether to strip punctuation and make words lowercase.
- 3Optional: remove repeated words and choose an order.
- 4Set the shortest word to keep if you want to drop short ones.
- 5Copy the list or download it.
Example
The text The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, and the dog barks! gives twelve words. With punctuation stripped, lowercase on and repeats removed, the list contains the, quick, brown, fox, jumps, over, lazy, dog, and, barks: ten words, because the and dog each repeat. Sorting A to Z puts and first and the last.
Splitting works on whitespace, so words joined by a slash, such as and/or, stay together as one item. If you want them separated, replace the slashes with spaces first using the Find and Replace Text tool. Numbers are treated as words too, and a number with a decimal point stays whole, because only punctuation at the ends of an item is stripped. This keeps lists of measurements and prices intact while still cleaning up ordinary sentences.
Good uses
- Making a vocabulary or spelling list from a text.
- Preparing words for a spreadsheet column.
- Checking which long words an essay uses.
- Creating a keyword list for SEO or tags.
- Feeding words into a script or a game.
Tips
Strip punctuation for clean lists, but leave it if you need to see the sentence structure. Remove repeated words before sorting if you need a vocabulary list, and set a minimum length of three or four letters to drop small function words such as a, an and of. For a ranked list with counts, use the Phrase Frequency Counter or the Word Frequency Counter.
Related tools
The Sort Lines tool orders any list, the Remove Duplicate Lines tool removes repeats, the Text Splitter divides text by a separator you choose, and the Word Counter shows totals. The Comma Separator Tool joins the words again.
Features
- One word per line
- Strips punctuation around words
- Lowercase and remove repeats
- Sort A to Z, Z to A or longest first
- Minimum word length
- Counts words before and after
Frequently asked questions
How do I split a sentence into words?
Paste the sentence into the box and the tool shows each word on its own line. Words are separated by spaces, tabs and line breaks, and punctuation around them can be removed.
How do I get a list of unique words?
Tick Remove repeated words. Comparison ignores capital letters, so The and the count as the same word, and the first spelling is kept. Add Make all lowercase if you want the list in a single case.
Can I sort the words alphabetically?
Yes. Choose A to Z or Z to A in the Order menu. Longest first helps when you look for long words, for example in vocabulary exercises.
What happens to hyphens and apostrophes?
Hyphenated words and contractions, such as well-known and don't, stay in one piece. Punctuation is removed only from the start and end of each word, not from the inside.
How do I count the words in the list?
The note under the result shows the number of words listed and how many there were in the original. For a full count of characters and sentences, use the Word Counter.
Can I turn the list back into one line?
Yes. Copy the list into the Comma Separator Tool or use Join in the Text Formatter to put the words on a single line with the separator you like.