How to compare two texts
- Paste the original text into Original text.
- Paste the changed text into Second text.
- Choose Compare by lines or words.
- Read the coloured view under the result. Green is added, red with a strike is removed. The tiles show the totals.
How the comparison works
The checker finds the smallest set of changes that turns the first text into the second. In lines mode, each line is either unchanged, removed or added. A line you edited shows up as one removed line and one added line, which is the standard way diffs are shown in code review.
In words mode, the comparison goes inside lines and keeps spaces, so a single changed word in a long paragraph is easy to spot. The plain output uses [-old-] and {+new+} markers, so the result still makes sense when you paste it into an email or a chat.
The Result tile says Identical when nothing differs. Line endings are normalized first, so a Windows file and a Mac file with the same lines compare as the same.
Tips
- Comparing contract or essay drafts? Use words mode. For code, lists and settings, use lines mode.
- If the whole text shows as changed, check spacing. Try Ignore whitespace, or remove extra spaces from both sides first.
- Sort both lists with sort lines before comparing, so order differences do not hide real changes.
- To see how much longer one version is, count it with the word counter.
Good to know
A diff shows differences, not meaning. Moving a paragraph shows as a removal in one place and an addition in another. If you only care about added or missing items, sort both lists first. Very large texts take longer to compare, because the tool looks for the shortest list of edits. They are handled in a background process, so the page stays usable.
Privacy
Both texts stay on your device. Nothing is uploaded, stored on a server, or placed in the page address. The coloured view is built from escaped text, so pasted markup is shown as text and never run.