Many word processing applications show number of words in a give text document. In case you do not have access to either of them, just hit the web to WordCountTool.com - it is a no fuss and very simple online word counting tool. Just copy and paste the text in the window provided and click on submit button. You will get word count at the bottom of the window.
Since it is a word count tool, it will omit counting of few items like words starting with an apostrophe ( ‘ ) or a hypen ( - ), Words made solely from numbers like 1234 will not be counted and HTML Tags. A must bookmark if you handle loads of text documents!