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Character Counter

Paste or type your text and see the character count update on every keystroke, with and without spaces, checked against the limits people actually run into. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Characters

0

0 words

Sentences

0

Paragraphs

0

Without spaces

0

Reading time

0

Three ways to count a character

On screen

What you see: a flag or an emoji counts as one.

0

Platform count

What X and most character limits use.

0

Program count

What a database field or a text editor reports.

0

Against common limits

Sentence count is approximate: an abbreviation such as "Dr." ends in a full stop and is counted as a sentence break.

A character is three different numbers

This sounds like a technicality and decides whether your post fits. The Brazilian flag emoji counts as 4, 2 or 1 depending on who is asking: 4 to a program storing it, 2 to the platform enforcing a limit, and 1 to you looking at the screen. The family emoji 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 counts 11, 7 and 1 the same way.

What you see on screen is the grapheme count: one flag is one character, because that is what your eye and your cursor treat as one. It is the honest answer to "how long is my text" and the wrong answer to "will this fit in a tweet".

The platform count is code points, and it is what X and most character limits enforce. If your text has emoji, this is the number to watch, which is why the limits below are measured against it rather than against what is on screen.

The program count is UTF-16 units, what a database field or a text editor reports. It is the largest of the three and the one that surprises people, because a single emoji can occupy eleven of them.

Accents add a fourth wrinkle. The letter é can be stored as one character or as an "e" plus a separate accent mark, depending on where the text was copied from. They look identical and count differently, and this tool treats the pair as one character on screen, which is what you see.

Frequently asked questions

How many characters fit in a tweet?

280 for a standard post on X. The count that matters there is code points, shown above as the platform count, so a text with emoji may be over the limit even when the on-screen count says otherwise.

Why does one emoji count as several characters?

Because it is built from several. A flag is two regional letters joined together, and the family emoji is four people joined by invisible connectors. On screen it is one symbol; in storage it is up to eleven units.

How long should a meta description be?

Around 160 characters, which is where Google usually truncates in search results. It is a display limit rather than a hard rule, and the cut-off varies with pixel width, so treat 160 as guidance and put what matters first.

Does the count include spaces?

Both numbers are shown. The main count includes spaces, since that is what platform limits count, and the count without spaces is shown beside it for the cases that ask for it.

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