Character counter

The counter reads your text and shows seven numbers at once:

• Characters – every letter, digit, punctuation mark, space and line break.
• Without spaces – the same count with spaces, tabs and line breaks removed.
• Words – runs of text separated by whitespace.
• Sentences – text ending in a period, question mark, exclamation point or ellipsis.
• Paragraphs – blocks separated by an empty line.
• Lines – every line break starts a new line.
• Reading time – based on 200 words per minute.

An accented letter such as é counts as one character. Most emoji count as one too, although a few combined emoji (families, flags, skin-tone variants) are built from several pieces and may count as two or more. Everything is counted in your browser; your text is never uploaded.

Many forms and platforms cap the number of characters rather than words. A few limits you are likely to run into:

Where	Limit
Post on X (standard account)	280 characters
SMS text message (single segment, plain characters)	160 characters
Title tag shown in search results	roughly 50–60 characters before it gets cut
Meta description in search results	roughly 150–160 characters
LinkedIn headline	220 characters
Instagram caption	2,200 characters

Platforms change their limits from time to time, so check the current rule if you are close to the edge. Search engines cut titles and descriptions by pixel width, not by an exact character count, which is why the numbers above are ranges.

When a form, a publisher or a teacher gives you a character limit, it almost always means characters including spaces, because that is what a text field counts. Translators and some publishers quote prices or lengths without spaces, since that number depends only on the actual letters.

If the instructions don't say, assume spaces are included. The difference is bigger than it looks: in ordinary English prose roughly one character in six is a space, so a 1,000-character text has only about 830 characters without spaces.

If you are over the limit, try these in order:

1. Cut filler words such as very, really, just, actually and in order to.
2. Replace long phrases with short ones: at this point in time becomes now, due to the fact that becomes because.
3. Use numerals instead of spelled-out numbers where the style allows it: 12 instead of twelve.
4. Drop double spaces and trailing spaces; they count as characters. The extra space remover cleans them up in one step.
5. Split the message into two posts or a post plus a link if the content truly needs the room.

Watch the counter as you edit; it updates with every keystroke.

A character count tells you whether text fits a box; a word count tells you how long it feels to a reader. As a rule of thumb, an average English word is about 4.7 letters long, so 1,000 characters with spaces is roughly 160–180 words.

The reading time assumes 200 words per minute, a comfortable pace for most adults reading on screen. Short texts under one minute show < 1 min. If you mainly need word goals and unique-word counts, use the word counter; for a more detailed reading-time estimate try the reading time calculator.