Counting characters: with spaces or without?
Counting with spaces or without changes the number by 15–20%. On a 1,000 character limit that is 150 characters: a short paragraph.
This is why you finish writing, paste it in, and the box says 1,180.
Who counts which way
| Where | Usually |
|---|---|
| Job applications, cover letters | With spaces, most of the time. It varies by employer, so read the note under the field first |
| University assignments, abstracts | With spaces |
| X (Twitter) | 280, but Korean and other CJK characters count double, so 140 in practice |
| App store listings | Characters, not bytes (Google Play short description: 80) |
| Search result descriptions | Not really a character limit: it is cut off by pixel width, not count |
When you're not sure, aim for the with-spaces number. It is always the larger of the two, so if you fit under that, you fit either way.
What actually goes wrong
If the limit is 1,000, stop around 990. Pasting often adds a line break or a trailing space, and that's enough to push you over.
And when you go over, most forms silently cut the end off rather than refusing the text. The last sentence is usually your conclusion, and that is what disappears.
Line breaks count as characters too. Break the text into a lot of short paragraphs and you have spent part of your limit on the gaps.
Why Korean text counts double
Some places measure bytes rather than characters: older message boards, SMS, and a fair number of internal systems in Korea.
When a computer stores text, a Latin letter takes one slot and a Korean syllable takes two or three. So the same 100 characters weigh two to three times more in Korean. If a field says "within 200 bytes", that means roughly 100 Korean characters.
The SMS/LMS split works the same way: go past about 45 Korean characters and the message is no longer an SMS.
This is worth knowing even if you don't write Korean yourself: it explains why a Korean form with a generous-looking byte limit runs out much faster than you expect.
An emoji is not one character
This one catches people out. A single emoji usually occupies two or more slots internally, and a combined one, a family emoji, say, can take seven or eight.
So depending on how you count, one emoji reads as 1, 2, or 7 characters. Here it is counted the way your eye sees it: one emoji is one character.
What this does not cover
- Korean manuscript-page counts (원고지): those count layout, indentation and line placement, not
just characters
- Word count: the English-language convention of counting whitespace-separated chunks
- Page count: depends on typeface, size and margins, so it does not map onto characters
Paste your text and three numbers come back: characters with spaces, characters without, and lines. The count moves as you type, so you can cut toward a limit and watch it come down.
For anything long, write it in a note and glance at the count as you go. Notes persist in your browser, so the text is still there next time you open the tab.