Characters with spaces and without spaces
Most word processors show two numbers. Characters with spaces counts every character, including spaces, punctuation and (depending on the tool) line breaks. Characters without spaces leaves out spaces, tabs and line breaks, so only visible characters remain. This page shows both at once, together with the number of spaces, tabs, line breaks and words.
How to use it
- Paste or type your text. The counts update as you type.
- Choose how characters are counted, and how a line break counts, if your limit has special rules.
- Read the numbers, or open a text file to count it.
What counts as a character
For plain English text every method gives the same number. They differ for emoji and for letters with accents that are built from two parts. The tool lets you choose:
- Characters as people see them: the default. A flag, an emoji with a skin tone and a letter with an accent each count as one.
- Unicode code points: counts each Unicode value. A thumbs-up with a skin tone is two.
- UTF-16 units: the number JavaScript and Java report as the length of a string. The same thumbs-up is four.
The table under the counts shows all three for your text, so you can see why a limit in one system gives a different number from another.
Line breaks
A line break is one character on Mac and Linux, and two on Windows (carriage return and line feed). Some web forms count every line break as two characters, some as one. Choose 1, 2 or 0 to match the form you are writing for.
Where the number matters
- Forms and databases with a character limit.
- Product titles, ad text and short descriptions.
- Essays and applications that ask for a count with or without spaces.
For a limit on a social network, use the X character counter. For a search snippet, use the meta description counter. For storage and database limits in bytes, use the byte counter.
Related tools
The main character counter and the counter without spaces cover the quick case, and the letter counter counts letters and vowels. Count sentences and paragraphs in the same way. The character count guide explains the rules in more detail. Your text stays in your browser.