- Which character count should I use?
- Characters, the grapheme count, is what a reader sees and what most platforms mean. UTF-16 code units is what JavaScript reports. UTF-8 bytes is what a database column or a network payload consumes. All are shown, and each is labelled.
- Why do you count one emoji as one character?
- Because that is what it is on screen. A family emoji is a single grapheme cluster built from seven code points and eleven UTF-16 units. The other numbers are there when you need them.
- Why did my word count change when I picked a locale?
- Japanese, Chinese, Thai and Khmer do not put spaces between words, so counting them requires the language's own word-breaking rules. With the wrong locale the number is meaningless.
- Is the SMS count reliable?
- It follows 3GPP TS 23.038. GSM-7 gives 160 characters in one segment and 153 in each of several; the extended characters like { } [ ] ~ ^ \ | € cost two each. Any character outside GSM-7 switches the whole message to UCS-2 at 70 and 67.
- How accurate is the reading time?
- It is words divided by a rate you can set. 225 words a minute is a common silent-reading average; adjust it to your audience.
- Does the readability score work for my language?
- Flesch and Flesch-Kincaid were built for English, so they are only shown when the text is Latin script. Showing them for Telugu or Japanese would be a number without a meaning.
- Can I count only part of my text?
- Select it. The counts switch to the selection and say so.
- Is my text uploaded anywhere?
- No. Everything is counted in your browser. The tool makes no network request at all and works offline.
- How much text can it handle?
- Five million characters. Above 250 KB the counting is done in slices with progress and a Stop button, so the page stays responsive.
Also known as: word counter, character counter, letter counter, character count online, words to characters, sms character counter, twitter character counter, meta description length checker, essay word count, reading time calculator, utf-8 byte counter, keyword density checker.