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How to use the character counter, and what counts as a "character"
Almost every submission form and web page comes with a length limit. Paste your text and this tool counts characters, characters excluding whitespace, lines, words and Japanese manuscript-page equivalents instantly. Everything is processed in your browser and nothing is uploaded.
How to use it
Paste or type into the box and the counts update as you go. Both the with-whitespace and without-whitespace totals are shown, because different institutions count differently. When the requirement is not explicit, it is safest to note both.
Characters and bytes are not the same thing
These are frequently confused. A character count is a count of characters; a byte count is the size of the data. In UTF-8 an ASCII letter takes one byte while a kana or kanji takes three. So a legacy form with a "200 byte" limit only holds around 66 Japanese characters.
Emoji can count as two characters
Emoji and some rarer CJK characters are stored as surrogate pairs — two units in UTF-16. Many programs and web forms count each unit, so the number disagrees with what you see. Emoji with skin-tone or family modifiers chain several code points together and can register as five or more.
Common length targets
Useful reference points: Japanese manuscript paper is 400 characters per sheet (the basis for the page count here). A search-result meta description is truncated around 120 full-width characters, and a title around 30. English-language guidance is usually given in bytes or pixels rather than characters, so check the byte figure too.
Estimating writing time
Typing Japanese runs roughly 60–120 characters per minute; handwriting 20–40. A 5,000-character draft therefore takes around an hour of pure typing before any editing. For ratios and percentages, see the percentage calculator.
Frequently asked questions
How are characters counted?+
Full-width and half-width characters are treated the same, and each kanji, letter, symbol or emoji counts as one character. Spaces and line breaks can be toggled.
Are spaces and line breaks included in the count?+
Whether line breaks are counted is controlled by the "Include line breaks in the count" checkbox.
How is the manuscript page count calculated?+
Real manuscript paper varies with how the grid is used, so treat it as an approximation.
Is the text I enter sent anywhere?+
You can safely use it for unpublished drafts or text containing personal information.
Why does the count differ from Microsoft Word?+
This tool counts by code point, so it can differ from word-based counts or tools that handle spaces differently. Always confirm against your destination's rule.
・Characters = number of Unicode code points in the input (equivalent to Array.from(str).length). Full-width, half-width and emoji each count as one.
・Words = tokens separated by whitespace (Latin-style word counting).
・Bytes = length of the UTF-8 encoding (equivalent to TextEncoder).
・The Unicode Consortium. The Unicode Standard (code points, and the definition of UTF-16 surrogate pairs)
・RFC 3629, UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646 (the encoding behind one byte per ASCII character and three per kana or kanji)
This site does not represent any official body or organization and does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the counts. Character-counting rules differ between software and destinations, so please confirm any official limit against the destination's own requirement.
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