Characters With and Without Spaces: Which Count Do You Need?

Two ways to measure one text

Every character counter shows at least two numbers: characters with spaces and characters without spaces. They describe the same text, so the second is always smaller or equal. The difference between them is the number of spaces, tabs and line breaks the text contains.

Take the sentence “Plan the work, then work the plan.” It has 34 characters including spaces and 28 without, because there are six spaces. Short phrases show the effect clearly; in a long text the gap grows with the number of words.

A rule of thumb for ordinary English prose is that the figure without spaces is about 15 to 20 per cent lower than the figure with spaces. The exact share depends on the length of the words: short words mean more spaces per hundred characters, long technical terms mean fewer.

What “with spaces” counts

Characters with spaces is the total of everything you typed: letters, digits, punctuation, spaces and usually line breaks. It is the figure that most platforms enforce. A social media post, an advertisement headline, a form field or a meta description is almost always limited by this number, since the space is a real character in the text that is stored and displayed.

If a rule says “maximum 160 characters” and gives no further detail, treat spaces as part of the count. It is the safer reading, because a text that fits when spaces are counted also fits when they are not.

What “without spaces” counts

Characters without spaces removes spaces, tabs and line breaks before counting. The result is the number of visible symbols: letters, digits and punctuation marks. This figure is used less often, but it appears in several settings.

Some translation agencies price by characters without spaces, particularly for languages such as Japanese, Chinese and Korean, where spaces are rare. Some schools and publishers set essay or abstract lengths this way. A few text fields in forms also state that spaces do not count. In all these cases the sender should say so explicitly, so look for the words “without spaces” or “excluding spaces” in the instructions.

If the instructions are silent, ask the person who set the limit. A one-line question is cheaper than rewriting a text that was cut to the wrong number.

Which figure to use

Use the figure that the rule names. If a rule names none, work with the count including spaces, and use the other as a second check. The list below shows common situations.

• Social media posts, ads, titles: with spaces.
• Meta titles and descriptions: with spaces, as a guide to display length.
• Translation quotes: check the agency; many use without spaces, others count words.
• Essays and abstracts: follow the assignment; many use words, some use characters without spaces.
• Text messages: with spaces, because every space uses a place in the message.

Words are another measure

Many assignments use words rather than characters, and the two measures are related but not interchangeable. In English, an average word, including the space after it, takes about five to six characters. A limit of 1,000 characters is therefore roughly 170 to 200 words, although the figure moves with the style of the text.

Technical writing with long terms uses more characters per word than conversational text. For that reason it is better to count both than to convert one to the other by rule of thumb.

The same logic applies to languages such as German, whose long compound words raise the characters-per-word figure, and to Japanese, where there are few spaces and the word count is itself an estimate. For those texts a character limit is the more reliable measure.

What counts as a space

A space is not only the key at the bottom of the keyboard. A tab, a line break and a non-breaking space are all kinds of white space, and a counter that removes spaces usually removes all of them. A non-breaking space, which keeps two words together at the end of a line, is often present in text copied from a web page or a word processor, and it can make a text look different from what you typed.

If two counters disagree on the figure without spaces, one of them may be treating a non-breaking space or a line break differently. Retyping a suspicious space or pasting the text as plain text usually settles it.

How to read both at once

This counter shows characters with and without spaces side by side, together with words, sentences, paragraphs and lines. You do not need to switch modes. Type or paste the text and read the figure you need, then use the limit selector if you have a specific number to stay under.

Checking both takes a second and avoids a rejected submission, a cut-off sentence or an extra charge from a service that bills by length. When the platform provides its own counter, trust that one in the end, since it applies the exact rules of the system that will receive your text.