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Words: essays and articlesCharacters: search results and social postsSMS is specialArabic and other scriptsA quick routine“Keep it under 160” could mean words, characters, or characters including spaces. Different places count differently, and a text that fits in one can overflow in another. Here is a quick guide, and how to check yours with the Word Counter.
Words: essays and articles
School work, articles and reports are usually limited in words. A word is a run of letters separated by spaces, so “well-known” counts as one and “New York” as two. The word counter also shows sentences, paragraphs and reading time, which helps when you are writing for a time slot.
Characters: search results and social posts
Search engines, social networks and message services limit characters. Spaces count in nearly all of them, so check the “Characters” figure, not “No spaces”.
| Where | Typical limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Page title in search results | about 50–60 characters | Longer titles are cut off with “…” |
| Meta description | about 150–160 characters | Google truncates by width, so it varies |
| X (Twitter) post | 280 characters | Links count as a fixed length |
| Instagram caption | 2,200 characters | Bio: 150 characters |
| LinkedIn post | 3,000 characters | |
| YouTube title | 100 characters |
SMS is special
A single SMS holds 160 characters if it uses the basic GSM alphabet, but only 70 if it contains any Arabic letter, emoji or other character outside it. Longer messages are split into parts of 153 or 67 characters. That is why an Arabic text message costs more parts than the same message in English.
Arabic and other scripts
The word counter splits words on spaces and counts Arabic, Cyrillic and accented letters correctly, so you can use it for any language.
A quick routine
- Paste your text into the counter.
- Read the figure that matches the place you are publishing to.
- Trim until you are under the limit with a little room to spare.
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