How to Count Characters Without Spaces and Check Writing Length

1. Paste the text you want to count

Open Text Inspector and type into the Text field, or paste writing from another app. The character, word, sentence and paragraph totals update as you edit. Reading-time estimates update too, and the mobile bottom bar keeps the current count in view.

The totals update after each edit. Highlight a passage in the editor to see its character and word counts separately.

2. Compare counts with and without whitespace

The Overview tab displays Characters (with spaces) and Characters (without spaces). The first includes whitespace such as spaces and line breaks. The second removes whitespace, including tabs and line breaks, from the count.

For example, enter '東京 A' on the first line and 'B' on the second. That's six characters with whitespace and four without it. The wording hasn't changed; only the counting rule has.

If a website imposes a limit, check its own definition. Text Inspector counts Unicode code points, so an emoji made from several code points may count as more than one visible symbol.

3. Track a 400- or 800-character target

Choose a preset such as 140, 400 or 800 under Character target, or enter your own limit. The indicator updates as you write, showing how many characters remain or how far you've gone over. On a phone, the compact meter stays in the bottom bar.

The meter uses the count with whitespace. For a requirement such as '400 characters excluding spaces,' use the separate no-whitespace total.

4. Check paragraphs and reading-time estimates

Overview also shows line and paragraph counts, average sentence length and the longest sentence. In Composition you can inspect the share of Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, Latin letters, digits and other characters.

Reading and speaking times are estimates. The manuscript-paper figure is a simple count divided by 400, not a layout calculation that accounts for paragraph breaks or indentation.

5. Find repeated words and lengthy sentences

Frequent Words lists terms that occur often in your text. Select one to open X-Ray, where its occurrences are highlighted. That can help you spot repeated phrasing in reports or descriptions.

Writing Checks also flags sentences longer than 80 characters, adjacent repeated words, repeated spaces and punctuation. Use the jump action to inspect the matching passage.

These are simple checks, not automatic proofreading or AI rewriting. Word boundaries may also vary by browser and language.

6. Locate invisible characters

Pasted text can contain characters you can't easily see. Writing Checks can identify five kinds, including zero-width spaces (U+200B) and non-breaking spaces (U+00A0), and show where they occur in X-Ray.

An invisible character isn't always a mistake: some are used intentionally for line-breaking or layout. The labels shown in X-Ray are only markers and do not alter the text you copied or typed.

Invisible-character analysis covers the first 200,000 UTF-16 code units. X-Ray normally displays up to 1,000 markers. Those are analysis and display limits, not a cap on the overall character total.

7. Save the text before leaving

Text Inspector keeps the current draft in your browser's localStorage so it can be reopened. Clearing site data can erase it; Save TXT gives you a file to keep separately.

Save TXT exports the full input as UTF-8, preserving line breaks, trailing spaces and invisible characters. It adds no BOM or extra newline; an empty editor produces a zero-byte file.

Counting and writing checks run in the browser, and the app does not upload your text. Loading the hosted version initially still requires a network request for the page.

Tips and limitations

• The target meter counts whitespace. For a limit that excludes spaces, consult the separate count without whitespace.
• Check the publisher's own counting rules. Reading-time estimates, manuscript-sheet figures, emoji sequences and word boundaries may be handled differently elsewhere.
• The browser saves your draft locally. Be careful with sensitive text on shared devices, and export important writing to TXT.