"Characters without spaces" counts only the non-whitespace characters in your text — letters, digits, and punctuation — excluding every space. This metric is used by some European universities for assignment limits, in typesetting and localisation, and by certain legacy character-counting systems. Most social media platforms count spaces, so use "characters with spaces" for those contexts.
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When a character counter reports two numbers, here is what each means:
Characters with spaces: 13 (H-e-l-l-o-,-space-w-o-r-l-d-!)
Characters without spaces: 12 (H-e-l-l-o-,-w-o-r-l-d-! — space excluded)
Note: Punctuation counts as a character in both metrics. Only the space character (U+0020) and similar whitespace is excluded in the "without spaces" count.
The difference is always equal to the number of space characters in the text. For a 1,000-word English text with approximately one space per word, the "without spaces" count is roughly 1,000 fewer than "with spaces."
| Context | Metric Used | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Twitter/X character limit | With spaces | Spaces count toward the 280-character limit |
| Instagram caption limit | With spaces | Spaces count toward the 2,200-character limit |
| Google meta description | With spaces | ~155 characters including spaces |
| Google Ads headlines | With spaces | 30 characters including spaces |
| SMS (standard) | With spaces | 160 characters including spaces |
| European academic assignments | Without spaces | Particularly German, Swiss, Austrian universities |
| Typesetting / column fitting | Without spaces | Used in some legacy print layout systems |
| Localisation / translation | Without spaces | Comparing character density across languages |
| DNA sequence length | Without spaces | Bases are counted without separators |
If you are studying at or submitting work to a German, Swiss, Austrian, or occasionally French or Italian university, you may encounter assignment limits expressed as Zeichen ohne Leerzeichen (characters without spaces) or caractères sans espaces.
This convention exists because:
A typical conversion: 1,000 words of English prose ≈ 6,000 characters with spaces ≈ 5,000 characters without spaces. However, always verify with your institution's own guidelines — never rely on a conversion alone.
The WordCountNow tool shows both character metrics simultaneously in real time, so you do not need to open a separate dialog.
For almost all social media platforms, no — spaces always count toward the character limit. When you draft a post on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or TikTok, every space character you type consumes one of your available characters. Writing "good morning" (12 characters with space) is one fewer character than "goodmorning" (11) — though the latter would not make sense.
The only scenario where "without spaces" matters for social media is if you are building automated tools that process platform character limits and need to understand the composition of the text. For everyday writers, use the "with spaces" count to stay within platform limits.
In modern computing, there are three different ways to measure "characters," and they do not always agree:
Most character counters report Unicode code points (logical characters). Twitter uses a modified count where most emojis count as 2 characters. Some legacy systems count bytes instead of characters. Always verify which standard your target platform uses for its limits.
Characters with spaces includes every letter, digit, punctuation mark, and space character. Characters without spaces counts only the non-space characters. "Hello world" is 11 characters with spaces and 10 characters without spaces.
Some European universities — particularly in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria — specify assignment length in characters without spaces (Zeichen ohne Leerzeichen). Australian universities typically use word count, but always check your specific assignment guide.
Yes. All major social media platforms — Twitter/X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok — count spaces as characters in their limits. When you see a 280-character limit on Twitter, spaces count toward that total.
Approximately 4,500–5,000 characters without spaces for standard English prose. This varies by average word length: shorter, simpler words mean fewer characters per word; longer technical terms mean more characters per word.