Word and character counts are useful for editing articles, essays, product descriptions and short-form copy. Different platforms may count punctuation, emoji and hyphenated terms differently.
Words versus characters
A basic word counter splits text at whitespace. A character counter typically counts all characters including spaces, although Unicode symbols may use more than one JavaScript code unit.
Practical uses
Check the length of your drafts, keep titles concise and review descriptions for clarity. Do not sacrifice useful information solely to meet an arbitrary word target.