Hit the word limit on the first try.

One counter for Common App, Twitter, SMS, LinkedIn, and SEO meta.

Different platforms count different things. Common App caps essays by words. Twitter and SMS cap by characters. LinkedIn summary uses chars-with-spaces. SEO meta descriptions are scored on rendered chars (≈ 155). This tool shows all of them at once so you stop pasting between five different counters.

Common App essay — 650 words is a hard cap, 250 is the floor

The Common App personal statement allows up to 650 words and discourages submissions below 250. The progress bar turns orange at 80% (520 words) and red at 95% (618 words). When you exceed the limit, the overflow is highlighted in red so you know which final phrase to trim — usually the one before submission anxiety made you add it.

UC PIQs — 350 words each, 4 of 8 prompts

UC Personal Insight Questions (PIQs) cap each response at 350 words. You answer 4 out of 8. Use the UC preset for any one prompt; the limit and "words" mode are pre-configured.

Reading time estimate (≈ 250 wpm)

For blog drafts and LinkedIn posts, a reading-time estimate at 250 words per minute helps you size content. 300 words ≈ 1 min. 1,500 words ≈ 6 min — a typical newsletter ceiling.

SEO meta description (155 chars) and title (60 chars)

Google truncates meta descriptions around 155–160 chars on desktop and slightly shorter on mobile. Titles are truncated near 60 chars (about 580 px). Stay inside both limits to avoid cropped snippets in search results.

SMS character math — why 160?

SMS uses 7-bit GSM encoding which fits 160 characters per segment. Use even one non-GSM character (most emoji, or curly quotes), and the message switches to UCS-2 with a 70-char limit per segment. This counter shows chars only — confirm the encoding with your SMS provider.

Three word-count gotchas writers hit constantly

1. Word vs character vs byte — three different numbers, three different limits

Twitter (X) limits posts to 280 characters (CJK languages count as 2 chars each — Japanese posts get ~140). SMS limits go by encoding: 160 characters in GSM-7(basic Latin), but drop to 70 characters in UCS-2 the moment you include any emoji, non-Latin character, or curly quote. Push notifications are typically ~178 byteson iOS and ~180 bytes on Android. This tool shows characters, bytes (UTF-8), and words side by side so you can plan content for any channel without surprise truncation.

2. Microsoft Word vs Google Docs vs LinkedIn — same body, different totals

Word and Google Docs both count words by whitespace, but treat hyphenated terms differently ("state-of-the-art" = 1 in Word, 4 in Docs in some settings). Resume word counts on LinkedIn include section headers and bullet markers, but ATS systems often strip them. Academic style guides differ too: APA counts the references list, MLA traditionally does not. Bottom line — when a target says "1,500 words," ask which tool it was measured with. This tool's pure whitespace-split count matches Google Docs and most ATS systems.

3. Resume length math — the "one page" myth and how to actually fit

Recruiters quote "one page" but the real constraint is readability density: ~400 words at 11 pt with 1.15 line spacing fits one US-letter page comfortably; 500 words pushes margins tight. Two-page resumes are fine for 10+ years of experience. The trap is auto-shrinking font size (below 10 pt) — ATS scanners and human reviewers both penalize this. Use this tool's word count to target 400–500 per page rather than fighting margins; if you're over 500/page, cut bullets rather than shrink type.

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