Twitter/X Character Counter

The Twitter Character Limit Story

280 characters. That's what you get now. Twitter doubled it from the original 140, and honestly? I kind of miss the old constraint. There was something elegant about forcing every thought into 140 characters.

If you pay for X Premium, you can write up to 25,000 characters per tweet. Basically a short blog post. Not sure why you'd want to, but the option exists. Most of my best-performing tweets are still under 100 characters though. Shorter tends to win.

The Counting Quirks

• Letters, numbers, spaces, punctuation - one character each (the obvious stuff)
• Emojis eat 2 characters each. Those add up faster than you'd think.
• URLs always count as 23 characters, no matter how long they actually are. Twitter shortens everything.
• Hashtags count at full length - #SocialMediaMarketing is 21 characters
• @mentions count toward your limit too, so choose wisely who you tag

How Twitter Actually Counts Characters

Here's where it gets technical, but in a way that actually affects what you type. Twitter doesn't just count keystrokes. Behind the scenes, it's dealing with Unicode, and that means some characters are sneakier than others.

CJK characters (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) used to count as 2 characters each back when Twitter had the 140-character limit. They fixed that years ago - now they count as 1, same as English letters. Fair is fair. But emojis? Still 2 characters minimum. Some of the fancy ones with skin tone modifiers or multiple parts can be even more. That crying-laughing emoji you love? Two characters gone.

URLs get special treatment. Type in "https://www.somewebsite.com/really/long/path/to/article" and Twitter sees it as 23 characters. Always. They run everything through t.co, their link shortener, so the actual URL length is irrelevant. This is great news if you're sharing links - you might as well use descriptive URLs instead of pre-shortened ones.

@mentions are counted at face value. Tag someone with @JohnDoe and that's 8 characters. Tag 4 people at the start of a reply and you've burned through 40+ characters before saying anything. Same deal with hashtags - #Marketing is 10 characters, #DigitalMarketingStrategy is 25. They count what you type, period.

Writing Tweets That Get Noticed

I've written thousands of tweets. Some went viral, most didn't. The ones that worked had patterns. Short usually wins, but not always. Under 100 characters tends to get more retweets - people can quote-tweet and add their take without hitting the limit. But tweets around 200-240 characters can work too if you're telling a micro-story.

Threads changed everything. Now when I have something longer to say, I don't cram it into 280 characters. I write it as a thread - 4 to 7 tweets usually. First tweet is the hook. Pure engagement bait. "Here's what nobody tells you about X" or "I spent 2 years learning this the hard way." Then deliver value in the follow-ups. Threads get way more impressions than single tweets because each one has a chance to be discovered separately.

Quote tweeting is underrated. When you see someone's tweet that you disagree with or want to add nuance to, quote-tweet it instead of replying. Your followers see your take, not just the original tweet buried in someone else's mentions. But here's the trick: keep your addition short - 50 to 80 characters. Let the quoted tweet do half the work. You're having a conversation, not writing a dissertation.

Timing matters more than character count, honestly. I've posted the same tweet at different times and seen 10x variance in engagement. Late morning and early evening (in your audience's timezone) usually work. Weekends are hit or miss. Friday afternoon is the worst time to tweet unless you're sharing memes.

Frequently Asked Questions