How Many Characters In A Tweet? [A Character Count Guide]

Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms across the world.

But how Twitter differs from other platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok is that it limits how many words and characters that you can put into a single tweet.

This can lead to some great content that can be quickly shared on the social media site, or lead to lengthy “threads” of tweets when a user wants to get a longer point across.

So how many characters are there in a tweet?

This is the question that we are going to answer for you today!

We’re going to tell you everything there is to know about Twitter and its beloved tweets so that you can work out how to make the best use of the space that you’re given to write your content.

We’ll also cover everything you need to know about the character limit and why this is in place!

Is Twitter 140 characters With Spaces?

When Twitter first started way back in 2006, the whole USP of the social media platform was that it limited tweets to 140 characters.

However, around 11 years later this was doubled to 280 characters, giving users more space to talk about whatever they wanted to talk about.

It makes it a lot easier to cram everything you need to into a single tweet rather than having to create several tweets to make a thread.

It’s also important to note that spaces are included as a character, as they are on a word document.

So you may think that you’ve stuck to the 280 character limit by only using certain characters, but spaces also count as a character in their own right.

So you will need to bear this in mind when you try to type out whatever you want to type out.

If you want to try and cut down on the characters that you are using in your tweet, you can always use “text speak” to cut down on the characters that you are using.

For example, rather than type out the word “you”, you can substitute this with the single character “u”, which can portray the same thing. Another alternative of course is to create a thread telling other users what you want to say.

Are Hashtags Included In The 280 Characters?

Yes, hashtags are included within the 280 character limit on Twitter. Every character that you use in your tweet counts as part of the 280 character limit, so you will need to think carefully about what it is you want to say.

First, type out what you want to say without the hashtags. This should then give you a better idea of how many hashtags you will be able to use in your tweet.

In terms of how many hashtags you should use, Twitter itself recommends using no more than 2 different hashtags.

Of course it’s up to you how many you use, but by using too many hashtags, you can make your tweet look cluttered and spammy. This will then make other users who come across your tweet dismiss it without looking at it.

So if you want to include more than 2 hashtags, it will be best to make sure that you’ve said everything you want to say first. More than 2 hashtags will of course take up more of your valuable characters, and clutter things up more.

Why Are Tweets Limited To 140 Characters?

So even though tweets are no longer limited to 140 characters, and are now 280 characters in length, it can be confusing to see why Twitter would want to limit what you can say in a single tweet.

But there is actually a reason for this! The whole point of the character limit was because standard text messages were limited to 160 characters, and Twitter wanted to imitate this.

The extra 20 characters were removed so as to account for the person’s username.

It may seem like an odd choice for Twitter to limit the characters in a tweet to a certain length. However, this serves as a great USP to make this social media platform different from its competitors.

It’s also a great way for users to get their point across in a more succinct manner than a larger essay that could be posted on Facebook or Instagram.

What Happens When You Go Over The Twitter Character Limit?

The only thing that will happen when you go over the Twitter character limit is that the extra characters are typically highlighted in red, and you won’t be able to post your tweet.

You should notice a character counter in the bottom right corner of your screen as you type out your tweet, telling you how many characters you have remaining.

This is also a useful tool for showing you how many characters you have exceeded. It helps you to work out which characters you need to remove to cut the tweet down to a more succinct form.

Alternatively, you can always copy the extra characters and paste them into a new tweet, forming a thread. This is an excellent way to bypass the character limit if you want your tweets to cover a certain topic that requires more than 280 characters.

It can be annoying when you exceed the character limit and aren’t sure how to edit your tweet down. However, this highlighting is a useful tool to help you work out how to say the same thing, but using fewer characters.

When Did Twitter Increase The Character Limit?

Twitter increased the character limit from 140 characters to 280 characters on the 8th November 2017. This was doubled, giving users more freedom in terms of what they could write on the social media platform. 

While this may sound like a dramatic difference to what was in place before, this is still a relatively short amount of characters. So it may appear that you have lots more room to say what you want to say, but you will still have to be succinct in what you type.

Twitter decided to do this so that fewer tweets would run into the character limit, and you wouldn’t have to edit what you had carefully typed out as much as you had to do before.

In Summary

So there you have it! You now know that a tweet typically has a limit of around 280 characters. This includes spaces, so you will need to think carefully about what you want to type.

When Twitter first launched, this character limit was much shorter, limiting users to 140 characters per tweet. It was doubled to 280 characters in 2017 to give users more freedom in terms of what they can write.

Tweets were originally limited to 140 characters because it was intended to mimic the short 160 character length of standard text messages, which were 160 characters.

The extra 20 characters were taken up by the user’s username.

A character typically uses up any space or letter, symbol, or emoji that is placed in the tweet, so you will have to think carefully about what it is you want to say, and what characters will be important to include.