<p>On one of the supplements for a school I'm applying to, there is an essay that has a 2000 character limit. Finished with the essay, Microsoft word "character count" says it is 1990 characters. When I upload my essay to the supplement, however, I receive an error message that my essay has exceeded the 2000 character limit. The thing is, the supplement is cutting my essay off over a whole paragraph short! The point where the supplement is cutting my essay off is at 1676 characters according to Microsoft Word. What is the deal here? How is there this big of a discrepancy? I have tried different font sizes, spacing, indenting, etc which like I figured, have no impact and would not account for a 300 character difference anyway. Has anyone else has this problem? Help is appreciated!</p>
<p>Are you counting punctuation and spaces between words? I believe that they mean you can have no more than 2000 characters… which may be a letter, a space or a punctuation mark.</p>
<p>I used this word/character count for my essays and it was largely accurate:
[Free</a> Online Word Count Tool and Online Character Count Calculator](<a href=“http://allworldphone.com/count-words-characters.htm]Free”>Free Online Word Count Tool and Online Character Count Calculator)</p>
<p>Yeah thought of that as well, and tested it in Microsoft Word. The character counter in Microsoft Word doesn’t count spaces, where as the Common App must. Ugh! Kind of annoying since I’m really happy with the essay, but oh well looks like I’ll have to carve it up a paragraph or so. Thanks!</p>
<p>What about having just one (instead of two ) space between sentences?</p>
<p>FYI I had this problem too</p>
<p>Often, not only do you have to follow character counts, but you also have to be within a certain amount of lines to make it fit into the pdf</p>
<p>I had too many paragraphs in one of my essays and had to consolidate. So character counts are not always strict.</p>
<p>Look at the print preview on the supplement to see if that helps</p>
<p>My MS Word counts spaces. I think you can edit it to do so if you want.</p>
<p>The MS Word’s count should show the count with spaces and count without spaces… at least 2010 does.</p>