"Word count" refers to the number of Chinese characters; And "number of characters" refers to the sum of the number of Chinese characters, English letters, numbers and punctuation marks. In a word document, a Chinese character or full-width character (including punctuation) is 2 characters, and half-width characters (or punctuation) and spaces are 1 character.
When calculating the number of characters, we need to pay attention to the differences in the positions occupied by different characters. For example, both an English letter and a Chinese character occupy a position, but spaces, tabs or line breaks also occupy a position. Therefore, if the text contains these special characters, we should consider their influence on the number of characters.
In practical application, we often need to calculate the length or quantity of text, such as the word limit in Weibo, the length limit of email title and so on. At this time, if the number of words is confused with the number of words, it will lead to calculation errors and misunderstandings. Usually, it is the number of characters you see on the paper.
In short, the number of words and the number of words are both methods to calculate the length of words, but the appropriate calculation unit should be selected according to the specific situation. When dealing with Chinese texts, the number of words is usually used; When dealing with English text, the number of characters is usually used.