How Accurate Is The Persona Paper Character Counter?

I like how Persona Paper has a character counter so you can easily make sure that your article’s character count is way past the minimum requirement of 500 characters. However, when I hovered my mouse on the character counter, I saw something that made me wonder exactly how accurate this character counter was, how it worked and how we can tell for sure if our articles are over 500 characters.

The text that shows up when you hover your mouse on the character counter is "how many characters are in the text". It further reiterates that a qualifying post needs 500 characters. The last one is what I'm concerned about.

It says "this is an estimate but not the official count as it is counted on the server when submitted". So how do we know for sure how many characters our article has and if it passes the minimum character requirement? How accurate is the estimate of the Persona Paper character counter?

When we see the estimated number of characters that our article supposedly has on the Persona Paper character counter, how much can we trust that the amount displayed is near what the server will count as the true number of characters that our article really has when we submit it to the site?

I usually write long posts so this isn’t much of a problem for me, but, sometimes, I might write short articles. I always double-check my article’s character count before submitting the article (I write my articles elsewhere then just paste them on the site’s submit page text box), but I’m wondering if it’s possible for a mistake to occur.

What if you thought your article met the minimum character requirement when you counted it elsewhere or in the Persona Paper character counter, but, apparently, when you submitted it, the server counted it differently and it turns out that you counted wrong and your article is actually below 500 characters?

Can something like that happen? What about if we use the Microsoft Word character counter? Can that give an accurate count of Persona Paper’s 500-character minimum requirement for articles?

Here are some of the comments from this article, back when it used to be posted elsewhere:

LoudMan wrote on July 26, 2014, 5:51 PM:
"From what I understand, the one we use only counts the Arabic letters and numbers and not the punctuation or spaces and special characters. Altogether, the 500-character requirement is only about 120 or so words. As much can be typed in just a passing thought."

FreyaYuki replied to LoudMan on July 27, 2014, 12:49 PM:
"Thanks for clarifying that. It's great that the Persona Paper character counter automatically doesn't count the spaces and the other things that aren't included in the 500-character minimum.

Yeah, I know it's not that hard to come up with 500 characters. As I mentioned, I usually end up writing articles that are longer than that. Sometimes, my comments end up around 500 characters or more as well. I was just wondering about the accuracy of the Persona Paper character counter."

bestwriter wrote on July 26, 2014, 9:09 PM:
"It is always better to go for posts that are a little more than 500 characters. There is yet another way. Paste your contents on msword and there at the bottom you will find the number of words. Click on it. You will get all the details."

FreyaYuki replied to bestwriter on July 27, 2014, 12:36 PM:
"Yes, that's what I think too. I wouldn't want to write an article with exactly 500 characters only. As I mentioned above, I usually write long posts. Even my short posts are still over the 500-character minimum. I was just wondering about the Persona Paper character counter and how accurate it was.

Yes, I know about the MS Word character counter as I mentioned in the article. I write my articles on MS Word so I count them with the word processor's character counter before pasting the article on the Persona Paper submit page and then double-checking with the provided character counter."

*Notes:
- Image is by StartupStockPhotos (Public Domain) from Pixabay
- This was previously published elsewhere