Subtitle Character Counter

How are characters counted in subtitles?

Subtitle limits are counted per line, not per file. A line holds at most 42 characters under the Netflix and TED guidelines and 37 at the BBC and the German-language broadcasters, and a subtitle normally has no more than two lines. Spaces and punctuation usually count as characters. Formatting tags such as <i> do not, because viewers never see them, so this subtitle character counter leaves tags out of every count.

There are two ways to count. Type or paste text and the numbers update as you write: characters with and without spaces, words, lines, the longest line, and a bar for every line that shows how close it is to the limit. Or open subtitle and text files to get the counts for every subtitle plus totals for the whole file, including the number of subtitles that are over the limit.

Length is only half of the question; the other half is time. For typed text the counter shows how long it needs at 17 characters per second, a common reading-speed limit: a full line of 42 characters takes about 2.5 seconds. For files it adds an estimated reading time. The totals of characters and words also help when a translation has to be compared with its source or a job has to be estimated.

Character and reading-speed limits by standard

Tips

• Lines over the limit do not have to be fixed by hand: the Subtitle Line Breaker re-breaks them at sensible places in one pass.
• A subtitle can respect the line length and still be too fast to read. The Subtitle CPS Calculator compares the characters with the time on screen.
• For a full check of timing, overlaps, encoding and line length together, run the file through the SRT Validator.
• Leave spaces switched on unless the guideline you work to says otherwise; most subtitle standards count spaces as characters.