Hebrew Character Counter

Count Hebrew letters with optional nikud/cantillation exclusion

Count Hebrew characters precisely, with toggles to exclude nikud vowel points and te'amim cantillation marks from the total. Separates consonant letters, vowel marks, and punctuation. Free, private, in-browser.

Why does Hebrew need special character counting?

Hebrew vowel points (nikud) and cantillation marks (te'amim) are combining marks layered on top of consonants. A naive character count includes each mark separately, which inflates the total. This tool lets you exclude them so your count reflects the actual consonant text.

This counter gives an accurate character count for Hebrew, where vowel points and cantillation accents are separate combining marks that a plain length check would over-count. Toggle them out to count just the consonantal text.

How it works

Every character is classified by its Unicode code point. Hebrew consonant letters (including final forms) live in U+05D0 to U+05EA. Nikud vowel points — shva, the hataf vowels, hiriq, tsere, segol, patah, kamatz, qubuts, dagesh, and the shin/sin dots — sit in U+05B0 to U+05BC plus U+05C1, U+05C2, and U+05C7. Cantillation accents (te’amim) occupy U+0591 to U+05AF along with meteg, rafe, and the verse separators. The counted total starts from the full code-point count and subtracts whichever categories you choose to exclude.

Example and notes

Take the vowelled word בְּרֵאשִׁית. It contains 6 consonant letters but several nikud marks (the shva, dagesh, tsere, hiriq, and shin dot). With “exclude nikud” ticked, the count reflects the 6 consonants; untick it and every vowel mark adds to the total. For form fields or databases that store unvowelled Hebrew, exclude both nikud and te’amim to match the stored length. The breakdown below the total always shows each category separately so you can see exactly what is being counted.