How Long Is 850 Japanese Characters? 2.13 Manuscript Sheets, Read Aloud in 2 min 50 sec

How long is 850 Japanese characters?

Written continuously without line breaks, 850 Japanese characters fill 2 sheets and 3 lines of 400-square manuscript paper (genko yoshi) — 43 lines in total — and roughly 0.59 A4 pages at a common 40 × 36 layout. Reading it aloud takes 2 min 50 sec; silent reading about 1 min 42 sec.

Conversion table

Format	Approximate size
400-square manuscript paper (genko yoshi, 20 × 20)	2.13 sheets (43 lines)
800-square manuscript paper (20 × 40)	1.06 sheets
A4 page (40 chars × 36 lines = 1,440 chars)	about 0.59 pages
Reading aloud (300 characters/min)	about 2 min 50 sec
Silent reading (500 characters/min)	about 1 min 42 sec

All figures assume full-width characters written continuously with no line breaks or spaces. Real text uses paragraphs and line breaks, so actual sheet counts tend to be higher.

What this volume looks like

Equivalent to 2 sheets and 3 lines of 400-square manuscript paper

Text with more kanji looks denser on the page, while hiragana-heavy text looks lighter. The same 850 characters can feel quite different, so check the kanji ratio too (the character counter measures it).

How these numbers are calculated

Manuscript paper: 850 characters ÷ 400 = 2.13 sheets. Lines are counted at 20 characters per line, rounded up — the same basis as this site's character counter.
A4: converted at a common word-processor layout of 40 characters × 36 lines (1,440 characters per page). Actual page counts vary with margins, font and line spacing.
Reading aloud: calculated at 300 Japanese characters per minute (the same basis as the counter's speech-time display).
Silent reading: calculated at 500 Japanese characters per minute (the same basis as the counter's reading-time display).

Where 850 characters shows up

Comparable to a short essay answer, a brief announcement or the introduction of a blog post.

Character limits are counted differently by each service (full-width vs. half-width, emoji, URLs) and may change. For the latest limits, see the social media character limit guide.