title: Counting special characters with PHP
body: <p>I want to count the number of characters in a textfield on my website. The textfield accepts any type of input from a user, including ascii art and other special characters. If the user types in normal characters, I can use strlen($message) to return the value, but if the user uses special characters (such as Â or ©), the count is incorrect. </p>
  
  <p>Is there are simple way to count everything without having to do any heavy lifting?</p>