To reproduce a character-count mismatch, use a harmless short string containing the exact feature involved: an emoji with a modifier, combining accent, non-breaking space, or newline. Show the string and counts from both the counter and the destination. State whether the limit is measured in bytes, UTF-16 units, Unicode code points, or visible graphemes. A plain ASCII sample often hides the mismatch. Keep whitespace visible with delimiters or a code block.