Description Best Practices Question , Character Count

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Many of my descriptions are fairly short.

However, to make them easy to read, I tend to break them up.

With spaces between sentences.

Pretty much like I just did here.

However, I think I read today that a "line break" equals 50 characters.

So, it doesn't take a lot of line breaks to get a decription above the 800 character limit.

Does ebay recommend using fewer line breaks?

And is there any easy way---when creating a listing---to see a character count? Without actually doing a count?

[shipscript]

This is an HTML line break:  <br>
It is four characters.

When you add two in a row, you get the spacing shown in your post (8 characters) .

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

shipscript,

thanks.

here's what ebay says in the FAQ:

eBay will allow you to create a customized View Item description summary, which will appear on mobile with HTML tags, and tag the specific content that you want to include in the description summary. If you specify the summary content using HTML, you can display up to 800 characters (note: line breaks count as 50 characters). Most sellers will not need to use HTML tags if they use item specifics, succinct item descriptions and text descriptions.

[fern*wood]

I do the same thing.  I have a line space between each sentence in my description.  I'm kind of lost here.  I see where they will pull 250 words out but I can only have up to 800 words? 

What about a link to my other items -- what does that do to the count?

[sharonlpk]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Many of my descriptions are fairly short.

However, to make them easy to read, I tend to break them up.

With spaces between sentences.

Pretty much like I just did here.

However, I think I read today that a "line break" equals 50 characters.

So, it doesn't take a lot of line breaks to get a decription above the 800 character limit.

Does ebay recommend using fewer line breaks?

And is there any easy way---when creating a listing---to see a character count? Without actually doing a count?

---

Seems like it wasn't too long ago that Ebay suggested that we break up descriptions like this because they are easier to read esp on mobile. Of course, this was following when they were telling us to use lots of detail, make customers be able to fall in love with the item etc.   Not sure why a line break counts as 50 characters unless that is standard in the industry?

[woodland_gnome]

I would assume that they are imposing a 50 count because a line break higher up could result in dropping the bottom of the description summary off the bottom of a small mobile device screen, and the idea is to have everything on the screen (or at least minimize scolling). 

[shipscript]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

shipscript,  thanks.

here's what ebay says in the FAQ:

eBay will allow you to create a customized View Item description summary, which will appear on mobile with HTML tags, and tag the specific content that you want to include in the description summary. If you specify the summary content using HTML, you can display up to 800 characters (note: line breaks count as 50 characters). Most sellers will not need to use HTML tags if they use item specifics, succinct item descriptions and text descriptions.

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I can only guess that they are warning that when you use eBay's editor and are not aware of HTML, that you could end up using 50 characters, or so, to break up your description. Otherwise, perhaps that is a typo for 5 characters. I'm puzzled by the strange note.

[shipscript]

Ah, listingguide has confirmed it is indeed 50 characters. eBay is, in effect, padding a row with spaces.

I suppose, as woodland_gnome suggested, the intent is to not exceed the vertical height of the summary block, so a line break (empty row) would take up about 50 characters on the mobile summary below. Something is just not right with this plan.  I thought that when eBay generated the summary, they compressed it into one blurb.