Question: How does Stackoverflow do the character counter saying xyz characters left?

![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fZD01.png)

Answer: 
Probably something like (with jQuery):

```
$('#txtbox').keypress(function() {
    var max = 500;
    var textLen = $(this).val().length;
    var textLeft = max - textLen;
    $('#charCount').text(
        textLeft + ' character' + (textLeft == 1 ? '' : 's') + ' left'
    );
});

```

(I know it's lazy to not actually look and see how they do it, but here's a working example: <http://jsfiddle.net/FishBasketGordo/hqex8/>)
HTML:

```
<textarea id="text" onkeyup="charCount(this);"></textarea>
<span id="chars"></span>

```

JS:

```
var maxChars = 500;
function charCount(el) {
   document.getElementById('chars').innerText = maxChars - this.value.length;
}

```

not tested, but that's the basics.