You could always do what I just did and test it.
I make no promises of the accuracy of the test. I have no idea if Factbooks and Dispatches have different character lengths, or if Category makes a difference. I have no idea what formatting codes do to the total, as my text is entirely unformatted.
That said, I've posted a
Dispatch → Meta → Reference called
Length test: 14406 words, 97450 characters including spaces, 83274 excluding spaces. I can confirm that the Title is part of the character limit. I can't confirm that this number is exact, but it's accurate to a sentence or two. No idea which of the three numbers is controlling.