For length including white-space:

$("#id").val().length

For length without white-space:

$("#id").val().replace(/ /g,'').length

For removing only beginning and trailing white-space:

$.trim($("#test").val()).length

For example, the string " t e s t " would evaluate as:

//" t e s t "
$("#id").val(); 

//Example 1
$("#id").val().length; //Returns 9
//Example 2
$("#id").val().replace(/ /g,'').length; //Returns 4
//Example 3
$.trim($("#test").val()).length; //Returns 7

Here is a demo using all of them.

Use .length to count number of characters, and $.trim() function to remove spaces, and replace(/ /g,'') to replace multiple spaces with just one. Here is an example:

   var str = "      Hel  lo       ";
   console.log(str.length); 
   console.log($.trim(str).length); 
   console.log(str.replace(/ /g,'').length); 

Output:

20
7
5

Source: How to count number of characters in a string with JQuery