diff --git a/i18npool/qa/cppunit/test_breakiterator.cxx b/i18npool/qa/cppunit/test_breakiterator.cxx
index ab5936aa0934..dfe342490c3d 100644
--- a/i18npool/qa/cppunit/test_breakiterator.cxx
+++ b/i18npool/qa/cppunit/test_breakiterator.cxx
@@ -151,6 +151,24 @@ void TestBreakIterator::testGraphemeIteration()
             i18n::CharacterIteratorMode::SKIPCELL, 1, nDone);
         CPPUNIT_ASSERT_MESSAGE("Should skip full grapheme", nPos == 0);
     }
+
+    {
+        const sal_Unicode ALEF_QAMATS [] = { 0x05D0, 0x05B8 };
+        ::rtl::OUString aText(ALEF_QAMATS, SAL_N_ELEMENTS(ALEF_QAMATS));
+
+        sal_Int32 nGraphemeCount = 0;
+
+        sal_Int32 nCurPos = 0;
+        while (nCurPos < aText.getLength())
+        {
+            sal_Int32 nCount2 = 1;
+            nCurPos = m_xBreak->nextCharacters(aText, nCurPos, lang::Locale(),
+                i18n::CharacterIteratorMode::SKIPCELL, nCount2, nCount2);
+            ++nGraphemeCount;
+        }
+
+        CPPUNIT_ASSERT_MESSAGE("Should be considered 1 grapheme", nGraphemeCount == 1);
+    }
 }
 
 //A test to ensure that certain ranges and codepoints that are categorized as
diff --git a/sw/inc/breakit.hxx b/sw/inc/breakit.hxx
index ae05468aa16b..3075fc9dfe63 100644
--- a/sw/inc/breakit.hxx
+++ b/sw/inc/breakit.hxx
@@ -110,7 +110,9 @@ public:
     }
 
     sal_uInt16 GetRealScriptOfText( const String& rTxt, xub_StrLen nPos ) const;
-       sal_uInt16 GetAllScriptsOfText( const String& rTxt ) const;
+    sal_uInt16 GetAllScriptsOfText( const String& rTxt ) const;
+
+    sal_Int32 getGraphemeCount(const rtl::OUString& rStr) const;
 };
 
 #define SW_BREAKITER()  SwBreakIt::Get()
diff --git a/sw/qa/core/swdoc-test.cxx b/sw/qa/core/swdoc-test.cxx
index 3d27fa071d39..d6f145f0d9bf 100644
--- a/sw/qa/core/swdoc-test.cxx
+++ b/sw/qa/core/swdoc-test.cxx
@@ -41,19 +41,20 @@
 #include <sfx2/docfile.hxx>
 #include <sfx2/sfxmodelfactory.hxx>
 
-#include "init.hxx"
-#include "swtypes.hxx"
-#include "docstat.hxx"
+#include "breakit.hxx"
 #include "doc.hxx"
-#include "ndtxt.hxx"
 #include "docsh.hxx"
-#include "shellres.hxx"
+#include "docstat.hxx"
 #include "docufld.hxx"
 #include "fmtanchr.hxx"
-#include "swscanner.hxx"
-#include "swcrsr.hxx"
-#include "swmodule.hxx"
+#include "init.hxx"
+#include "ndtxt.hxx"
 #include "shellio.hxx"
+#include "shellres.hxx"
+#include "swcrsr.hxx"
+#include "swscanner.hxx"
+#include "swmodule.hxx"
+#include "swtypes.hxx"
 
 SO2_DECL_REF(SwDocShell)
 SO2_IMPL_REF(SwDocShell)
@@ -73,14 +74,15 @@ public:
     void testFileNameFields();
     void testDocStat();
     void testSwScanner();
+    void testUserPerceivedCharCount();
     void testGraphicAnchorDeletion();
 
     CPPUNIT_TEST_SUITE(SwDocTest);
     CPPUNIT_TEST(randomTest);
     CPPUNIT_TEST(testPageDescName);
     CPPUNIT_TEST(testFileNameFields);
-    CPPUNIT_TEST(testDocStat);
     CPPUNIT_TEST(testSwScanner);
+    CPPUNIT_TEST(testUserPerceivedCharCount);
     CPPUNIT_TEST(testGraphicAnchorDeletion);
     CPPUNIT_TEST_SUITE_END();
 
@@ -189,6 +191,28 @@ void SwDocTest::testDocStat()
     CPPUNIT_ASSERT_MESSAGE("And cache is updated too", m_pDoc->GetDocStat().nChar == nLen);
 }
 
+//For UI character counts we should follow UAX#29 and display the user
+//perceived characters, not the number of codepoints, nor the number of code
+//units http://unicode.org/reports/tr29/
+void SwDocTest::testUserPerceivedCharCount()
+{
+    SwBreakIt *pBreakIter = SwBreakIt::Get();
+
+    //Grapheme example, two different unicode code-points perceived by the user as a single
+    //glyph
+    const sal_Unicode ALEF_QAMATS [] = { 0x05D0, 0x05B8 };
+    ::rtl::OUString sALEF_QAMATS(ALEF_QAMATS, SAL_N_ELEMENTS(ALEF_QAMATS));
+    sal_Int32 nGraphemeCount = pBreakIter->getGraphemeCount(sALEF_QAMATS);
+    CPPUNIT_ASSERT_MESSAGE("Grapheme Count should be 1", nGraphemeCount == 1);
+
+    //Surrogate pair example, one single unicode code-point (U+1D11E)
+    //represented as two code units in UTF-8
+    const sal_Unicode GCLEF[] = { 0xD834, 0xDD1E };
+    ::rtl::OUString sGCLEF(GCLEF, SAL_N_ELEMENTS(GCLEF));
+    sal_Int32 nCount = pBreakIter->getGraphemeCount(sGCLEF);
+    CPPUNIT_ASSERT_MESSAGE("Surrogate Pair should be counted as single character", nCount == 1);
+}
+
 //See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=40449 for motivation
 void SwDocTest::testSwScanner()
 {
diff --git a/sw/source/core/bastyp/breakit.cxx b/sw/source/core/bastyp/breakit.cxx
index 69a35b7f9f4b..2435aae33180 100644
--- a/sw/source/core/bastyp/breakit.cxx
+++ b/sw/source/core/bastyp/breakit.cxx
@@ -33,6 +33,7 @@
 #include <unicode/uchar.h>
 #include <com/sun/star/lang/XMultiServiceFactory.hpp>
 #include <com/sun/star/i18n/ScriptType.hdl>
+#include <com/sun/star/i18n/CharacterIteratorMode.hpp>
 #include <unotools/localedatawrapper.hxx>
 
 #include <editeng/unolingu.hxx>
@@ -169,4 +170,20 @@ sal_uInt16 SwBreakIt::GetAllScriptsOfText( const String& rTxt ) const
     return nRet;
 }
 
+sal_Int32 SwBreakIt::getGraphemeCount(const rtl::OUString& rText) const
+{
+    sal_Int32 nGraphemeCount = 0;
+
+    sal_Int32 nCurPos = 0;
+    while (nCurPos < rText.getLength())
+    {
+        sal_Int32 nCount2 = 1;
+        nCurPos = xBreak->nextCharacters(rText, nCurPos, lang::Locale(),
+            i18n::CharacterIteratorMode::SKIPCELL, nCount2, nCount2);
+        ++nGraphemeCount;
+    }
+
+    return nGraphemeCount;
+}
+
 /* vim:set shiftwidth=4 softtabstop=4 expandtab: */
diff --git a/sw/source/core/txtnode/txtedt.cxx b/sw/source/core/txtnode/txtedt.cxx
index 0c70225b8eee..8fe6051f4fb8 100644
--- a/sw/source/core/txtnode/txtedt.cxx
+++ b/sw/source/core/txtnode/txtedt.cxx
@@ -1862,12 +1862,13 @@ void SwTxtNode::CountWords( SwDocStat& rStat,
             if( 1 != aExpandText.match(aBreakWord, aScanner.GetBegin() ))
             {
                 ++nTmpWords;
-                nTmpCharsExcludingSpaces += aScanner.GetLen();
+                nTmpCharsExcludingSpaces += pBreakIt->getGraphemeCount(aScanner.GetWord());
             }
         }
     }
 
-    nTmpChars = nExpandEnd - nExpandBegin - nNumOfMaskedChars;
+    nTmpChars = pBreakIt->getGraphemeCount(aExpandText.copy(nExpandBegin, nExpandEnd - nExpandBegin));
+    nTmpChars -= nNumOfMaskedChars;
 
     // no nTmpCharsExcludingSpaces adjust needed neither for blanked out MaskedChars
     // nor for mid-word selection - set scanner bClip = true at creation
@@ -1889,10 +1890,10 @@ void SwTxtNode::CountWords( SwDocStat& rStat,
             while ( aScanner.NextWord() )
             {
                 ++nTmpWords;
-                nTmpCharsExcludingSpaces += aScanner.GetLen();
+                nTmpCharsExcludingSpaces += pBreakIt->getGraphemeCount(aScanner.GetWord());
             }
 
-            nTmpChars += nNumStringLen;
+            nTmpChars = pBreakIt->getGraphemeCount(aNumString);
         }
         else if ( HasBullet() )
         {