From my experience, when typing in Markdown writing apps the character and word count does not include things like the URL for a link, or Markdown markup characters. Drafts does not do this…at least as far as I can tell.
Is there a way to do this?
My “work around” for this (when I am on OS X), is to open the draft in Marked streaming preview. At the bottom is a character and word count, minus the markup.
I’d also be very interested in this!