Presuming you are using windows as your operating system, draft your message in note pad. This will allow you to create a text file.
To ensure you type 65 characters and then enter a hard carriage return, type 0 to 9 across the top of the page once, then copy this and paste it in 5 more times. This gives you a line of 60 characters.
To get to 65, just cut and paste 0 to 5 inclusive and viola, you now have 65 characters across the top of the page.
Lazy? Bookmark
Busitoolz Formatit which allows you to cut, paste and format to the character length you desire "for free."
You can also take the script, paste it on to your own web page and offer it as a feature to visitors as long as you link back to Buzitoolz.com.
Busitoolz.com is operated by Jim Hamlin, who offers a suite of tools for the online entrepreneuer.
I like Jim's tool because there are no pop ups. You don't have to remove all the existing hard returns before re-formating during editing. This can be a pain at times, especially if you are in a hurry. Also, the script tells you how many lines, characters and words are in the text, which is useful to know when publishing an article.
The other one? As referenced by Maria, another site a lot of people use is J B McKee's
Formatit.com.
This tools offers you the additional ability of being able to remove characters from emails and so forth, as well as being able to format your message.
One word of caution. If you have already formated the message, you have to remove all the hard returns and then re-format the message to the desired character length.
Trusting this helps,
John
P.S. If you use an email service provider like
AWeber one of the included tools is a text editor which allows you to create messages with 65 characters per line.
John Glube
Toronto, Canada
Are You Ready To Make Email Work For You?