Starting Character Amount (0 or 1?)

[Lil Chris]

I'm confused.  Is '0' the first number to be counted when counting the number of characters in a string?  Or... is it '1' that starts it.  I'm puzzled since the words start counting at '0' and there's no point for the character counting to be any different.

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[Lil Chris]

Oh crap, I think I put it in the wrong section.

[Chrono]

I think it's 0.

[Headcrab Zombie]

it's 0.