My Galaxy s7 Edge suddenly stopped providing character count in sms.

[AC Question]

Recently the character counter in sms has disappeared. On all my Android devices, long unbroken texts have always run the risk of losing format, arriving out of sequence; so I simply prefer to chop up my msgs so as to conform each w/in the established character limit. I'm aware there are word/character counting apps [I have one] but for simple msgs employing a cut-paste-count-adjust process over&over is vexing. The function worked flawlessly for sev months & even now will "show up" on the rare occasion. [I've thus far been unable to find any commonality or pattern when it does alight for a sporadic moments.] For roughly the past 2 weeks it seems to have gone missing permanently I know weighted emoticons etc will skew the count so I omit same sending pure word texts. No impact. I'm also aware I have the option to increase the # of characters (really irrespective of this issue). What I seek, today, is how to reestablish this previously default function.