We have found that the hard character limit defined in a report template for Comments is only enforced when the individual report status is set to "Complete". When a report is at an earlier status, the character limit is only advisory. In our opinion, this places too much emphasise on the "Complete" status - even for the other statuses it is important that a comment is the right length.
When teachers write the comment, they move the Status from "Draft" to "Ready for Proofreading", at which point our management team checks the Comment and moves it to Complete status. Of course, if the Comment is too long, this is not possible.
So the idea - simply that hard character limits are enforced as such, at any status level.
