I fail to understand why 文字 isn’t accepted when every resource i can find (Bunpro included) says they mean essentially the same thing. Am I cheating myself by giving myself a pass here? It feels ridiculous to beat my head against a wall with these two vocab words unless there’s actually a meaningful distinction that it’s important for me to learn. Am I missing something?
字 includes all characters like .,; etc
文字 doesn’t include them.
Hi, @Balduran !
字 and 文字 have the same meaning and are interchangeable in almost all cases. So, we’ve added 文字 as an alternate answer with a hint that triggers the answer the quiz in the 字 entry is looking for!
In addition, we found that 私の名前は六文字です。 was included as one of the example sentences in the 字 entry. This sentence uses 文字 instead of 字, so we’ve replaced it with a new one. Sorry if this caused confusion 
While 字 and 文字 are generally used similarly, 字 is often used for written characters or handwriting. When evaluating whether handwriting is good or bad, 字 is typically used. For example:
あの人は字が上手だ。
あの人は文字が上手だ。(unnatural)
On the other hand, 文字 has a slightly stronger nuance of symbols, such as the Greek alphabet (ギリシャ文字), emoji (絵文字), and hieroglyphs (象形文字).
Hope this helps!
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My favorite is fingerspelling (finger characters 指文字)