Handling Unicode in algorithms is crucial for ensuring accurate text processing, especially when dealing with diverse character sets beyond ASCII. Challenges arise when algorithms naively count words, leading to incorrect results due to the presence of multibyte Unicode characters and different whitespace representations. The outlined approach emphasizes iterating through individual runes rather than bytes to accurately detect word boundaries while counting, thus enhancing both reliability and efficiency. By leveraging the `unicode/utf8` package for decoding runes, the algorithm can manage varying buffer sizes and correctly process complex text files, ultimately refining the functionality to accommodate both standard ASCII and Unicode characters. This foundational work sets the stage for future enhancements and optimizations in text processing applications.