strlen ?

Trying to manage line breaks in some output I'm generating and using 
strlen to measure the lengths of the strings I'm printing.  Discovered 
something strange (to me!) in that strlen is returning +1 more than it 
should.

The strings are from a query of my database - simple name fields.  But 
everyone of them is coming back with a length that is one more than I see.

Ex.

Mike Hall  comes back as 10, not 9
F.B. comes back as 5, not 4.

I've looked at my data and counted the chars - there is no extra space 
at the beginning or end in my table.

Anyone have an explanation?