I have read a few posts on positioning the caret, but none seem to answer my particular issue.
When you click on an element, a Selection object with zero length is created (get it from element.getSelection() , where element is the div in question). The focusOffset of that object will let you know that you clicked on, for example, the 74th character in that div (this is the thing that Adrien said was impossible in a different answer).