Talk:Word count

Much longer novels
The table doesn't have categories for science fiction and fantasy novels that are much larger, such as the "The Wheel of Time" series being 300-400k words per book. why arent larger books addressed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.50.209.76 (talk) 20:22, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Is this some sort of advertisement?

No

Well, after a fashion it is.

Is the Speedcent link some kind of joke?

Definition of word?
I've remove For word count purposes, a word is often arbitrarily defined to be five characters. Because it seems, well, utterly wrong. I would think word count programs count words. --220.239.89.20 00:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC) That's me --Aioth 00:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, in typesetting the number of characters is obviously more important --- how much page space is a text going to take up? --- and it is (I believe) common to work in 5-character "words" rather characters. Also, a 1000 words by a highly technical, sesquipedalian author is a lot longer than 1000 words by a snappy, informal author. --Taejo|대조 23:44, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I would put it in. The five-letter word is a standard for counting the words on a page by hand in the office before the advent of word processors.  Unfortunately, I don't have a source at the moment so I can't add it to the article with authority, but if I remember right, one would count every five characters for the first three (five?) lines and then use that so you can average the number of words on the page and, ultimately, the entire document.  20 May 2007

The idea of a "word" is a fixed number of characters and spaces. In timed writing in typing, it's typically 5. In publishing, it's typically 6. See: http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/what-is-a-word/ look at sources related to writing to see these kinds of definition of "word". The idea (mentioned below) that a specific number of characters was chosen before word processors because the actual space-delimited words were too hard to count is mistaken. The idea of "word" in this context relates to layout and the overall size of the finished text, so the count of actual space-delimited words is not desirable (as it might be in say, characterizing the grade-level of the writing for younger vs. older readers). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Srogers (talk • contribs) 14:59, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

"Non-fiction"
Really? The proper term for a document used for a Ph.D. is dissertation, not thesis. DTavona (talk) 09:15, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
 * In my experience the two words are used interchangeably. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:16, 22 June 2014 (UTC)
 * I edited the article. While we don't self-reference, our own dissertation article reads that it mostly applies to PhDs.-- Jim in Georgia  Contribs  Talk  19:21, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

"At least 75,000-100,000 (or 200,000) words"
From the table under the heading "Document types defined by word counts":

What does "At least 75,000-100,000 (or 200,000) words" mean? does it mean at leat 75k? does it mean at least 200k? does it mean as few as 75k up to a limit of 200k?

Is this trying to express that many sources have chosen different lower limits? Could it be expressed as 75k-200k words?

Nick —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.45.0.133 (talk) 02:31, 28 November 2007 (UTC) At least 9000! ;) 84.16.123.194 (talk) 12:34, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

80,000 words minimum
Most agents, editors, and publishers feel manuscripts should be a minimum of 80,000 words, even though novels in the Young Adult genre can be around just 40,000 words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.121.214.44 (talk) 03:50, 16 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Source? Dumaka (talk) 19:21, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Word-count feature
I discovered a feature in Microsoft Word: the word-count. You click "Options" (under "tools") and click on the 'Spelling and Grammar' tab. Click on the box next to "Show r eadability status". From then on, when you click F7 in a document on your keyboard, you see the word count (after the spelling and grammar checks). Shouldn't we include this? Many cps have Microsoft Office.

Note: I have Word 2003. Any other types of Word may not have word count, or may have it a different way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.37.4 (talk) 21:06, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * It is already mentioned in the article: "The command wc in Unix/Linux can do automatic word counts, as can many word processors." We don't need to give specific how-to instructions for specific word processors, I don't think. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:42, 15 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Agree, and I deleted mention of Unix and Linux, too. That will be irrelevant to 95% of the people who read the article, and of the remaining 5% many reading this article will already know it (or know how to find a better source than a sentence that just mentions that the command exists). Piano non troppo (talk) 12:24, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

List and new topic, called "purpose"
"Purpose" is : reader quickly finds what is goin' on. I think it might be better to make examples into blocks here, and put some explanations & bonuses :) there.

Word count is so obvious, that it needs "just" those interesting uses (so that reader is smarter after a while).

Also calling "Purpose" may catch reader's attention ("So tell me ,smartass ,what is the purpose"? ;) 84.16.123.194 (talk) 13:00, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Other uses of word count
Agreeing with the spirit of the above "Purpose" section, word counts are used in several other ways: Calculating ad copy, determining the number of pages in a book (or vice-versa the number of words in an existing book), and setting the lower limit for a school homework assignment.

There's also an interplay between readability and page word count. Reading readability test and the associated tests, one would assume that readability is simply a matter of the relation between characters, words and sentences, but a children's publisher includes how many words are on a page: many words, small font, and small margins = adult book. (Also for adults whose reading skills are otnay ohsay odgay.) Since generally reading time increases with number of words, for my knowledgebase editing, I invest effort removing words -- looking for those adding length without significantly adding to meaning.

Finally, maybe a few words (lol) related to this statement in "Readability test": "Since readability formulas do not take the meanings of words into account, they are not considered definitive measures of readability." Piano non troppo (talk) 13:01, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Novel length (merge?)
Novel length appears to be almost identical in content to this article. Perhaps we could get a merge going? ☻☻☻Sithman VIII !!☻☻☻ 16:26, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I think you mean Length of a novel. I agree that they look redundant, and have tagged both articles for a possible merge. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:49, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's what I meant. Thanks!  ☻☻☻Sithman  VIII !!☻☻☻ 17:50, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with the merge. They both seem to say the same thing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tideflat (talk • contribs) 00:03, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Only "most" word processors?
Surely ALL word processors have a word counter these days. I mean even LocoScript had a word counter. I have never come across a word processor without a word count facility.--Shantavira|feed me 11:08, 3 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Apple's TextEdit lacks one. There are probably other examples. Also, old software doesn't go away, it just gets older. Some people still use WordStar (which does count words, I think) jhawkinson (talk) 05:02, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

What is a word?
I think this article could benefit from some discussion of, or a reference to addressing 'what is a word' for word-counting purposes. As mentioned above a word may be defined as being 5 or 6 characters under certain circumstances. Other issues may involve whether contractions, or hyphenated words are typically counted as single or multiple words. An interesting and informative paragraph could begin with something like 'The definition of a word for word-counting varies according to software or convention. The unix software 'wc' defines a word as being a string of alphabetic characters started or ended by one of the following [list] characters, whilst Microsoft Word defines a word as being ...' 92.237.31.247 (talk) 23:03, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Sci-Fi novels
Here is a article on the increasing lenght of sci-fi novels and the effect on the quality of the writing.

http://www.sfwriter.com/rmdeatho.htm — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.22.9.86 (talk) 07:53, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

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