How are characters counted in Word from a computer
Let’s start this discussion by discovering first how to count characters in Word from a computer, thus taking advantage of the desktop version of the famous Microsoft word processing program, available for Windows and macOS. In addition to being able to count the characters, through the procedure that I am about to show you, you will also be able to count the words, paragraphs and lines in the document, if it may interest you in some way.
The first thing you need to do to proceed, therefore, is to open the document of your interest: to do so, after opening Word, go to the menu Open> Browse (top left) and select the file of your interest. Alternatively, you can open the document in question by double-clicking on it — if associated with Word — or by right-clicking and selecting items Open with> Word give the menu answer.
After opening the document, you will immediately notice that Word automatically counts the words present in the text, signaling this by means of the wording [N] word, which is located at the bottom left of the program window, next to the current page number. By clicking on it, you can open the box containing the character count, which you can also call up by clicking on the button Word count, present in the card revision located at the top of the Word window.
In the pane that opened, the number of characters without spaces included in the count is indicated (Characters excluding spaces) and the number of characters with spaces included (Spaces characters included). Furthermore, as I told you, the lines, number of paragraphs, pages and passwords.
Do you want to count the characters of a specific portion of the text? Word allows you to do this too. To do this, select the text of your interest: position the mouse cursor to the left of the first character relating to the text to be highlighted and, holding down the left mouse button, move the cursor to the last character.
Then click on the wording [N] word located at the bottom left of the Word window, or click the button Word count present in the card revisions located at the top, and that’s it. You will be able to read all the information of your interest in the “usual” box that appears on the screen.
How characters are counted in Word Online
If you want to know how characters are counted in Word Online, the version of Word that can be used on all major browsers, know that the procedure to follow is practically the same as I showed you for the desktop version of the program. However, let me explain what to do.
First, go to the main Word Online page, log into your Microsoft account (if you haven’t already) and open the document of your interest. Then click on the wording [N] word, placed at the bottom left. Alternatively, click on the tab revision and click on the button Word count.
Thanks to the box that will appear on the screen, you will be able to see the characters with spaces included, the characters with spaces excluded, as well as other information, such as the total of passwords present in the document and the total number of paragraphs.
In case you want to count the characters related to a specific piece of text, you must first select the latter (as I showed you in the previous chapter) and use the feature related to the character count that I just showed you.
How to count characters in Word from smartphones and tablets
I conclude this guide by explaining to you how to count characters in Word from smartphones and tablets. Before proceeding, I remind you that Microsoft has made two word processing apps available to users: Microsoft Word (Android / iOS / iPadOS) e Microsoft Office (Android / iOS / iPadOS), also available for Android devices without Google services (you can search for them in an alternative store).
The apps I mentioned to you are free, but only by signing up for a subscription to Microsoft 365 starting from 7 euro / month, you can make full use of their functions. The subscription is also mandatory if you have a device with a screen diagonal greater than 10.1 «. More info here.
Having clarified these aspects, here’s how to proceed: open the Word document of your interest through one of the Microsoft apps among those I mentioned to you, tap on the tab revision, present in the drop-down menu at the bottom (on the smartphone) or in the tabs at the top (on the tablet). Then tap on the wording Word count, so as to display the count for characters with spaces included, characters with spaces excluded, the total number of words, pages and so on.
How are characters counted in Word
An experienced word count user may already have noticed that there can be slight and even substantial differences in word counts results produced by different word count tools. Surprised? Let’s find out what is the reason for that.
Different word counters have different approaches to word count.
Microsoft Word Statistics, the most common unspecific word counting instrument, considers everything between two spaces of a word, be it a number or a symbol. On the other hand, Word doesn’t include in its word count statistics the text in text boxes or shapes. That may sometimes happen to add a significant number of words to your word, character, or line count.
How does Microsoft Word count words? Where do differences in word counts come from?
Currently, there are no rules or systems defining what instruments or schemes should be used for word count. Different word count tools use their own schemes for word count. And the most important question here is what to count. Well, words, obviously, but it appears that different programs include different meanings in this single object.
Accurate word count tool to avoid differences in word counts.
The specific character count tools are more accurate here. Usually, a user can define whether to count numbers or not and whether to include the text from additional objects to the character count statistics. The best character count tools are usually armed with character count opportunities in footers, headers, notes, footnotes, endnotes, text boxes, shapes, text in embedded and linked documents, comments, and hidden text. Also, they can provide the character count in a large number of file formats. For example, AnyCount counts text in 70 file formats! Try it absolutely free here.
It is also said that because of these differences the character or line count produced by specific word count tools usually scores more words/units than word count in Microsoft Word. But I guess I’d like to find that out myself and do some research on the matter. So just look forward to it!
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The word count is the number of words in a document or passage of text. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. This may particularly be the case in academia, legal proceedings, journalism and advertising. Word count is commonly used by translators to determine the price of a translation job. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of readability and to measure typing and reading speeds (usually in words per minute). When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for English.[1]
Details and variations of definitionEdit
Variations in the operational definitions of how to count the words can occur (namely, what «counts as» a word, and which words «don’t count» toward the total). However, especially since the advent of widespread word processing, there is a broad consensus on these operational definitions (and hence the bottom-line integer result). The consensus is to accept the text segmentation rules generally found in most word processing software (including how word boundaries are determined, which depends on how word dividers are defined). The first trait of that definition is that a space (any of various whitespace characters, such as a «regular» word space, an em space, or a tab character) is a word divider. Usually a hyphen or a slash is, too. Different word counting programs may give varying results, depending on the text segmentation rule details, and on whether words outside the main text (such as footnotes, endnotes, or hidden text) are counted. But the behavior of most major word processing applications is broadly similar.
However, during the era when school assignments were done in handwriting or with typewriters, the rules for these definitions often differed from today’s consensus. Most importantly, many students were drilled on the rule that «certain words don’t count», usually articles (namely, «a», «an», «the»), but sometimes also others, such as conjunctions (for example, «and», «or», «but») and some prepositions (usually «to», «of»). Hyphenated permanent compounds such as «follow-up» (noun) or «long-term» (adjective) were counted as one word. To save the time and effort of counting word-by-word, often a rule of thumb for the average number of words per line was used, such as 10 words per line. These «rules» have fallen by the wayside in the word processing era; the «word count» feature of such software (which follows the text segmentation rules mentioned earlier) is now the standard arbiter, because it is largely consistent (across documents and applications) and because it is fast, effortless, and costless (already included with the application).
As for which sections of a document «count» toward the total (such as footnotes, endnotes, abstracts, reference lists and bibliographies, tables, figure captions, hidden text), the person in charge (teacher, client) can define their choice, and users (students, workers) can simply select (or exclude) the elements accordingly, and watch the word count automatically update.
SoftwareEdit
Modern web browsers support word counting via extensions, via a JavaScript bookmarklet, or a script that is hosted in a website. Most word processors can also count words. Unix-like systems include a program, wc, specifically for word counting. There are a wide variety of word counting tools available online.
Different word counting programs may give varying results, depending on the text segmentation rule details. The exact number of words often is not a strict requirement, thus the variation is acceptable.
In fictionEdit
Novelist Jane Smiley suggests that length is an important quality of the novel.[2] However, novels can vary tremendously in length; Smiley lists novels as typically being between 100,000 and 175,000 words,[3] while National Novel Writing Month requires its novels to be at least 50,000 words. There are no firm rules: for example, the boundary between a novella and a novel is arbitrary and a literary work may be difficult to categorise.[4] But while the length of a novel is to a large extent up to its writer,[5] lengths may also vary by subgenre; many chapter books for children start at a length of about 16,000 words,[6] and a typical mystery novel might be in the 60,000 to 80,000 word range while a thriller could be well over 100,000 words.[7]
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America specifies word lengths for each category of its Nebula Award categories:[8]
| Classification | Word count |
|---|---|
| Novel | 40,000 words or over |
| Novella | 17,500 to 39,999 words |
| Novelette | 7,500 to 17,499 words |
| Short story | up to 7,500 words |
In non-fictionEdit
The acceptable length of an academic dissertation varies greatly, dependent predominantly on the subject. Numerous American universities limit Ph.D. dissertations to 100,000 words, barring special permission for exceeding this limit.[9]
See alsoEdit
- Flash fiction
- Twitterature
- Word lists by frequency
ReferencesEdit
- ^ The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America suggest 6 chars to a word
- ^ Smiley, Jane. 2005. Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 14.
- ^ Smiley, 2005, p. 15.
- ^ Edge, Tom, «Does Size Matter?» The Guardian (UK), Booksblog, Nov. 2, 2006. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2006/nov/02/doessizematter
- ^ Quindlen, Anna (September 23, 2002), «Writers on Writing: The Eye of the Reporter, the Heart of the Novelist», New York Times,
A novelist doesn’t write to space, of course; 80,000 words, 100,000, it is up to the writer to say when the story is done.
. - ^ Lamb, Nancy, Crafting Stories for Children. Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, p. 24
- ^ Thurston, Carol (August 3, 1997), «Agents give writers the book on what’s hot and what’s not», Austin American-Statesman,
no one wants more than 60-80,000 words in a mystery, 110,000 for a thriller
. - ^ SFWA Awards FAQ, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as follows:
- ^ Dunleavy, Patrick (2003), Authoring a PhD, Palgrave Macmillan, p. 46, ISBN 978-1-4039-1191-9.
SourcesEdit
- DeRocher, James E.; Miron, Murray S.; Patten, Sam M.; Pratt, Charles C. (1973), The Counting of Words: A Review of the History, Techniques and Theory of Word Counts with Annotated Bibliography (PDF), Syracuse University Research Corporation, p. 302, ED098814.
- Rothman, Chuck (2005), Word Counts: What Is a Word?, Science Fiction Writers of America. An article on various word count methods in fiction publishing.
- Michaels, Melisa (2005), Focusing on the Wrong Things, Science Fiction Writers of America, archived from the original on April 17, 2009 An article on the relative importance of various word count methods in fiction publishing.