Word counting in english

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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 definition[edit]

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.

Software[edit]

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 fiction[edit]

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]

In non-fiction[edit]

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 also[edit]

• Flash fiction
• Twitterature
• Word lists by frequency

References[edit]

Sources[edit]

• 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.

Learn how your words are counted in IELTS. This page explains about counting words, numbers and symbols. You need to know how words are counted for IELTS listening, reading and writing. If you make mistakes with the number of words, you can lose points which can affect your band score.

How words are counted in IELTS

1. Numbers, dates and time are counted as words in writing. For example 30,000 = one word  /  55  = one word  /  9.30am = one word / 12.06.2016 = one word. “Six million” is counted as two words in IELTS writing. In listening, 30,000 is counted as one number and 9.30AM is also counted as one number.

2. Dates written as both words and numbers are counted in this way: 12th July = one number and one word in IELTS listening and as two words in IELTS writing.

3. Symbols with numbers are not counted. For example, 55% = one number (the symbol “%” is not counted as a word). However, if you write “55 percent” it is counted as one word and one number.

4. Small words such as “a” or “an” are counted. All prepositions, such as “in” or “at” are also counted. All words are counted.

5. Hyphenated words like “up-to-date” are counted as one word.

6. Compound nouns which are written as one word are also counted as one word. For example, blackboard = one word.

7. Compound nouns which are written as two separate words, are counted as two words. For example, university bookshop = two words.

8. All words are counted, including words in brackets. For example in IELTS writing, “The majority of energy was generated by electricity (55%).”. This sentence is counted as 9 words. The number in brackets is counted. Brackets can be used in IELTS Writing Task 1, but not in IELTS Listening or IELTS Reading.

9. Some people have asked me if words such as “the” are counted only once regardless of how many times they are used. It is best to illustrate: “The man walked into the shop for the newspaper” = 9 words.

10. Contractions are counted as: it’s = one word / it is = two words.

Tips

• Get useful tips and advice about the word count for IELTS writing.
• Start learning how to write compound nouns correctly. Some are one word and some are written as two words. If you make a mistake, it can affect your band score. Here’s a link to tips about compound nouns.
• Learn more about the meaning of ” no more than one word and/or a number” in listening and reading, by watching the video on the main IELTS Listening Page.

The word counter offered on DupliChecker isn’t an ordinary tool that just lets you know about the total number of words existing in a piece of text.

This wordcounter is quite efficient due to its advanced and exceptional results. The outcomes offered by this word counter include the following:

Total Number of Words

Have you ever received a task that required a specific number of words?

Counting words manually in such a situation won’t be an efficient approach. Therefore, you can utilize our word counter to find the exact number of words existing in any kind of text. If you want to rewrite an already written text file, you can rely on the paraphrasing tool.

Total Characters

Character count matters when it comes to sharing any post on social media or updating meta tags of applications and websites.Our word calculator provides you with this information. It helps you to analyze whether your text’s length is within the given character limit or not.

Total Sentences

In academic writing, the students are asked to follow the given structure and layout, which also includes the limitation on the maximum/minimum number of sentences.

Duplichecker’s sentence counter will prove to be beneficial for you in this regard, as you can figure out the total sentences existing in your content with a single click. Duplichecker also helps you to eliminate all the errors existing in your sentences, as it also offers the grammar checker facility.

Show Syllables

Enhancing the readability of written content is crucial to improving its readership.

Our syllable counter shows syllables to help people know about this important aspect of writing. Syllables play an integral role in this regard, as they work as building blocks of words.

Estimated Reading Time

How much time will you take to go entirely through your content?

The exact pace at which a reader goes through your content from top till end can’t be figured out. However, you can still find an estimated reading time based on an average reader’s skills through this online word count checker tool.

Case Conversion Toolbar

Another top-notch feature of this word checker is the case conversion toolbar.

You can easily convert your text into any case, such as uppercase, lowercase, sentence case, capitalized case, alternating case, toggle case, snake case, and hyphen case by using this word counter.