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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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

"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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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 readability 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.