Using MS Word for word counts...

BruceJ · Dec 12, 2006

I read on another thread (can't find it now) not to use MS Word's statistics for the word count, but to count the words on a page, divide by 5 and multiply by the number of pages (at least I think that was the formula). Is this true/important? Why is Word's statistical wordcount suspect/wrong?

Anybody?...Anybody...Bueller?...

Thanks. Just curious.

WildScribe · Dec 12, 2006

I've heard that also, but I've also heard that it doesn't really matter as long as you get it close. Word is fine, since things will be edited and mixed up post submission anyway.

icerose · Dec 12, 2006

I have seen that weird formula as well, I think it derived from the early word programs where the word count was really off, I can't say for sure though. I use the 25 lines per page in courier, 250 words per page to get me a rough estimate and count it as good unless they want a more specified word count then I go with the in-program word count and round it down. Just read the submission guidelines and go with that.

BruceJ · Dec 12, 2006

Thanks, icerose. I'm too new to have seen a wordcount requirement from a publisher. Do they normally tell you how to derive the count, too?

stormie · Dec 12, 2006

Wouldn't worry about it. I remember doing that multiply divide subract add thing years ago. It drove me nuts. Just use MS Word word count. At the top of the first page, you can type "approx. ***** words."

And no editor has asked me to do any kind of specific type of word count.

blacbird · Dec 12, 2006

?Divide by 5? Never heard that one, and I guarantee if you do the math described in that first post you won't have anything like an accurate representation of word numbers. The general thumbrule is, with a Courier 12-pt double-spaced manuscript, 25 lines per page, each page counts as 250 words. But I think most people are just using the word-processor count anymore.

caw

BruceJ · Dec 12, 2006

I'm sure you're right, BB, I couldn't remember the exact formula, but I know I saw one somewhere that had a division step. Anyway, the general consensus seems to be that the word processor does an okay job at word counting. I just remember it coming across as almost a statement of the obvious in its certainty that I wondered if there was something I was missing.

Thanks for the reply.

johnzakour · Dec 12, 2006

I always just use Word. I don't believe word counts are all that important. I don't think it's hurt my career in the least.

icerose · Dec 12, 2006

It's called Stone Press or Cold Stone or something like that. They are EXTREMELY picky. And by extremely I mean extremely. They also pick three random pages and if there is more than two errors of any kind total on those three pages it is an automatic rejection before even reading it. They also have precise instructions on formatting and word count that is different most every other publisher I have ever seen. And yes, they are legit.

blacbird · Dec 12, 2006

icerose said:
They also pick three random pages and if there is more than two errors of any kind total on those three pages it is an automatic rejection before even reading it. They also have precise instructions on formatting and word count that is different most every other publisher I have ever seen.

Two, right there.

caw

greglondon · Dec 12, 2006

if you can run perl on you computer

(and PC folks can download perl for free from http://www.activestate.com/Products/ActivePerl/ )

then you can run a perl script I wrote which does word counts.

http://cpan.uchicago.edu/pub/CPAN/authors/id/G/GS/GSLONDON/wordcount_20061019.pl

You feed it a text file of your manuscript, it cuts it up into
standard manuscript format and counts the total number of pages
needed, and then multiplies by 250.

The thing is that publishers want to know how many pages it will take
to publish the book. They really don't care about the "ink", they care
about the paper. and if you have a lot of whitespace and one word
dialogs, then your word count can be seriously different than the paper
count.

"Hi."
"Hello."
"Busy?"
"No."
"Whaddup?"
"Nothin."
"Working?"
"A bit."

The word count for this would be 9 from MS Word, but it will take up 8 lines of paper, which is a publisher would count as 80 words or so.

UrsusMinor · Dec 12, 2006

You've gotta go with what the publisher wants, of course.

Unless otherwise specified, though, on a novel most agents and publishers just want to see an approximate word count rounded to the nearest thousand. Word is fine for this. (Unless asked to do so, don't report something like "93,452 words." Looks amateurish.)

By the way, unless a font is specified by the publisher/agent, I use Times New Roman, but also use wider-than-average margins so the word count per page approximates Courier. (This means the pages turn faster, ala Courier, but have Times New Roman readability--in my opinion, the best of both worlds.)

Matt Lipp · Dec 12, 2006

I'm pretty sure as long as you make it over 50,000 (at least for a novel) you're gold.

greglondon · Dec 12, 2006

Manuscript:

"Hi."
"Hello."
"Busy?"
"No."
"Whaddup?"
"Nothin."
"Working?"
"Hardly."

MS Word word count: 8 (eight) words
perl script word count: 80 (eighty) words

The perl script is more "accurate" when giving a publisher a
word count for your manuscript, because the perl script puts
the text into manuscript format and figures out how many
pages your work will take.

standard format works out to be 25 lines per page, 10 words per line,
or 250 words per page. The perl script counts lines, and even if you
have only one word on the line, the perl script counts it as a full line,
and when the line count reaches 25, it counts it as a full page,
even if the page is mostly whitespace. which means it translates into 250
words for your word count, even if it is nothing but 25 lines of single word
dialogue.

Dru · Dec 12, 2006

I actually ran into this last night from my NaNo-novel.

MS wordcount = ~50,000
"Standard 250 per double-spaced Courier" wordcount = ~62,500

I don't have the arcana version, do you Greg?

There is a significant difference in the genre/market in how forgiving agents/editors may be. Just be aware that you may unintentionally misrepresenting your wordcount.

Short stories tend to be different in which you should use, IIRC. Not my area of interest, but I'm sure someone who regularly pubs or subs can tell you.

icerose · Dec 12, 2006

blacbird said:
Two, right there.

caw

That is exactly what happens when I write fast and don't think the word usage through which is why I would never submit to such a press because I know I am far from perfect.

greglondon · Dec 12, 2006

Dru said:
I don't have the arcana version, do you Greg?

erm, arcana version of what?

scarletpeaches · Dec 12, 2006

Here's what I do:

I aim for roughly 75,000 words according to the MS word count. That's just my 'thing'.

However, when submitting, I format in 12 point Courier New, double spaced (and switch off widow/orphan control). I then take the number of pages and multiply by 250 words per page to give what I call the 'manuscript word count'.

Everyone has different methods. That's mine.

Dru · Dec 12, 2006

Sorry Greg, the arcana calculation from VP. There was algebra and line counting and whatnot. I stuck with the bog simple version, but I know someone took down the exact version. My notes don't have the exact method, since they rattled off the equation too quickly for me.

scarletpeaches: That's the method I was referring to.

BruceJ: Someone like scarletpeaches is probably safe if she's subbing to a market with a broad range of acceptable lengths. However, if you get to 100,000+ with Word and then sub to an agent/editor with a hard stop at 100K, when your word count is 'really' 125K, then you might run into issues.

However, this is a great way to perform a writing-avoidance ceremony. Write the entire story and then worry about wordcount when you've edited, revised, and polished the piece to perfection. Just my humble take on the matter, though.

Arden · Dec 12, 2006

scarletpeaches said:
Here's what I do:

I aim for roughly 75,000 words according to the MS word count. That's just my 'thing'.

However, when submitting, I format in 12 point Courier New, double spaced (and switch off widow/orphan control). I then take the number of pages and multiply by 250 words per page to give what I call the 'manuscript word count'.

Everyone has different methods. That's mine.

This sounds like something I could handle... just out of curiosity, how many pages do you have for the Word 75,000 words as compared to the "manuscript word count" pages... and how many words does the latter come out to be? Does question make sense? Whew!

Thanks!

UrsusMinor · Dec 12, 2006

greglondon said:
MS Word word count: 8 (eight) words
perl script word count: 80 (eighty) words

The perl script is more "accurate" when giving a publisher a
word count for your manuscript, because the perl script puts
the text into manuscript format and figures out how many
pages your work will take.

Yes, but the publisher is unlikely to want you to do that for them!

They all have different ways of estimating how the words will move to paper, and giving them a number that is already 'adjusted' may mean that they will end up double counting.

Approximate word count and exact page count are all the writer usually need supply.

Dru said:
I actually ran into this last night from my NaNo-novel.

MS wordcount = ~50,000
"Standard 250 per double-spaced Courier" wordcount = ~62,500

A 25% discrepancy is pretty large, but a 10-15% ballooning above actual word count is comon when applying the '250 Courier wpp' rule of thumb.

It may be handy for publishers in trying to estimate resource requirements, but I have generally found the '250 wpp' rule to be a substantial overestimate of actual words for fiction. With spaces at chapter heads, stretches of sparse dialog, scene breaks, etc, my actual word count averaged over chapters runs as low as 204 wpp and up to a maximum of 236 wpp. (Some individual pages run higher of course.)

250 actual wpp on an ongoing basis is pretty dense fiction (or pretty narrow margins!)

Oh, how I wish that word count was the largest of my worries...

greglondon · Dec 12, 2006

Dru said:
Sorry Greg, the arcana calculation from VP. There was algebra and line counting and whatnot. I stuck with the bog simple version, but I know someone took down the exact version. My notes don't have the exact method, since they rattled off the equation too quickly for me.

The perl script that I link to has the numbers at the very top. If you click on the above link and "open" instead of save or execute, you'll see this block towards the top:

########################################
my $default_lines_per_page = 25;
my $default_characters_per_line = 60; #
my $default_tab_stop = 5;
my $default_words_per_page = 250;
my $default_output_text = 0;
########################################

This was from VP and then from either the mailing list or some other online discussion. The end result being that the "standard" manuscript page is 60 characters per line and 25 lines per character for a total of 250 words per page.

If there was something else, I must have missed it.

Dru · Dec 12, 2006

There was mention of the half-page breaks for chapters, I think. Outside of that I think you got it all. At least, IIRC. I'm so far away from stressing about the wordcount that I hadn't grabbed the module yet.

I'll go with what major editors have stated their preferences are in terms of how to calc/report wordcounts (250 Courier method). Everyone will have their preferences, and unless a house has a hard limit, then people should be fine. Agent preferences I don't have a good feel for. Miss Snark perhaps has her response in the archives?

If you're neurotic^Wcompulsive enough, you can calculate every way, and then have a good feeling if there might be a potential for violating an expectation of submission rules.

greglondon · Dec 12, 2006

Dru said:
There was mention of the half-page breaks for chapters

whoops. I didn't put that in. I remember talking about it, but it didn't get in there yet.

When I finish my WIP rewrite (end of month if it kills me) I wanted to take the word count perl script and roll it into a perl editor that I created way back when. It would be nice to have the word counter built right into the text editor application.

and spell check. wanted to add spell check.

But like I said, after the WIP is finished.

TheIT · Dec 12, 2006

Also take a look at the "GENERAL MANUSCRIPT FORMATTING" thread stickied to the top of the Writing Novels forum. There's a link there with a good description of the different word count methods including the 250 word/page method. Several other threads in Writing Novels also describe word count in detail.

Using MS Word for word counts...

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