Only 115 word per page! WTF(luff)?

That does seem odd. I use the same formatting and normally have 220-250 words per page.

I'd check your paragraph formatting. Do you have any space set before and/or after each paragraph? Also, is it all left-justified, ragged right edge?

You said you've got lots of dialog. That will expand how much paper is used, especially if you've got a lot of short exchanges.

The average is generally around 250 per page, but if you have lots of short one line dialogue, this is going to cut down your overall word count per page.

Me, I always do Page set up, 1 inch margins all the way around, then go to headers and zero out the footer. From there I then go to Format Paragraphs, 0 all the requirements, first line special, double paragraph. Courier is or was the preferred font and 12 is the right size, so if you don't find any problems, more than likely its the amount of dialogue that is cutting your word count per page down.

If you change to Romans, you will find your word count per page increases because the letters are closer together than they are in courier, so you get more letters per line. I had an epublisher prefer Romans over Courier for submission, and I can tell you that on a 108,000 word manuscript, the page count was less by a large margin.

There's nothing wrong with 115 words per page, if writing you do on that page warrants it.

I am confused about "Paragraphs are double spaced". Lines should be double-spaced, not paragraphs. If you're adding an extra space between paragraphs, you're wasting a LOT of space.

Jamesaritchie said:

I am confused about "Paragraphs are double spaced". Lines should be double-spaced, not paragraphs. If you're adding an extra space between paragraphs, you're wasting a LOT of space.

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Ditto.

It's those "boarders" -- you shouldn't rent the margins to large families. *snerk*

Dialog is a big space-eater, and extra space between paragraphs will crowd out a lot of words too.

Jamesaritchie said:

There's nothing wrong with 115 words per page, if writing you do on that page warrants it.

I am confused about "Paragraphs are double spaced". Lines should be double-spaced, not paragraphs. If you're adding an extra space between paragraphs, you're wasting a LOT of space.

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Sounds like that's the problem, especially with the dialog requiring short paragraphs. If you've set it for double spacing, and a white space between pragraphs, that's the problem. Count the total number of lines. It should be close to 25.

And: needing the entire manuscript for a workshop seems excessive, unless it's a week or more of focused work, or the feedback comes later, as the result of "homework." Unless you're working at a professional level, a few chapters and a synopsis would seem more than adequate to pinpoint any writing problems.

Have you turned off "widow and orphan" control? Might be messing things up, too.

Glad to help. Good luck at your workshop!

thothguard51 said:

Me, I always do Page set up, 1 inch margins all the way around, then go to headers and zero out the footer. From there I then go to Format Paragraphs, 0 all the requirements, first line special, double paragraph. Courier is or was the preferred font and 12 is the right size, so if you don't find any problems, more than likely its the amount of dialogue that is cutting your word count per page down.

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This sounds like a lot of work when Word does it for you as standard.

As for formating the paragraphs, you can do it at anystage by selecting all teh text and holding Ctrl 2

Why make life difficult for yourself.

TheIT said:

Have you turned off "widow and orphan" control? Might be messing things up, too.

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Aha! You really should get a kewpie doll for that.

can i be really simple and ask what 'widow and orphan' is?

shaldna said:

can i be really simple and ask what 'widow and orphan' is?

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That refers to a single line of print -- the first or last line of a paragraph -- that is separated from the rest of the paragraph by a page break, leaving a single line at either the top or bottom of a page. (I think the last line at the top of a page is a "widow" and the first line at the bottom of a page is the "orphan". Not sure. Doesn't matter.)

MS Word has a feature in the paragraph settings (and I think it's turned ON by default) that prevents this from happening. So if there's just the first line of a paragraph at the bottom of a page, it'll move it to the next page so the whole paragraph is together. If the last line of a paragraph breaks to the next page, I guess Word moves the whole paragraph to keep it together. That could really make a difference in the average number of words per page.

ah. i'd knew word did that, I didn't realise it had a name.