28 Apr
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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2 Comments
Terence Vickers
“He isn’t here” counts as seven word in WPS office writer and as three words in an online word counter. WPS counts te contraction as three word > isn-‘-t< counting the apostophe t as two extra words. It also counts each " quotation mark as a word.
Carll Tucker
In the new Word program, the word-count at the bottom of the page doesn’t match the (more accurate) number given in Words under Tools. In this morning’s instance, the page says 599 words and the tool says 600. The discrepancy is small but disconcerting. Is there a flaw in my Word program? Or do I have two different counting mechanisms in process, leading to divergent results?