The word count is the number of

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

s 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 An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...

, legal proceedings,

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy. The word, a noun, applies to the journ ...

and

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

. Word count is commonly used by

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''trans ...

s 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 Words per minute, commonly abbreviated as WPM (sometimes lowercased as wpm), is a measure of words processed in a minute, often used as a measurement of the speed of typing, reading or Morse code sending and receiving. Alphanumeric entry Since ...

). When converting character counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for English.

Software

Modern

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

s support word counting via

extensions Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (proof theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values t ...

, via a

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

bookmarklet, or a script that is hosted in a website. Most

word processor A word processor (WP) is a device or computer program that provides for input, editing, formatting, and output of text, often with some additional features. Early word processors were stand-alone devices dedicated to the function, but current word ...

s can also count words.

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

-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 Text segmentation is the process of dividing written text into meaningful units, such as words, sentences, or topics. The term applies both to mental processes used by humans when reading text, and to artificial processes implemented in compu ...

rule details. The exact number of words often is not a strict requirement, thus the variation is acceptable.

In fiction

Novelist

Jane Smiley Jane Smiley (born September 26, 1949) is an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel ''A Thousand Acres'' (1991). Biography Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a subu ...

suggests that length is an important quality of the

novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...

. However, novels can vary tremendously in length; Smiley lists novels as typically being between 100,000 and 175,000 words, while

National Novel Writing Month National Novel Writing Month, often shortened to NaNoWriMo ( ), was a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that promoted creative writing around the world. Its flagship program was an annual, international creative writing event in which participa ...

requires its novels to be at least 50,000 words. There are no firm rules: for example, the boundary between a

novella A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) ...

and a

is arbitrary and a literary work may be difficult to categorise. But while the length of a novel is mainly dependent on its writer, lengths may also vary by subgenre; many chapter books for children start at a length of about 16,000 words, 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. The

Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, doing business as Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association and commonly known as SFWA ( or ) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization of professional science fiction and fantasy writers. Whi ...

specifies word lengths for each category of its

Nebula Award The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), a nonprofit association of pr ...

categories:

In non-fiction

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..

References

Sources

*. *{{citation, url=https://charactercounter.cc/ , title=Focusing on the Wrong Things , last=Michaels , first=Melisa , year=2005 , publisher= Science Fiction Writers of America , url-status=dead , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090417072033/http://www.sfwa.org/writing/wordcountredux.htm , archive-date=April 17, 2009 An article on the relative importance of various word count methods in fiction publishing. Word processors Book terminology Writing

Software

In fiction

In non-fiction

See also

References

Sources