Word Counts at FFN and Elsewhere

[queenlua]

Ever notice how the word count for a story is always higher on FFN than it is in your text editor?

Here's why: evidently FFN's word counter counts words with an apostrophe in it as two words rather than one. So "she's" counts as one word in Microsoft Word, whereas it counts as two words on FFN.

Additionally, if you're like me and use a certain hipster text editor, know that said hipster text editor counts hyphenated words as two words (so "boarded-up" counts as two words in Bean, whereas it counts as one word on Microsoft Word).

If you use Open Office, know that Open Office counts words linked by an em-dash (i.e., "He looked at her—then looked down") as one word, whereas Microsoft Word counts them as two separate words.

AO3 and Microsoft Word appear to use the same word counting algorithm, and I think that's the one that easily makes the most sense. I'm a little puzzled why the others haven't followed suit; seems like it'd be easy enough to fix.

Comments

[amielleon]

FFN's word counter used to do more than that. When I originally posted a certain work with pretentious formatting, I used apostrophes to space it out correctly ... and FFN counted each and every apostrophe as a word.

[queenlua]

that's what you get for using pretentious formatting, clearly :P

[raphiael]

FFN's also super wonky about edits. Every time I edit, even if I just change a word or fix a spelling, my word count goes up.

[queenlua]

I noticed a similar problem—when I first copy+pasted in my fe-contest entry, it gave a word count of 129 and I was like "uh, what?" Then I saved again and it gave 529. Weird stuff, man.

[writerawakened]

Agh, yes, this drives me crazy. I swear FFN's word count algorithm must have been made by trickster aliens trying to sabotage the world of fic.