Difference in Word Count

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The reason for the difference in word count between the two applications is that they are not using the same font, even though the name may be the same. Letter, word, and line spacing won’t be identical.

Walt

Message was edited by: Walt K

I don't understand why using different fonts change the word count.

My own guess is that …Soft and Apple doesn't define 'word' the same way.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 21 janvier 2010 07:14:16

I checked a long document and you are right. It differs. It showed about 900 more words in Pages than in MS Word.

I have a small solution for you, macseries. Write your piece in Pages but do the word count in MS Word!

I did some counting i one of my Word documents. I picked one seneteces that I found differed in the two apps.

+B: CoSO4 p.o. 2-7 mg/v i ex. vattnet. Tar 7-10 dgr innan effekt syns. Vid grava+
MS Word: 16 words, Pages: 19 words. fruhulda: 16 words!

It is the words looking like this that makes the difference: *2-7 mg/v*
MS Word: 2 words, Pages: 4 words

Yvan,

The OP said "pages word count tends to be about 60 words higher per 20 pages. " I understood this to mean that the number of words on a page differed, not the total number.

Walt

Walt

OK now I understand the meaning of your post.

I just realize that we have something in common.
Your first name is Walt, my second one is Walter 😉

Back to the words, in Appleland, 7/12 are two words because the slash is deciphered as a word delimiter. It's the same for - , @ # ! ?and of course space (even NO BREAK space)

$ € = are deciphered as words

Of course, I don't give the complete list, just details helping the OP to understand why he get different counts in different worlds.

*If I remember well*, the word count returned by the free WordServices returns the same count than Office.

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 21 janvier 2010 19:21:03

Yvan, you remember well. I just checked and Word Services said 16 owrd instead of 19 in my example above.

I just realize that we have something in common.
Your first name is Walt, my second one is Walter 😉

Yvan,

Mine is Walter also. Long, long ago I was inspired by Walt Disney to adopt the short form.

Walt

Nobody use Walter to speak to me so, I thought that it was wasted.

I reused it as firstname for my son 😉

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 21 janvier 2010 19:52:51

I use Walter when I talk to myself, especially if I'm reprimanding myself for being stupid.

Walt

To get you two back on topic - how many Walt can you count in this thread?

OK, I'm back! How many what?

Walt

Not how many what, but how many Walt 😉

There's only one of me. 🙂

All together now: "Thank God!"

Amen!