Word Count Discrepancy

Quote by Wet_n_willing
One thing I have noticed is that Word counts hyphenated words as one while the Lush counter counts them as two. That likely wouldn't account for a discrepancy that large, but if it does the same thing when you use a dash as punctuation vs. a comma or semi-colon it might add up especially if you use it often. I use Word and mine are always a higher word count here.

Quote by kistinspencil
Did you save the Word doc as a plain text file first or just copy and paste? Word inserts all manner of crap format coding, some of which gets counted here as a word. Others are having issues with posts in Micro and Flash stories along the same lines.

Quote by Wet_n_willing
One thing I have noticed is that Word counts hyphenated words as one while the Lush counter counts them as two. That likely wouldn't account for a discrepancy that large, but if it does the same thing when you use a dash as punctuation vs. a comma or semi-colon it might add up especially if you use it often. I use Word and mine are always a higher word count here.

Quote by RejectReality


Unless something has changed since the last time I submitted a micro with one, proper use of an emdash ( no spaces before or after ) only counts 1 word for the two words connected by the em dash. Seems weird that it would do that, but count hyphenated words as two.

Quote by sprite
have officially changed the word count for micros from 100 to 95. you're welcome.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith
Verity100 has done some sleuthing recently and found that formatting counts towards the word count. Since you have a bunch of bold phrases in your intro, that may account for some (or all) of the inflation.

Hyphens are a standard trick I use to cut down the word count (side-by-side = 1 word, yay) so it's probably not that. Em dashes maybe. Not sure.

The other thing is that dividers can get counted as 'words' in the lush counter but some word counters only consider alphanumeric characters as words. This one: ---- might not count, but this one: -oOo- might. Not sure about the string of tildes you use. Worth a look, maybe?

Quote by KimmiBeGood
Wicked Jake ... those who know you know you always play within the comp rules. You shouldn't have to use less words than the limit just because your bold type, hyphens, dots count against you on word count.

In my mind, your piece is an easy Top Ten, so add an author note saying your actual word count is xxxx, so you won't catch flack from others if you get recognition.

Quote by Jaymal
Put [an em dash] directly after the word like a comma, however, and it doesn't count as an additional word.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith


That makes sense. Word is clever (?) enough to distinguish that an em dash isn't a character that makes up a word on its own. I expect the Lush counter simply looks for anything with a space either side (or a space on one side plus punctuation the other) and counts that as 'a word', regardless if those characters are alphanumeric or not. So yeah, taking out the preceding space will help.

The rest may well be that pesky formatting: the counter probably reads the markup under the hood, treating the opening and closing marks that tell the system to make the bold text as 'words'.

Not much we can do about the dividers. You may find that some character sequences don't get treated as words but (as it stands) I don't think it'll make any difference. The Lush word counter seems to use a simpler (likely faster) algorithm than the one in most Word processing programs. If you're running tight on words, try inserting an image as a divider, or use the horizontal rule built into the Lush editor. That should be ignored (though I've never tried it).

Edit: and if you're less than 10 words over, don't worry about it: that's tolerable in competitions, precisely because of this annoying word count issue.

New Lush seems to have a similar wordcount discrepancy.

I'm drafting a micro. In the editor it's 98 words, which is correct, but when I click save draft it says 101. I've been trying to diagnose what the difference is by deleting things, but haven't figured it out yet. There are no dashes in the story.

Quote by NicolasBelvoir

New Lush seems to have a similar wordcount discrepancy.

I'm drafting a micro. In the editor it's 98 words, which is correct, but when I click save draft it says 101. I've been trying to diagnose what the difference is by deleting things, but haven't figured it out yet. There are no dashes in the story.

Is it counting the words in the title or the one liner perhaps?