My word processor (Pages) counts my words as I type, keeps the running total at the bottom of the window all the time, and the program's "Inspector" when set to info keeps track of pages, lines, paragraphs, even characters counting spaces and not counting spaces. Pretty thorough.
HOWEVER, when I copy and paste my ms into Nano's Novel Info, the word count shows as less. For instance, last night I reached 35,067 according to Pages; Nano counted that as about 34,860. It's been doing that all along. I tried taking out some brackets, made sure Pages wasn't counting running heads etc., but made no difference.
Last night I reread the instructions and re-input my word count according to Page instead of having Nano count the words; but that won't do at validation time.
Anyone have any clue why Nano is getting a different word count?
Cheers,
Mig
ps--for those of you who live by the Word as given by almighty MS, Pages is Apple's premiere word processor in their iWork package (and it's excellent).
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* http://www.margotcomstock.com
* Short Short Stories in Doorknobs & BodyPaint: www.iceflow.com
* Tell Me a Story--fiction and verse: http://web.mac.com/margotsart/ArtToo/
* Lead Short Story in Riverbabble, Summer
50,158 / 50,000
Nov 21, 2009 - 14 45
Hi,
For word count, I remembered that at the top I wrote: NaNo, the title of my novel, my name, I took them all off for the actual word count. And I am using ipage and loving it!
My suggestion is to pad your word count a bit so you aren't disappointed when you upload to the NaNo web site.
Catharine
55,315 / 50,000
Nov 22, 2009 - 00 13
Replying to myself, so to speak. The discrepancy was in hyphenated words. Pages counts each side of a hyphenated word as a word. Nano counts all parts of a hyphenated word (pit togither) as one word. This is a kind of interesting issue. In the past, and probably by the grammar and style books, Pages makes more sense because prefixes like non and co and the like were closed up to the word they modified, except if that word was a proper name. Now, it seems to be fashionable to hyphenate such prefixed words; these should in fact be counted as one word--but should not be hyphenated in the first place.
Ah weil, it's late and I'm either beyond tomorrow's quota or 196 words shy--depending on who's counting. And so a bit more to write at the end. It's all fun.
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* http://www.margotcomstock.com
* Short Short Stories in Doorknobs & BodyPaint: www.iceflow.com
* Tell Me a Story--fiction and verse: http://web.mac.com/margotsart/ArtToo/
* Lead Short Story in Riverbabble, Summer
55,315 / 50,000
Nov 22, 2009 - 00 17
Thank you, Catharine. Good idea! I did take out a bunch of those hyphens. ; ) And virtual confetti and multicolored balloons floating in the air here too for your early 50K!
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* http://www.margotcomstock.com
* Short Short Stories in Doorknobs & BodyPaint: www.iceflow.com
* Tell Me a Story--fiction and verse: http://web.mac.com/margotsart/ArtToo/
* Lead Short Story in Riverbabble, Summer