What Counts in the Word Count

Please note: This thread IS NOT for for general rules questions. It's JUST for "can I count XXX in my official word count" questions. Off-topic questions will be removed. You can start a new thread for other questions, or ask on an existing thread. Be sure and read the FAQs and at least the first page of threads here in the Rules forum before starting a new thread. The odds are good that your question has already been asked, and answered.

Everything you type into your file you call "novel" in November counts. This means:

Includable

Title
Epilogues
Prologues
Dedications
Introductions
Forewords
Afterwords
Epigraphs
Prefaces
Author's Notes
Endnotes
Footnotes
Appendices
Glossaries
Chapter titles
The actual prose

Things you probably shouldn't count:

Headers
Footers
Page Numbers
In-line notes that aren't a part of your final work

Things you can't count

Anything that isn't a word... graphics, charts, graphs, markup. Text only.
Anything written by you outside of November
Blurbs
About the Author

If you are quoting other works (such as lyrics, poems, movies, plays, books, etc.) you MAY count them towards your final word count goal. (Whether or not the items are copyright and you're allowed topublish your book with such excerpts is an entirely different matter.) Opinions differ on whether or not this is ethical, so in the end, only count what you absolutely feel you have to.

I don't see why the author's name wouldn't count, but I'm leaving that up to you. It's important to note that this is not a "write 50k" challenge... it's a "write a novel" challenge. If it's not something that you would consider a part of a novel, then it's best to leave it out. After all, in the end, your real prize is your novel... and if you don't have a real novel, then you won't feel very accomplished at all!

(If you want to know anything and everything about the technical aspects of word counting, your excerpt posting and your profile page, check the Tech Help forum.

I posted this in another thread before I saw this thread, but I hope it can be answered here.

This is my first time doing NaNo, but my mother has done it in the past, and she tells me that you can simply cross out sections that were made obsolete by a later development or that you decided to replace rather than simply deleting them, thereby reducing your word count.
So, my question is, can you simply cross out stuff you aren't using anymore, or do you have to delete it?

So i started my book a ten months ago and have 23,300 words already. Should i include them in the word count or just the words i type this month? I am still shooting for 50,000 additional words, but my total would be around 75,000.

i have a question that's been nagging at me, "can we include a poem of saying by another person before our actual work in the word count used as a prologue or something?"

Does an outline count toward the word count if it was started on Nov 1st?

I'm a first timer here at NaNo. After reading a few forum comments I'm feeling confused about what 'winning' entails. My novel's story feels huge to me at this time and will most likely take much more than 50k before I can write, "the end". In sketchy outlines I've divided it up into book sections - book 1, book 2 kind of thing. Would those be considered a complete novel? Or is it all about the final count of words written, or....?

Back when I was writing short stories and sending them to be published, they paid by the word (probably still do). There was a formula for figuring word count for something written in standard manuscript format. This is sort of how it went.
1: Find a block paragraph with at least 5 complete lines. Count the number of characters and spaces in those lines, and divide by 25. That gives you the average number of words per line.
2: Count the number of lines in the story and multiply by average words per line.
That's your word count.
The idea was to measure how much space it would take in the magazine or book, not the number of actual words.
Is this how NaNoWriMo does it, or is it just counting the number of words (which is what most word processors to)?
You come up with radically different number counts this way.
Word processor word count: 9280.
Standard Manuscript count: 13125.
Any idea what the verifier does?

Can a table of contents be counted?

How about an index?

I am new to this as well, so please forgive the naivete of my question.

So the rule is we have to start a brand new book? Or can we count the words from a book we are working on, so long as we only count those words that were written in November? I'm down with the latter part if that's the case. I have a novel I'm working on that's nearly 20,000 words long and while I have other ideas for stories, I'd rather not get involved in writing another novel while I'm in the middle of this first one. I'm not certain I'd actually finish this novel by the end of November anyway. But still, I wouldn't mind taking part in all of this with my current work.

-Brian Schade

It's not really important I'm just curious.
I started in Dutch, but decided that it really wasn't working and switched back to English. Now I just can't help but translate the first part to English, that's just who I am. I know I could just leave it and do it after November, but that doesn't feel right. I've been doing this after reaching my word count for the day so it doesn't really matter, but someone mentioned that I should count the translating to the word count too since they are still words I wrote. I'm not planning on doing this, but it did get me curious whether or not this was allowed to be counted.

That was the plan, but thank you for answering, it's always good to know.

So I should not include notes for revision in the word count? For example: Chapter Seven should happen earlier in the story.

Does it have to be exactly 50,000 words or can it be over?

(Not that I am anywhere near the golden number right now!)

A friend of mine got to 12k and then decided it wasn't working and started over. She's only gotten 4k done now. Does she just forget the first batch of words? I thought that as long as the second wasn't a re-write that it all counts in a first draft. After all, when it's done, there may be a place in the novel for that first batch. Comment?

I'm not sure if this is where I should ask, but it seems appropriate. If not, then I apologize.

I'm just wondering if hyphenated words are counted as one, or two? Like, if I were to write, "half-way down the street", would "half-way" be counted as two words, or one?

Hi, just to make sure: if we write our novel in a language other than English it still qualifies, isn't it? I am writing in Romanian because it is my mother tongue and my novel it's mostly fiction but partially autobiographic and I want my family to be able to read it! Just please tell me that's okay.

I've found that using Scrivener makes it easy to get confused about what should go in the word count and what shouldn't. It allows you to create and keep so much information about your story - character and setting sketches, research notes, chapter and scene synopses, etc. - that it's easy to spend a ton of time writing stuff that isn't actually part of the manuscript per se.

The default setting is to count only documents marked to include in the final compile, which I guess is the appropriate setting for NaNo word counts - but it can be a real eye-opener to uncheck that box once in a while, and see how much I've REALLY written so far this month! (As of this moment: 8620 words that will be included in compile, but 17,157 is the actual total without that restriction! If this trend continues, by the time I've written 50,000 words officially, I'll have written more like 100,000 unofficially. Yikes!)

Every time I switch a scene, I use "-----" and then go to the next scene. Microsoft Word seems to count that, does the validator count it? D:

Hey,

Sorry if this is already covered somewhere - I checked the FAQs and didn't find this topic.

So I just noticed that Word and Open Office (which I use) count words differently. Open Office is more generous in its definition of a word, so my NaNo file is actually 500 words shorter in Word. I've gathered from this thread that Word and the NaNo validator might produce somewhat similar frequencies - however, I'm beginning to fear that I will have to write a lot more than 50k in Open Office!

If Open Office counts more words in my file than the NaNo validator will do, what can I do to have a more realistic view of my word count? I can't switch to Word at this point, having exceeded 16k ...or can I? Actually, should I?? It would drop the word count by some hundreds of words at least. I'm looking for some peace of mind, so please advise!

Don't know if this was answered somewhere else but what exactly constitutes an in-line note? I have some notes written down to include a new character in the novel and some information about said character, would that be able to be added to my word count?