I was just thinking, since I keep hearing about discrepancies between word counts tallied elsewhere and the official word counter, maybe someone with the right expertise could make plug-ins for free, open source writing software programs such as Notepad++ and OpenOffice.org Writer that use the word counting algorithm used on this site, so people can confidently keep track of their official word count?
For example, the TextFX Tools' Word Count in Notepad++ (a plugin, likely open source, same as the application itself), says that this post is 107 words long. If anyone would like to try in another writing tool, see if you get a different number.
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Cups of coffee drank: 25
7,085 / 50,000
Nov 7, 2009 - 19 54
Running on Windows 7:
Microsoft Word 2007: 107 words
WriteMonkey: 107 words
NaNoWriMo Word Counter: 107 words.
OpenOffice 3.1.1: 107 words
Your post doesn't use erroneous punctuation, so that takes care of one of the biggest word counter issues. Plus, there's only one hyphenated word... I'm not sure why Open Office didn't count it as two words like it seems to usually do -- I did just download this version though so maybe it's got bug fixes in it.
Edit: For what it is worth, for writing I use MS Word 2007 exclusively and have never had a discrepancy with the NaNoWriMo counter of more than three or four words. I've found the differences to be due to me messing up formatting and missing a space after a comma, period or ellipsis.
----------NaNo 2006(win): "Children of the Stars"
NaNo 2007(win): "Darkness Falls"
NaNo 2008(win): "Dark Storm Rising"
52,540 / 50,000
Nov 7, 2009 - 20 16
I am actually fairly sure that we actually use Unix's wc command... a very basic, primitive word count function. It counts the spaces between words.
So it's already open source, if someone wants to create one. :) I can guarantee, though, at this time our tech team doesn't have the time to work on an official one, though.
----------Heather Dudley
Forums Moderator
Liquid Story Binder, on sale for 50% off during November!
A Dragon Writes
35,301 / 50,000
Nov 7, 2009 - 21 46
If NaNoWriMo.org already uses open-source technology, it's probably why it agrees with Notepad++ and OpenOffice Writer, as open source stuff tends to share and share alike. (And Microsoft just rips everyone off, but that's old news.) Operating system shouldn't matter, or at least the word counting algorithm should be basic enough that changing the OS shouldn't affect how it does its job.
----------Cups of coffee drank: 25
7,085 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2009 - 04 32
Well, Open Office is usually really, really bad at word counting -- we've seen discrepancies of thousands of words and we've found time and again that the cause is bugs in OpenOffice Writer, not in the NaNo Word counter. Discrepancies with other word processors have tended to be more author-error (punctuation mistakes mostly). Whether Microsoft rips off other folks is a non-issue for me; MS Word's word counting has been spot-on for me when I have not goofed up punctuation so if they stole it from someone, then all the open source stuff should steal the same one. (I am not a fan of open source stuff, in case you were wondering).
The reason I mentioned my OS was solely in case there is a discrepancy when someone else tries to ge a word count we have all the data points available.
----------NaNo 2006(win): "Children of the Stars"
NaNo 2007(win): "Darkness Falls"
NaNo 2008(win): "Dark Storm Rising"