I have become a tad frustrated with Microsoft Word lately (“Only a tad?” I can hear you asking.) because its word-count feature seems to count a whole lot of things as words which aren’t words. For instance, the em-dash (or the — ) is counted as a whole word when it is surrounded by spaces, but not otherwise. I’m going through a patch of using lots of em-dashes, and so my real word-count does not match my perceived word-count.
“Why should you mind?” you all keep asking. (I can hear you out there!)
Well, I’ll tell you why I mind. The NaNoWriMo contest has set the “winner’s circle” at a minimum of 50,000 words. They will count them at the end. And I have a very sneaky suspicion that em-dashes just aren’t gonna count as words. They’ll probably use a handy javascript thingy like I went and found. I not only found it, I installed it on a page here at the site, this particular page, so as we all can use it. It’s also linked to over there on the sidebar.
Copy and paste your story into the little window on that page, and hit the button. Easy as pie. (Why do they always say “easy as pie?” I don’t know how to make pie. For me it would be hard.) (But I trust you get the point.)
white pebble 