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Word Count Analyzer

Have you ever had different tools give you conflicting word counts? Although word count is a seemingly mundane task it is sometimes the cause of a lot of unnecessary stress in client-translator relationships. Your client's tool reports one word count, and your tool reports a different word count. What is causing the difference? This tool will tell you. TM-Town's Word Count Analyzer searches your text for areas that are known to cause word count discrepancies across different tools and reports those to you. Try the live demo below!

Word Count Analyzer is an open source tool built by TM-Town. Currently this tool supports English.


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Common word count gray areas include:

Other gray areas not covered by this tool:


Ellipsis

default = 'ignore'

Checks for any occurrences of ellipses in your text. Writers tend to use different formats for ellipsis, and although there are style guides, it is rare that these rules are followed.

Three Consecutive Periods ...

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 0

Four Consecutive Periods ....

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 0

Three Periods With Spaces . . .

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 3
Pages 0

Four Periods With Spaces . . . .

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 4
Pages 0

Horizontal Ellipsis

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 0

Hyperlink

default = 'count_as_one'

http://www.example.com

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 1
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 4

Contraction

default = 'count_as_one'

Most tools count contractions as one word. Some might argue a contraction is technically more than one word.

can't

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 1
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 1

Hyphenated word

default = 'count_as_one'

devil-may-care

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 1
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 3

Date

default = 'no_special_treatment'

Most word processing tools do not do recognize dates, but translation CAT tools tend to recognize dates as one word or placeable. TM-Town's tool checks for many date formats including those that include day or month abbreviations. A few examples are listed below (not an exhaustive list).

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 4
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 4
Pages 4

04/04/2011

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 1
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 3

04.04.2011

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 1
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 1

Number

default = 'count'

Simple number 200

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 1
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 1

Number with preceding unit $200

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 1
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 1

Number with unit following 50%

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 1
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 1

Numbered list

default = 'count'

1. List item a
2. List item b
3. List item c

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 12
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 12
Pages 9

XML and HTML

default = 'remove'

<span class="large-text">Hello world <new-tag>Hello</new-tag>

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 3
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 4
Pages 12

Forward slash

default = 'count_as_multiple_except_dates'

she/he/it

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 3
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 3

Backslash

default = 'count_as_one'

c:\Users\johndoe

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 1
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 3

Dotted line

default = 'ignore'

.........

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 0

………………………

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 0

Dashed line

default = 'ignore'

-----------

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 0

Underscore

default = 'ignore'

____________

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 0

Stray punctuation

default = 'ignore'

?

Tool Word Count
TM-Town 0
Microsoft Word / wc (Unix) 1
Pages 0

Additional Resources