Knowledge Base

Works: Word Count Counts Punctuation and Pictures as Words

Article ID: 121674

Article Last Modified on 11/15/2004

APPLIES TO

This article was previously published under Q121674

SYMPTOMS

Single characters (including punctuation marks) and graphical objects that are preceded by and followed by a space or a paragraph mark are counted as words in Works for Windows.

RESOLUTION

To prevent a character or object from being counted as a word, remove the space (or paragraph mark) before or after it.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

Steps to Reproduce Problem

  1. In a new word processing document with no header and footer text and no footnotes/endnotes, enter the following text:

    word1 word2 word3 word4 word5 word6 ?
    Word7 Word8 Word9 , <PICTURE> Word10 !

    NOTE: <PICTURE> indicates an inserted picture or OLE object.

    If you manually count, you find 10 words.
  2. From the Tools menu, choose Word Count.

    The result is 14.
The picture and , ! ? were counted as words. If you remove a space before or after the object or character, it is not counted as a word.

NOTE: Because Word 6.0 for Windows counts single characters but not pictures as words, it returns 13 for the test above.

Additional query words: 2.00 2.00a 3.00 3.00a 3.00b 4.00 4.00a 4.50 4.50a w_works count words buglist2.0 buglist3.0 buglist3.0a buglist3.0b buglist4.0

Keywords: kbprb KB121674


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