Re: Rules for counting words in XyW 3+

["Lawrence Malkin" malkinlit@xxxxxxxx]

Dear Alison Tartt

  Like you, I am a professional writer and editor and have an
even easier way, which I have found foolproof in editing and
writing books for publishers, articles for magazines, and even
for newspapers when I worked for them, where the count must be
quite close. This has worked for me since 1986, and it also works
for novels. I use XyWrite 3+. Right now I am editing (ghosting)
a book by an outrageously wordy former Washington official of
very high rank and fortunately fat wallet; at the end of the day,
all I need to know is the number of bytes given in the XyWrite
"DIR" directory next to the file and a pocket calculator in order
to know how close I am keeping to the publisher's iron rule of
inner space.

  I divide the number of bytes in the file (i.e., article or
chapter) by 5.5 or 5.6. I find this gives the number of words to
within a couple of hundred as counted by Word in an article or
chapter of, let's say 5,000 words. Now it's possible that you
have a simpler, snappier, less Latinate stytle than
mine--actually, you do--or, like most people you use simpler
language writing a newspaper article than a book. Then you simply
vary the number by a factor of one-tenth. If I feel like
cheating, I use 5.7. For me, it never varies much more than that.
  To establish your own divisor (I think that's the term),
count out a few of your printed pages by hand. You'll be
surprised how constant the number remains page by page, and then
multiply. Doublecheck at the end of the article. It remains very
close to the counts by Word, in my experience, although when I
convert XyWrite to Word I use MSWorks and keep the matter in a
very simple txt or .doc mode. All of this keeps me out of the
hands of nerds, even if it takes a few minutes longer.

Lawrence Malkin.
212-213-0045 or 212-689-9346
malkinlit@xxxxxxxx

 .
----- Original Message -----
From: "WooF" 
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 3:13 PM
Subject: Re: Rules for counting words in XyW 3+


> I'm a professional magazine editor. I use what's caled
"Printer's
> Rule" for counting words: number of characters in a typical,
> mid-paragraph line, divided by 6, times the number of lines in
> the whole document. Count lines that will be blank in the final
> document; don't count blank lines between paragraphs that wil
> disappear in teh final document.
>
> To do this quickly in XyWrite:
>
> Use a monospaced font on screen,
> Set line length to 63 characters.
>
> Set lines per page at 100 lines.
>
> Close up blank lines between paragraphs unless they are lines
> that will be blank in the final, typeset copy.
>
> Go to the end of the document on screen. Look at the page/line
> counter. (pages minus 1) x 100 plus (lines on last page) gives
> the total line count. Multiply that times 100, then divide by
> six. This gives you the "word" count by Printer's Rule -- which
> is really a measure of the space the document will take on a
> typeset page; it is NOT a measure of the number of real words,
> but it's more useful for typesetters, layout folks, and
editors.
>
> George H Scithers of owlswick@xxxxxxxx
> Editor, Weird Tales
>
> On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, Alison Tartt wrote:
>
> >
> > Can anyone tell me how XyWrite 3+ determines a word when
counting words in
> > a document (WC command)? I'm trying to figure out why
XyWrite's count is so
> > radically and consistently different from MS-Word's. If this
has already
> > been address on the list, I apologize.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Alison Tartt
> >
>
>