Word and Character Count Tool

[Peter Green]

I occasionally produce documents where word count is important -- for example, I might write an article for a local publication which someone else wishes to publish on line as long as I can keep it within a specified word count.

I recently also asked someone else to write a brief piece for a newsletter where the space was limited. To give my writer an approximate word count, I had to copy the text from an earlier issue into Word and use the word count  from there.

InDesign has a built-in "Info" tool which is far more convenient.

[botkins]

I'm running into this exact same issue right now with a publication layout. Word count feels like a simple add that would be immeasurably helpful to some people.

[walt.farrell]

I'm sure word count could be provided, but to me it doesn't seem as simple as one might think.

Total words in the document? Including repeated use of the word "Page" in footers?

Words in one particular text frame? Or including any linked text frames?

Words in a paragraph? Or in a sentence? Or in a selection?

Words on all document pages, but not including any words that came from master pages?

Something else? Or any of the above, depending on options chosen by the user?

[Fixx]

All of it presented as table... but yes, this is more feature of a word processor, but as OP said sometimes useful in layout tool too.

[walt.farrell]

13 minutes ago, Fixx said:

All of it presented as table... but yes, this is more feature of a word processor, but as OP said sometimes useful in layout tool too.

Yes.

Mainly I was pointing out that it's not necessarily a simple function to add, given the various ways that words might need to be counted to satisfy everyone.

[Seadog]

I can barely believe Aff Publisher has no Word Count, when even Apple's Pages has a perfectly usable version visible all the time (if selected) and able to provide either total wordage for the document or a sub-total for any selected text, both of which are easily and prominently displayed.

Work-arounds that involve going in and out of other applications, copying and pasting and goodness knows what else, miss the point completely.

[Fixx]

Word processor character count is used daily. I need word/character count in layout applications maybe once in a year. I think it is for most users the same. Thus using workarounds hardly matter.

[Peter Green]

InDesign has a word count function which I use pretty frequently. It gives a word count within a frame or it counts words in a selected passage. As far as I am aware, it doesn't give the word count in an entire document. It should be possible at least to emulate what InDesign has offered since the beginning and PageMaker before it.

Examples of how I use word count include:

• Preparing documents for reading or verbal presentation where it helps me keep tabs on timing
• Copying quotations etc. from external sources into newsletters where space may be tight (and I have been able to count the approximate space using dummy text)
• Transferring material between my own publications and republishers' publications where the available target space is limited.

If I have to work out the word count from more than one frame, most computers come with a calculator, so the difficulties are not as great as some envisage.

Understandably, some users of a DTP program don't use it in these ways, but it is clear that some of us do.

 

[Seadog]

4 hours ago, Peter Green said:

some users of a DTP program don't use [word count] in these ways, but it is clear that some of us do.

Well said Peter. Thanks for your positive repost to the some of the nay-sayers. Word Count remains one very good and vital addition that could be made to AffPub. If some didn't wish to use the feature, they needn't!

[v_kyr]

Hmm, AFAI can see it's more or less suported for all major DTP tools, personally I know FM best and that supports such word and character count things since old Unix Workstation times. For many DTP tools with APIs and scripting support there are also other third party tools and plugins which sometimes go beyond simple word counts and offer even more here...

Quote

PDF Documents

To count the number of words in a PDF document:

1. Open the document in Adobe Acrobat (full version only, not Acrobat Reader)
2. Go to the 'File' menu
3. Choose 'Save As'
4. In the 'Save as type' drop-down menu, choose 'Rich Text Format (RTF)'
5. Click the 'Save' button
6. Open up your new RTF document in Microsoft Word
7. On the 'Review' tab, in the 'Proofing' group, click 'Word Count'

Quote

Adobe InDesign

To count the number of words in an Adobe InDesign document:

1. Open the document in Adobe InDesign
2. Click on 'Window' > 'Info' to open the 'Info' panel
3. To count words in a select area of text, highlight the text and see the Character, Word, Line and Paragraph counts appear in the 'Info' panel
4. To count words in a whole story, stretching across a large number of text frames, click your cursor into one of the text frames and see the relevant info appear in the panel

Quote

 

QuarkXPress

To count the number of words in a QuarkXPress document:

1. Open the document in QuarkXPress
2. Go to the 'Utilities' menu
3. Choose 'Word and Character Count'
4. Select 'Layout/Story'

Quote

FrameMaker

To count the number of words in an Adobe FrameMaker document:

1. Open the document in FrameMaker
2. Go to the 'File' menu
3. Choose the 'Utilities' function
4. Choose the 'Document Reports' function
5. Select 'Word Count' and press the 'Run' button

Quote

Readability Tools provides additional capabilities for analyzing and improving the readability of FrameMaker documents. Features include determining document statistics, calculating standard readability formulas, generating readability reports, and producing lists and counts of all words used in a document or book. The Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, ARI (Automated Readability Index), SMOG, and Gunning Fog Index readability tests are available.

...

When authoring or revising a document, you sometimes want to find out the number of words and characters in the document. For Asian-language documents with double-width (multibyte) charac­ters, counting the number of characters in a document is useful.

•Choose File > Utilities > Document Reports.
•Select Asian Character Count or WordCount, and then click Run.
note:    The Asian Character Count report gives the number of single-width characters, double-width characters, and the total number of characters.

Quote

PageMaker

To count the number of words in an Adobe PageMaker document:

1. Open the document in PageMaker
2. Go to the 'Utilities' menu
3. Choose the 'Plug-ins' function
4. Select 'Word Counter' function

 

[Wosven]

+1

This is an important feature for layout applications.

Some use:
1. You create with a client a new document (magazine type):

• He knows how much characters by page he wants, you create projects accordingly (It happens once a year… and I'm generous)
• He doesn't: you create some projects, using usual characters by page values until he's happy (most of the time, or he's already got a magazine, and you know if he wants more or less text here and there, etc.).

2. The project is validated. You do a "calibrage" for the client as example/reference/working file: on each page, you put a visible frame with datas about characters lenght (for header, article, block, etc.) That's when you need an integrated characters/lines/paragraphs  count.

In the best of world, with this, he'll be able to send articles with the right lenght (±10% of what was specified in your "calibrage", less text if he want more pictures than in the original file.
This original file, (we have the calibrage's datas on a hidden layer), is re-used each time we do a new magazine for the client: styles, frames, everything is clean each time we use it.

We'll adjust some parts if needed in the beginning, and re-do a new calibrage accordingly.

With this, we'll be happy and work few years, until the client want a fresher look for his magazine.

 

It's simplified a lot, but you've got the gist: it's important to tell a client (and easily retrieve the info) which lenght his text should be, or the shorter version should be… The same with coworker when we ask for some text here or there to complete a page…

 

 

[Distill7]

Usually, you'll need character/words count for the whole document and for selection, that's the most used ones.

Others can come later.

[fde101]

17 hours ago, v_kyr said:

Hmm, AFAI can see it's more or less suported for all major DTP tools

Most word processors do this too.

 

To count the words in a Nisus Writer Pro document...  just look at the center of the status bar along the bottom of the window.  Always right there.

To count the words in a Mellel document...  look at the Statistics palette.

 

Current versions of M$ Word also put it on the status bar along the bottom of the window.

[v_kyr]

26 minutes ago, fde101 said:

Most word processors do this too.

It's common usage, especially for word & text processors as for most text editors to show and give a char and word count overview. - In my own tools which deal with text input I indicate such things too.

[Distill7]

Word count is also so important to configure line length, 45-75 is the most recommended, and character/word count will help so much.

[cpoh]

I too need this on a daily basis and am missing this feature a lot whie transferring from InDesign to AP.

My UseCase is layouting a small newspaper and getting the texts from about 6 different people.
I have to go on a layout after content principle. This means the writers don't care much about the correct length of their articles and after the first layout run i do have to tell them "this could be xx characters longer" or "this have to be 234 characters shorter" etc.

For the last years there is the handy "info tool" in indesign which i use for:
- See the total count of characters in the text's columns (linked)
- See the count of characters in marked text
- see the count of overflowing text (that's for me the most helpful part)

As stated above, this whole counting is a feature in almost every software that deals with text and should be in AP as well.

[johnvsc]

Hey everyone -

One of the features that I always wanted (but never could seem to find) is average character count of sentence length - you know to get into the 65-68 sweet spots. 

That is the ask. Below are stream of consciousness meanderings that might be useful but probably not 😝

• This might be achievable within a particular frame text tool instance - I am not interested in a whole document analysis for this specific feature because that might be useless.
• Could maybe be a simple read-only analysis in the typography dialog box. I hesitate to add a set value to this because there are so many other considerations that affect this dimension — a simple "set sentence length count" key value pair would probably be abused.
• So, for this to work, maybe it is the container that is in focus - or, maybe even, the current selected text ... but the former would be better ...
• If I were to go type nazi -> I would say a line count abbreviation hanging in the left or right gutter maybe like 13/64  = line#/sentenceCount#

On 6/17/2019 at 6:45 AM, toutou123 said:

Word count is also so important to configure line length, 45-75 is the most recommended, and character/word count will help so much.

Just want to add that Designer and Publisher has resolved all the years of needed therapy from QuarkXpress and lesser tools. InDesign was amazing when it came out ... but Publisher - what a great job! thanks so much!

Edited February 22, 2020 by johnvsc
ugh typos ...

[dl1mgb]

+1

[MaurBela]

I'm guessing there is still no progress on this issue? Was looking for character count per column line to teach my students how to be design good typography  (55 to 75!!) and counting my hand... hmmm. Not happening in their world. Happy to hear if this changes soon as many students find other products impossible to afford and Canva and co. is simply not an option.