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Word count in Affinity Publisher


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Via pdf ... online
For me a usable workaround.

But Publisher certainly needs a word count. On section, (connected) text frame, page, section, document. + my mac, the web, globe, universe 😉 
Missed also last month or so a good head- and footnote system!

But every day I enjoy the app in the studio setting!

grtz, Jos
(57 words)

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I created a document in Publisher for the first time since ditching Indesign.
The idea was to recreate a previous A4 Indesign file in A5 size and in Publisher.
There are a few paragraphs of text that need editing down to fit the new size.
The Editor asked for a word count. A pretty normal request in publishing but I was so surprised that a dedicated publishing app didn't have a feature so fundamental to what we're using it for, I had to check the forum to see if I was missing something?
I am missing something... A word count facility.
I know the price of the app is so much better than Indesign and for the most part it's a joy to use. I don't expect it to have all the bells and whistles of Indesign either but when when an app of such potential ignores fundamental practices of the industry it is designed to serve (and not for any lack of prompting by industry users) you have to wonder who the developers are listening to?
Let's face it, Affinity don't market their apps to deter professionals and attract Hobbyists.
 

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The only problem I see with a word count is that words vary so much in length. Maybe a character count (with and without spaces) would be more accurate if you want to have an idea of how much space is used?

For example a count of ten words could either be:

"a a a a a a a a a a"

or it could be

"Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism" 

 😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁

57 minutes ago, Brian W said:

I created a document in Publisher for the first time since ditching Indesign.
The idea was to recreate a previous A4 Indesign file in A5 size and in Publisher.
There are a few paragraphs of text that need editing down to fit the new size.
The Editor asked for a word count. A pretty normal request in publishing but I was so surprised that a dedicated publishing app didn't have a feature so fundamental to what we're using it for, I had to check the forum to see if I was missing something?
I am missing something... A word count facility.
I know the price of the app is so much better than Indesign and for the most part it's a joy to use. I don't expect it to have all the bells and whistles of Indesign either but when when an app of such potential ignores fundamental practices of the industry it is designed to serve (and not for any lack of prompting by industry users) you have to wonder who the developers are listening to?
Let's face it, Affinity don't market their apps to deter professionals and attract Hobbyists.
 

Seriously, I agree that word and character counts could sometimes be useful, but until Affinity introduces such a feature, if you really need a word count, it's easy enough to copy and paste the text into a text editor, like LibreOffice. It took about twenty seconds to find out that this post has 191 words and 1,027 characters in it.

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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Quote

 if you really need a word count, it's easy enough to copy and paste the text into a text editor, like LibreOffice.

Fair enough, try that with an entire newspaper (a little one, to be fair) but 20 pages with around 100 articles. Sums up every week.

Quote

For example a count of ten words could either be:

You're right. But since virtually NO software i used to layout magazines and newspapers in the last 20 years did have either word OR character count (they all have this feature and count both, if not more (paragraphs etc.)) , i think the focus here is COUNT.
Maybe i should update the topic, thanks for that. 🙂
 

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18 minutes ago, cpoh said:

Fair enough, try that with an entire newspaper (a little one, to be fair) but 20 pages with around 100 articles. Sums up every week.

I can see this starting to get a bit complicated! It seems that what is really needed is the ability to count words and characters in a single text frame, a story in linked text frames, the number on a page and in the whole publication. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a bit more work to implement it than just a word count. Maybe a dedicated tab for information about the contents of a publication would be a good idea?

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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25 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

The only problem I see with a word count is that words vary so much in length. Maybe a character count (with and without spaces) would be more accurate if you want to have an idea of how much space is used?

For example a count of ten words could either be:

"a a a a a a a a a a"

or it could be

"Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism Antidisestablishmentarianism" 

 😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁

Seriously, I agree that word and character counts could sometimes be useful, but until Affinity introduces such a feature, if you really need a word count, it's easy enough to copy and paste the text into a text editor, like LibreOffice. It took about twenty seconds to find out that this post has 191 words and 1,027 character in it.

I hear what you're saying. It's 'how long is a piece of string' but when you have an industry that has historically relied on a particular way of measuring text to approximate the space required, it seems strange to ignore it.
Using a third party app to tell you something that the app you're working in is doing seems a little out of whack. Especially when you consider the amount of competing apps that can deliver what you need.
Publisher can't genuinely hope to compete with the more established apps if it's going to fall at hurdles like this and the developers are going to literally ignore industry professionals who seem to think it necessary/useful.

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2 minutes ago, Brian W said:

I hear what you're saying. It's 'how long is a piece of string' but when you have an industry that has historically relied on a particular way of measuring text to approximate the space required, it seems strange to ignore it.
Using a third party app to tell you something that the app you're working in is doing seems a little out of whack. Especially when you consider the amount of competing apps that can deliver what you need.
Publisher can't genuinely hope to compete with the more established apps if it's going to fall at hurdles like this and the developers are going to literally ignore industry professionals who seem to think it necessary/useful.

I don't disagree, but I think it also depends on how you work. I don't miss having a word count, partly because I don't really need it for what I do, but also because I always write anything of any length in a word processor and then import it into APub to do the formatting and layout. It just depends how you choose to work.

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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13 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

I can see this starting to get a bit complicated! It seems that what is really needed is the ability to count words and characters in a single text frame, a story in linked text frames, the number on a page and in the whole publication. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a bit more work to implement it than just a word count. Maybe a dedicated tab for information about the contents of a publication would be a good idea?

I really don't think, it's getting complicated. This is a feature, that industry leading programs like Quark and Adobe InDesign deliver.
I don't care much, how this is integrated as long as it actually is integrated. But at a basis a character and word count on a textframe basis (connected or not) is a must if you're aiming for semi- and professional users, especially those, who are willing to leave the market leaders...

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2 minutes ago, PaulEC said:

It just depends how you choose to work.

Sadly not everyone can freely choose here. See, in my case, i get texts from about 20 editors/writers.
They do not have a word count as a goal, sometimes its 2 paragraphs, sometimes a whole page with pics. So the page layout somewhat follows the content.
If you have to fit 3 articles on a page, you sometimes have to tell one or all three writers to shorten or lenghten their articles. And this goes only by telling them "shorten about 240 characters" or "lenghten by 1.200".

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4 minutes ago, Alfred said:

Or floccinaucinihilipilification.

That depends on how you measure the length, number of letters, or the space it takes up on a page! (Which was sort of my point originally!)

floccinaucinihilipilification

antidisestablishmentarianism

😉

(Unless, of course, you're using a monospaced font!)

Acer XC-895 : Core i5-10400 Hexa-core 2.90 GHz :  32GB RAM : Intel UHD Graphics 630 : Windows 10 Home
Affinity Publisher 2 : Affinity Photo 2 : Affinity Designer 2 : (latest release versions) on desktop and iPad

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4 minutes ago, cpoh said:

I really don't think, it's getting complicated. This is a feature, that industry leading programs like Quark and Adobe InDesign deliver.
I don't care much, how this is integrated as long as it actually is integrated. But at a basis a character and word count on a textframe basis (connected or not) is a must if you're aiming for semi- and professional users, especially those, who are willing to leave the market leaders...

Exactly!
It's not the fact of whether it's entirely necessary or how good it is, it's the fact that it's just not there is a real head-scratcher.
If you tried to market a publishing/word processing app to someone and told them that it didn't have a word/character count, what do you think the response would be?

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I guess for over two years now we're still waiting on this simple elusive word count function. I know this is new software considering how long Adobe has been around but really, there are some basic functions people are asking for that never seem to be implemented to the trio of apps. Could we actually have an answer from Affinity as to whether or not this word count is planned, then we can all move on. It's really such a basic and necessary feature when designing spreads. Thanks.

MacBook Pro 2.9GHz, 16GB, 4GB GPU, macOS 11.7.8

Affinity Designer 1.10.6, Affinity Photo 1.10.6, Affinity Publisher 1.10.6

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  • 3 months later...

Upvote on Word Count! The more I depend on AP, the more I need word count.  A handy additional feature would be to see a target word count per spread/page and a notification appears if you overshoot it. It would help readability. 

Happy New Year lads

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  • 2 months later...

This is the first time that I have looked up this topic and could not believe what I have seen. An obvious and simple feature has been ignored for years. I have just started to design and print a communal newsletter. I asked contributors to submit articles with a certain word-count, assuming that I'd be able to check this with no problem. But the feature is missing. Now I either have to count manually or export to another pice of software just to count the words. It's been in all major word processors since dinosaurs ruled.

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7 minutes ago, stuartbarry said:

This is the first time that I have looked up this topic and could not believe what I have seen. An obvious and simple feature has been ignored for years. I have just started to design and print a communal newsletter. I asked contributors to submit articles with a certain word-count, assuming that I'd be able to check this with no problem. But the feature is missing. Now I either have to count manually or export to another pice of software just to count the words. It's been in all major word processors since dinosaurs ruled.

It's beyond me it really is sometimes, the way the most basic necessary features like this get overlooked. I mean who was paid to overlook a word count function in an app in which the primary use is working with text for publication 🤯

MacBook Pro 2.9GHz, 16GB, 4GB GPU, macOS 11.7.8

Affinity Designer 1.10.6, Affinity Photo 1.10.6, Affinity Publisher 1.10.6

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On 3/25/2022 at 2:46 PM, Ted88 said:

an app in which the primary use is working with text for publication

I’m all in favour of Affinity Publisher having a word count (along with other counts such as characters, lines and paragraphs) but the primary function of any layout app is — wait for it! — layout. There may be little or no text in the content being laid out.

Alfred spacer.png
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for Windows • Windows 10 Home/Pro
Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher 2 for iPad • iPadOS 17.4.1 (iPad 7th gen)

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2 hours ago, Alfred said:

There may be little or no text in the content being laid out.

Yes, but MAY is the thing here.

I mostly layout books (yes, with multi-page-text! ;-)) and small newspapers (also lot's of text).
For this use case (one-page designs with little text i do in designer, not publisher) i need word and character counts. Especially for the newspaper where i have to tell some of the contributors "your text is too long or short by xx characters...

Since you can mostly count on lots of text in a multiple page layout program, i think it's essential. I used InDesign for a long time and think this feature is there for many reasons.

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  • 4 months later...

I would love a word count feature as well. However, for those wanting counts for highlighted sections, words, characters, etc., all of the books I layout come from Google docs. Docs has all of that in its "Tools" menu. Yes, you have to highlight it over there, but I already have it open for each chapter and use 3 screens, so it's not too terribly out of the way.

Everyone else, a decent workaround is just keeping a Google doc open to paste in and delete when done.

Bonus docs to publisher points: since italics don't carry over from docs into a formatted publisher text box, docs has a handy little feature to highlight just italicized words. Saves me a ton! Highlight an italicized/other formatted word (or click between two italicized letters) > right click > formatting tools > select all matching text. It will highlight every italicized, bold, etc., word in the document as long as the writer did not change text styles or copy in half the text from elsewhere.

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  • 1 year later...

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