Yeah. Since I write long, I'm always bouncing off of word count limits on submissions. (grin) Most editors accept word count estimates from MS Word, because its so damned common, and most new writers don't know the old tricks of the five-letter "word" or the 250 words/page standards of yore. They certainly don't remember the word count wars between people with Elite and Pica typewriters (!!), let alone the reasons for using a non-proportional font like Courier vs. Times New Roman...
I've had two instances where my word counts and the editors were WAY off. The first time was when I discovered this bit with the hyphens.
Send as RTF attachment ~4pm
Rcv e-mail (12 minutes old) on Gmail account, saying the story is 60 words over 4000 words. That if I cut 60 words in the next hour, I could re-submit. Huh? Checked and found out that in doing Search-and-Replace of " ^= " with " ^~- ", that the non-breaking hyphens somehow count as words – never checked that before. There were 59 replacements.
Re-Send as RTF attachment ~4:30pm
The second time was the Barcelona novella contest, which specifies character and page counts -- but my dialogue tends to inflate the page count so that in 40,000 words, I couldn't make it fit both the character and page count limits. So I punted and printed it in Times New Roman. (!!) On A4 paper, of course. (grin)
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branchandroot
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Date: Tuesday, 30 January 2007 18:56 (UTC)I've had two instances where my word counts and the editors were WAY off. The first time was when I discovered this bit with the hyphens.
The second time was the Barcelona novella contest, which specifies character and page counts -- but my dialogue tends to inflate the page count so that in 40,000 words, I couldn't make it fit both the character and page count limits. So I punted and printed it in Times New Roman. (!!) On A4 paper, of course. (grin)
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