![]() ![]() While a general guideline is one page is 500 words (single spaced) or 250 words (double spaced), this is a ballpark figure. So, there may not be a single “professional” answer to settle any side bets about how to count hyphenated words.There are times when it helps to know how many words per page you're writing. LaTeX also seems to lack a built-in word-count function. Googling, I see one suggestion for a hacky way to force InDesign to do a document-wide word count - a script that just counts raw spaces between words, much like the “wc” function you mentioned earlier. ![]() I recall that my print shop used InDesign, which does not appear to have a concept of a document-wide word count (although it is apparently possible to piece that total together from word counts of smaller segments). I did not think to ask how they verified the word count. Supreme Court amicus briefs last year, I was told that they used a professional typesetting package to transform my draft Word document into its final filed form. When I worked with a print shop to prepare some U.S. None of them have a separate provision for typeset briefs. Supreme Court, the federal courts of appeals, and the Texas appellate courts now use very similar language giving a safe harbor (“may rely”) to those using the word count feature of their word processor. Tags: Legal The distinction between word processing and “professionally typeset” briefs seems to be fading from the rules. If you are using WordPerfect, you now have one more thing to boast about: Your briefs will, by necessity, be a little less wordy. The clear choice for verbose people is Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word? It counts that statutory cite as a single word. WordPerfect (much like Pages) thinks that “§123.23(A)(1)(a)(i)” is five words. ))īut all WordPerfect’s sophistication is lost for deeply nested statutory cites. (( This paragraph was rewritten after Leif’s comment on this post. If you use an en dash rather than a hyphen, that subtle choice increases the word count. The same goes for spans of numbers joining them with an en dash to indulge your typographic precision does not cost you an extra word. In WordPerfect, two words joined together by any flavor of dash (a hyphen, en dash, or em dash) are treated as one long word. Word and WordPerfect also treat dashes differently. So the over counting of record cites is less pronounced in WordPerfect than in Pages.)) (( Oddly, WordPerfect counts “S.W.3d” as just one word and “4.RR.125-26” as (just) two words. It turns out that WordPerfect counts a record citation like “CR.25” as two separate words. What about the difference between WordPerfect and Word? (( Perhaps the programmer was trying aid struggling freelancers “paid by the word”? It’s puzzling. But so long as it counts words so greedily, it will be relegated to short motions and letters. This is a shame, because Pages is a very pleasant word processor to use. Pages sees imaginary word breaks in places that I do not. What led to the huge gap between the lowest count (Word) and the highest count (Pages)? It turns out that Pages uses an algorithm that treats an abbreviation like “4.RR.125-26” as being four words. Here are the word counts from four word processors I had at my fingertips: Word processor I put this text into its own clean word-processing file and made a few tweaks to the typography. I lifted roughly a page and a half from a recent appellate brief. Statutory citations: How many words is a cite to “§123.23(A)(1)(i)(a)”? Is it just one long word, or is it five very short words? Record citations: Is a record citation like “4.RR.124-25” one word or two or three or four? Numerals: Does a pinpoint cite to a span of pages (e.g., “123-25”) count as one word or two? Legal citations: Is “S.W.3d” one word or two? Phrasal adjectives: Is “summary-judgment motion” two words or three?.Word processors disagree about the mathĪlthough your favorite word processor will give you a “word count,” do you know what it is counting? This post explains my thinking - and may make you reconsider your word-processor allegiances. The comment I left suggested that your certificate specify the word processor that you used to generate the document (and thus the count). You’ve no doubt noticed the new word-count limits applicable in Texas appellate courts.Īt his blog, Todd Smith has collected some examples from practitioners about how to phrase the word-count certificate of compliance. ![]()
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