Posted by Ed Kiser on July 04, 2002 at 17:51:18 from 152.163.195.182 user Kisered.
In Reply to: Books - size & wordcount posted by John Wilson on July 03, 2002 at 03:48:41:
John-
My stories are set up with one chapter per file. The collection
of chapters for one book are kept as a set of files in one
subdirectory. Being in ASCII TEXT format, they are quite compatable
to being displayed with simple text editors, such as EDIT or
NOTEPAD, or the more sophisticated word processors such as MS WORD
and WORD PERFECT, once they are told the input is the old fashioned
simple ASCII TEXT with HARD CR at the end of each line. I dare not
run the spell checker of these more sophisticated readers because
they speak English (American) not English (UK). Too bad we don't
agree how to spell the same word on both sides of the pond. But
then, that is half the fun of going through these texts, to note
the oddities of difference in our languages, but it does make it
a bit of a re-training process to get the typing DUN RITE.
I took the SA subdirectory, and put a scan across each of the 31 chapters of that book, getting a word count on a per chapter basis.
Here are the results so far (according to Word Perfect):
SA - total word count 100,340
average size of each word - 4
average number of words per sentence - 6
I thought it was interesting that for the "4" and "6" statistic,
it seemed to be consistant for each and every chapter.
The word count must be considered as approximate. There are
several types of entries that can affect this word count. For
example, each page has, for example, the notation:
P176
which counts as a word.
The name of the chapter has words in it that are also counted.
For pictures, which of course I cannot "type" in a picture, I
do include the notation that looks like (for example):
P176 picture, "Title Of Picture"
which in this example, produces an addition to the word count
of FIVE more words.
So my total word count does also include the above items that
perhaps you do not want to consider.
I did not include the file that is just the table of contents in
this count.
The books that I have, so far, produced as ASCII text files, are:
SA, SD, WH, PP, PM, CC, BS, WD. I am about 70% through entering
"Secret Water". Not sure at this time if I am interested in
typing in any of the others, as they are much lower on my personal
interest list. If that statement steps on anyone's "favorite" -
sorry 'bout that.
What books were you specifically interested in getting their
word count made?
Hope all this helps...
It's been my pleasure.
Ed Kiser