1. stargazingwriter

    stargazingwriter New Member

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    Setting number of words per page on a word ?

    Discussion in 'Writing Software and Hardware' started by stargazingwriter, Mar 15, 2018.

    How can you set up a word processor(suggest one) to put a set number of words(like 200) on a page? What words: "I, the, a, on, etc." do you not count? Thanks
     
  2. SethLoki

    SethLoki Retired Autodidact Contributor

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    I'd say you count them all. I'd also say that to get a 200 word average on a page you may want to visit some of your old writing, copy paste the requisite block it into a new doc, then adjust font size + margin till your last sentence fills the page. Do that a couple more times with other samples of your work to get an average and call that it.

    Only... can you call it 'it' ? I've just thought—Paragraph breaks, dialogue... chapter endings. < They're all gonna throw you out of kilter.
     
  3. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    I'm unclear. What's the greater goal here?
     
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  4. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I don't know that I've seen that option with a standard word processor. Sounds like something you might be able to do with desktop publishing software, maybe using text boxes or something. I suppose the question, as acknowledged by @ChickenFreak, is why?
     
  5. izzybot

    izzybot (unspecified) Contributor

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    Echoing the 'why'.

    But if you use Standard Manuscript Format, you should end up with approximately 300w per page -- if you're looking to convert page count to word count, that gives you a rough estimate. You do count every word, by the way. Always.

    I also found this for LibreOffice, which is what I use -- it's about lines rather than words, but without knowing what you're after, I dunno if that might be useful. And this thread about OpenOffice.
     
  6. stargazingwriter

    stargazingwriter New Member

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    Why? Well, I thought it would be an electronic way to put all the words in a book on separate pages without counting the words. To look at it and see how many pages the complete text will be....to be or not to be...that is my question?
     
  7. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Scrivener has something akin to what you're looking for. I don't know if MS Word has something similar.

    Screen Shot 2018-03-16 at 8.59.35 AM.png
     
  8. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    So, are you self-publishing? And you want to know how exactly how the text will appear in the printed page? If you are using Createspace, for example, just download the appropriate size template and paste your text into it.
     
  9. Ohmo

    Ohmo Banned

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    I'm pretty sure it's impossible to do in any existing word processor.

    A viable alternative might be counting characters instead of words, which can be as short as one character or as long as 189,819 characters ( https://gizmodo.com/5962401/the-longest-word-in-english-takes-35-hours-to-pronounce ) - which is quite a mouthful. One character is one character no matter how many words it is in.

    Why not try this: set margins, font, and size, spacing, indents, etc. and then start typing. After running out of space, count the characters (done automatically in MS Word, and probably in most others). The same number of characters should fit on each page set up as the first page.

    If these suggestions are not helpful it is entirely my fault because I cannot visualize any useful reason to automatically set the number of words that can be typed on a page. Words vary in length, so what might fit on one page within the settings suggested above, would not fit in subsequent pages.
     

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