Checking the Word Count

Select the text in which you want to count the words or characters. If you don't select anything, it defaults to tallying the entire document.

Open the Tools menu and select Word Count. The Word Count dialog box opens, displaying the number of pages, words, characters, paragraphs, and lines.

Click the Word Count dialog box's Close button to return to your document.

INTRODUCTION

Sometimes you might be asked to create documents with particular length specifications. For example, your boss might ask you for a 200-word project summary, or the newspaper in which you want to run an ad for your garage sale might limit the ad to three lines with 30 characters per line including spaces. Instead of counting each character, space, word, line, paragraph, or page, let Word do the work for you. In addition, to track the word count as you work, click the Show Toolbar button in the Word Count dialog box. If you add or remove any text, click the Recount button on the Word Count toolbar.

TIP

Space Characters

The words count calculates only the number of words in the selected text, whereas the characters count tallies up each letter, numeral, space (if desired), and punctuation mark.