My document has 99 pages. What will it cost to edit?

Jobs are priced per word. So, the price for a job is the number of words times the rate for a word in the local currency. Choosing the rewrite option doubles the price as that provides a more substantive edit or is used for certain types of edit (another blog post). The express option also increases the price.

Well, then, how does Wordy count how many words there are in my document? What is a word anyway?

For Word documents (DOCX, and also ODT, RTF, etc.), the word count is, more or less, as you would expect. These are all single words:

• word
• £1234.56
• COVID-19
• Jump!
• B.B.C.
• 1+1
• ?

Although note that the word count includes the bullets in the list (which MS Word does not count as words). So, punctuation at the end of a word is ignored but standalone punctuation counts as a word. Numbers count as a word. The word count includes, for example, the number of words in each table cell. Also each figure counts as a single word (including the figures can make it easier for your editor to understand the text and also allows the editor to cross-reference between the text and and the figure). By contrast. the word counter in Word does not include figures. Of course, behind the scenes and out of sight, a DOCX has also sorts of tags for formatting. These are all ignored.

The word counter works in much the same way for Excel spreadsheets in XLSX files as it does for DOCX, effectively treating each sheet as a table. The word count also includes the name of the sheet. A formula counts as a single word, but it is unlikely that your editor will look at any formulas.

PowerPoint files are again, much the same. Slides do not count as words. Only, the words in the slides count. Figures also count as a single word. Lines and shapes are not counted.

For a PDF, the word count includes only selectable words. These are words that you can highlight with the “Replace selected text” or “Underline” tools in Adobe Reader. Text embedded in images is not selectable, is not included in the word count and will be, generally, ignored by your editor. The word count also includes words in comments, although these will probably not be edited.

For a web page (HTML, HTM), the word count just includes the words displayed. It ignores all the tags used for formatting.

Plain text documents (TXT and text pasted into Wordy) do not support formatting of any kind (fonts, bold, bullets, images, etc.). So, there are no tags under the hood. The word count is then what you would expect the word count to be.

With LaTeX jobs, the word count does include LaTeX commands and comments.