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Hidden control characters
Thread poster: Renassans LS
Renassans LS
Renassans LS
Local time: 11:17
German to Swedish
+ ...
Sep 9, 2003

Hello!

I've had some discussions with clients about word counts lately. Usually we compromised and I charged the average of our word counts. After a few of these incidents, I realized my count was always higher than those of my clients. Recently, one client mentioned hidden control characters as a possible reason for this (which my Word-version would count).

Does anyone have experience of these, and how do one stop Word from counting the hidden characters?

... See more
Hello!

I've had some discussions with clients about word counts lately. Usually we compromised and I charged the average of our word counts. After a few of these incidents, I realized my count was always higher than those of my clients. Recently, one client mentioned hidden control characters as a possible reason for this (which my Word-version would count).

Does anyone have experience of these, and how do one stop Word from counting the hidden characters?

Thanks for your help!

Jonas ▲ Collapse
 
T_Herrmann (X)
T_Herrmann (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:17
German to English
+ ...
I don't know about other Word Versions... Sep 9, 2003

but on my XP it is very simple. Hidden characters displayed, word counts them, hidden characters hidden, it doesn't.

HTH
 
Peter Linton (X)
Peter Linton (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 10:17
Swedish to English
+ ...
Different word counts Sep 9, 2003

I don't know the answer, but different software will inevitably count words differently. I did a test some months ago. Take this French phrase:
L'argent de Louis-Philippe
How many words? MS Word finds 3 words, MetaTexis finds 4, and WordFast finds 5. Which is right?
 
Heinrich Pesch
Heinrich Pesch  Identity Verified
Finland
Local time: 12:17
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
characters, not words Sep 10, 2003

Lars Peter Linton wrote:

I don't know the answer, but different software will inevitably count words differently. I did a test some months ago. Take this French phrase:
L'argent de Louis-Philippe
How many words? MS Word finds 3 words, MetaTexis finds 4, and WordFast finds 5. Which is right?

Probably the problem relates to pricing along with the amount of characters or Normzeilen, not word-count.
I have never had any differences with my clients or colleagues about this feature, and a quick test shows, that word counts the same number of characters, if hidden characters are shown or not. Very strange!
 
Renassans LS
Renassans LS
Local time: 11:17
German to Swedish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Very odd... Sep 10, 2003

Thanks for you comments.

I did try to count the characters/words with all characters shown and then with some hidden, without change in word count.

The problem really doesn't relate to number of characters per line, either. We have agreed on 55 characters/line. Either way, we do get a different number of words too.

I use Word XP, and I know that at least one of my clients use an earlier version. Do you think that the different versions count differently?... See more
Thanks for you comments.

I did try to count the characters/words with all characters shown and then with some hidden, without change in word count.

The problem really doesn't relate to number of characters per line, either. We have agreed on 55 characters/line. Either way, we do get a different number of words too.

I use Word XP, and I know that at least one of my clients use an earlier version. Do you think that the different versions count differently?

I guess one solution would be to agree on the Trados word count instead of the one from Word, but since Trados doesn´t count numbers and such as words (right?) I'd be losing out.

Jonas





[Edited at 2003-09-10 06:28] ▲ Collapse
 


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