[OS X TeX] Word count function?

[Curtis Clifton]

On Jan 18, 2005, at 5:22 AM, Peter Pagin wrote:

> Here is a proposal: 'E' is one word, a context department singular 
> term; '=' is one word, a two-place predicate; 'm' is one word, a 
> context dependent singular term, 'c' is one word, a constant singular 
> term, and '^2' is one word, a mathematical function expression. All in 
> all, this gives us five words. The multiplication function is not 
> represented by any word of the surface string, but is implicit in the 
> construction.

I thought that the usual reason for word count limits is because 
publishers actually have a page count limit and they don't trust 
authors to typeset appropriately for their pages to match the final 
page count.  Therefore, publishers give authors a word count limit and 
trust them to be able to count words.

It seems that with TeX, counting well typeset pages would be more 
accurate than counting words.  So it seems that a first option might be 
to ask whoever is imposing the word count limit what average 
words-per-page they are assuming.  Then one could just use a page count 
limit.  If they require you to tell them how many words you have, well, 
just multiple your page count by their number.

All this assumes that you have a .cls file that matches the publishers 
formatting requirements.  And idealistically assumes that someone at 
the publisher will divulge the necessary info.

Cheers,

Curt

----------------------------------
Curtis Clifton, PhD Candidate
Dept. of Computer Science, Iowa State University
http://www.cs.iastate.edu/~cclifton

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