How do you count words for a writing assignment?

[yvonne]

I made it all the way through college without ever having to count words for a writing assignment. (Of course, that was back in the dark ages, so maybe requiring x pages was the norm back then.)

 

We're doing WWS, week 5, and the assignment calls for a chronological narrative "at least 150 words long and no longer than 300 words." About how long is that in pages? When you count words, do you count articles?

 

Thanks!

[KathyBC]

If you type it, most word processing programs have a word count feature. It's been awhile, but I think one handwritten page would come to about 100 words, though I'm open to correction on that. I count articles.

[Carol in Cal.]

Yup, a handwritten single-spaced page is usually about 100 words, and Word does have a word count feature.

[chepyl]

I always checked with the the word counter in Word.

[Farrar]

If it's that few, I would just count it a couple of times to get a feel for the handwriting word count per page of your child.

[yvonne]

Good idea. I'll have the boys count their words, including articles, for a couple of assignments to get a feel for the length of "100 words."

 

Oh, my goodness! I just checked Word & found the word count tool! I never knew it was there. Wish we had more than one computer so they could just type their assignments.

 

Thank you so much, everyone!

[Grover]

For handwritten work you can get a close enough estimate by counting the number of words on five random full lines of text, taking the average of that and multiplying by the number of lines written.