Hyphenated words |
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AngofWords
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 15 Jul 2018 Location: Columbus, Ohio Status: Offline Points: 774 |
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Posted: 15 Jul 2018 at 9:59am |
Hello! I'm extremely close to the max word count and I realized that my program (Libre Office) counts hyphenated words as one word. I know others may count them as two, and I'd hate to be disqualified over something so trivial. Can you let me know how they are counted here?
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Cosima
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 13 Jul 2018 Location: California Status: Offline Points: 638 |
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This is a great question--I was wondering the same thing. Decided to err on the side of caution.
I'd love to know the answer!
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wordnerd30
Newbie Joined: 17 Jul 2018 Status: Offline Points: 13 |
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This is an excellent question and I would love to hear other opinions. I can't guess how the judges will interpret things. I use Microsoft Word and it counts hyphenated words as one.
I can only give you my personal interpretation, which is not to be taken as a definitive answer. If you hyphenate a word to be used as an adjective describing a noun, you are creating a single unit of expression. Let me try to give an example off the top of my head. She refused to swim in the shark-infested ocean. "Shark-infested" is now a single adjective describing a noun (the ocean). Here is what the AP Style Guide has to say on the subject: "Hyphens join words together and should be used to help form a single idea from two words or avoid ambiguity in your writing." Hopefully, you get more answers to your excellent question. Edited by wordnerd30 - 21 Jul 2018 at 2:43am |
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Read my first FF submission CH1 (Horror):In Cold Water
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jdadams1
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 13 Jul 2018 Status: Offline Points: 4559 |
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Oh, if they count hyphenated modifiers as two separate words, then I'm definitely over my word limit. I was trained in AP Style for many years, so it is second nature for me to hyphenate compound modifiers. (I think it looks strange when I see them not hyphenated.)
Two separate word counters said that my piece was (barely) under the word maximum -- Microsoft Word and a third-party online tool I found. (The online tool said it was about six words more than Microsoft Word did, but they both came in under.)
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Poutine
NYC Midnight Groupie Joined: 16 Jul 2018 Status: Offline Points: 155 |
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I wondered the same thing. Initially, I cut a bunch of stuff out and was under. But I found that a line I took out could go back in and I'd have exactly 1000 words. Google Doc and an online word counter put my document at 1000. But my friend put it in MS Word (after I submitted) and it came back at 1002! I have the word five-year-old which Google Doc counts as one word, but the other counter reads "year" and "old" as two additional words.
Anyway, moral of the story is when they say 1000 words, I'm going to write 995...need some padding there—just in case.
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FFC19|R1G96| The Rivalry
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Trond24
NYC Midnight Addict Joined: 26 Jul 2016 Location: Aguanga, CA Status: Offline Points: 1080 |
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One thing I noted this time around after specifically looking at it: times
8:49 p.m. 8:40p 20:49 even the 20:49 is counted as two words in gdocs. The 8:49 p.m. is four! Open Office counts 20:49 as one word. Not sure how Word treats it? It really is worth going over this with a fine-tooth comb. :-P
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"Every time I think I've seen it all, a person comes along and objects to the mistreatment of rubber chickens."
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Suave
NYC Midnight Black Belt Joined: 25 Jan 2015 Location: Thailand Status: Offline Points: 25028 |
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I have submitted right on the nose of the word count many times. As far as I know I have never been dinged - but here on NYCM they never tell us anything to do with scoring, so who nos? I am going to bet that they realize just how many different ways there are to count a story so they might just do it with two or three and take the one counting the least.
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