Author Topic: Actually a stupid question  (Read 2951 times)

Heradel

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on: November 06, 2007, 11:38:44 PM
I know this is stupid and shouldn't really come into the process, but it's been bothering me. About how many book sized pages does one regular letter-sized page (12 point, single spaced, no funky margins) translate to? Is it 1:1 or more like 1:1.5?

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Anarkey

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Reply #1 on: November 07, 2007, 05:16:45 PM
Instead of being a stupid question, I consider this a can of worms question.  And here I am, with the first wiggly, juicy worm.

Usually, what works predictively to tell how much space you would be taking up on the printed page within a book is not comparing a screen page or a word processor output page to a book-sized page, but using word count.  This is why editors ask for word counts on manuscripts.

In printer speak, as I understand it, word count is not truly a count of words but a character count (six characters per word!  Spaces count.  As do punctuations marks).  Given that, your word processor's word count function is not a true word count from a publisher's point of view. 

The most illuminating, concise version of how to get an accurate word count I've ever read comes from here.  All hail Teresa.

However, I just use wc -w and consider that close enough.

Wait, is that my geekitude showing?   :-[

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