Hope I’m doing this right.
This seems to be a bug.
Problem: Enter the following text into a new text.
Character count should be 15, but character count will be 17 or 18 depending on whether or not you hit Enter after line 3. This suggests character count is counting line breaks as characters.
Why this is a problem: Many word count formulas rely on characters including spaces (but not line breaks). For example, a common formula is characters including spaces / 6 (because page space is more important than actual words for obvious reasons). This also affects page count calculations based on characters per page, because those numbers are typically excluding line breaks.
FWIW, counting line breaks is also contrary to three different word processors I’ve used–all of which disagree on word count but agree on character+space count, and don’t include line breaks in that count.
Based on the traditional methods of estimating word and page counts and the fact that word processors agree on this, line breaks should not be counted in the character count.
System: Windows 7, Scrivener 1.2.3.0 (22 June 2012)
Thanks.