I was wondering how does Scrivener counted the words? Because I copied a chapter from Microsoft Word and the word count was 2,016. After I pasted it into Scrivener, the word count is 1,972. So, I want to know how does scrivener counted the words.
Many thanks in advance,
Zach Sweets 
Never mind, I finally figured out the difference. It turns out Microsoft Word counts << as one word while Scrivener doesn’t count it as a word.
Yes, you’ll often find small discrepancies like this between programs. Counting words is not a science, and there are many theories on the proper way to do it. This is expected in the industry so it’s not too much to worry about.