I have just started using Scrivener for essay writing and research after a recommendation from my partner who uses it to write novels. I love it!
I have a feature request. For many of the essays I submit the total word count does not include any quotes or bibliography. Whilst the bibliography can easily be placed in a separate document (and thus I can untick “include in compile” to take it out of the total word count) I would like to select all quoted paragraphs within a document and mark them ‘do not include in word count’. Ideally I’d like to apply this property to a preset formatting style, so that blocks of text can be formatted as a quote and also removed from the total word count.
This additional functionality would be invaluable!
I agree with this request for a different reason. When I’m writing an article, I make an outline first, and I keep it above the article. I only want to count the article to count in word count. It would be great to some how automatically exclude the outline from the word count.
This one at least should be easily solvable with the current tools. Just create two documents, one for the outline which you set in the inspector not to be included in compile, and a second below for the actual article, then select them both in the binder and choose View > Scrivenings (Cmd-1) to view their text together in a Scrivenings session.
EDIT: I realized you’re probably talking about the word count in the footer, so this won’t change that when you’re working an viewing both; you’ll need to get your word count stats either by just viewing the individual document (or looking at it in the outliner, etc.) or using the Project Statistics.
Or, just make the text you don’t want to count into an inline annotation, and click on the word count in the footer to see the count without annotations.
I really love this program. Still on the trial version, but definitely intend to buy.
However, the annotations being included in the word count does bug me. In my trial version for Windows, at least, the annotations certainly do count in the overall word count at the bottom, and I don’t see a way of turning this on/off. Left- or right-clicking the word count at the bottom doesn’t seem to do anything.
This is also true of the right-click (contextual) word counts. If I select three words plus five annotated words, the contextual word count is eight, not three.
Is there a difference between the trial and the purchased versions, perhaps? Thanks in advance for the response!
Thanks for your interest in Scrivener and your kind words!
There’s no difference between the trial and licensed version–it’s the same program, and the license just removes the time limitation of the trial. The confusion here is between Mac and Windows–the additional features of excluding certain elements from a word count pop-up in the footer (not the footer display itself, as that is always a live count of everything in the editor) were added in the Mac 2.0 version. They will be coming to Windows, but for now you’ll want to use Project > Project Statistics to get the word count, as this is based on your compile settings, for the Draft (or Manuscript) folder, and provides options such as excluding annotations when getting the count for a selection.
there are two other scenarios for such a feature: >>qualitative research papers<< and >>literature reviews<<.
In both you heavily use quotations, either interview responds or excerpts. You usually do not want to include this in your word count, at least if you are interested in your own output (in this case inline annotations are not of much help). Therefore a “Not for Word Count” would be much appreciated.
I just wanted to add my name to those asking for a more flexible way to designate small sections of text “not for word count”.
I write picture book texts, where the text is interspersed with illustration notes formatted with an “Illustration note” style preset (italicised in a smaller font size than my body text style preset) so that my editors can easily distinguish them from the text that will be printed in the book.
So, ideally, I’d like to designate a particular style preset “not for word count” so that my illustration notes were automatically excluded, but even if I had to go through and designate each note individually, that would still be very useful.
… Or just split the editor, the outline above (or to the side of) the document you’re writing in. You can also Lock one or both of the editors so that clicks in the binder don’t change which document you’re viewing/editing.
Also jumping on the bandwagon wishing for a way to exclude text from word count based on user-defined preset.
In academic articles I include figures with long captions, which should not be included in the word count. For my own overview I format these in Courier 9 (as opposed to Helvetica for general text); it would be ideal if I could then tell Scrivener to exclude all characters/words where font = Courier 9 (I now run a home-made AppleScript on a compiled RTF file to count all words where font = Courier 9, and then subtract this from the wordcount that Scrivener supplies in <$wc>).
I think one of the most obvious reasons why is having a notes section. I keep lots of notes in a couple documents, and those notes are included in the total wordcount AND in the project writing history.
I don’t care about the wordcount for both of those things in regard to my notes. It muddles up the count of the project, and it muddles my view of writing history, because I add and subtract from the notes as I go.
So I am NOT getting a true writing history of my project or a true total wordcount, and that is a big problem.
It seems to me the solution is simple. Give us an option to tag any document as “do not include in wordcounts.” And it shouldn’t show up in total words or writing history.
Also, you could simply put your self-standing notes docs in the Research folder, not in the Draft folder. (Using project and document bookmarking you can still “virtually” locate those notes docs to make them show up in the inspector in association with whatever Draft docs you please.)
Again, set the word count options to only include the current Compile output. (Note that this defines the word count reported in Scrivener; you don’t have to actually run the Compile command to see the result.)
You can also use the Word Count column in the Outline view to see per-document word counts.
… but the word count at the bottom shows the no. of words in whatever you have just selected in the Binder, doesn’t it? Why would you compile?
At least that’s the way I use when I have to write let’s say an application for a research grant. Then there is limited no. of words allowed for different parts. So one click in the Binder shows me the total word count of whatever is in the Editor, including any sub-documents when in Scrivenings mode.
Or are you discussing some other kind of word count?
