I’m using 1.3 for NaNo. For the most part, I am so bleepin’ delighted I could spit. But there are a couple really picky things…
When I want to save after writing a “chapter” within my main folder, I click on “Edit” and more than half the time I get a big black box…I’m patient, though, and eventually the drop down does drop in. Just a niggling picky note.
Also, it’s still very laggy…time to switch from a chapter to the main “Draft” takes quite a long time - done after I’ve been writing for a couple hours and want to see my total wordcount and I’m too lazy to actually add up the numbers in the chapters. I know. Lame.
Also, writing NaNo, I become very interested in my wordcount. Wouldn’t it be nice if Scrivener and MS Word added up words the same way? “Yep, it would,” she said. I’m running just over 1000 words off. That seems like quite a lot. I wonder if this might have something to do with the fact that before dot 3 was up, the last few lines of text were being eaten after a save. And I would dutifully try to remember what I’d written and write it back in. They don’t appear twice. GAH! Doesn’t seem that those words would add up to 1044, but…there you go…I don’t know…which is why I’m reporting this as a bug. Of sorts.
There are differences in the way word-counters count words. For instance, some just count space characters, others treat hyphens as spaces and count them. So a word-count system that works the latter way will find more words than one which counts the former. So you might be able to work it out from there …
Hmmm. I’m intrigued by how LARGE your word count difference is coming up, and can’t help but wonder if you have some words included in your draft that aren’t supposed to be. My word count is with in ten words of a count on both Word, OpenOffice, and the NaNo validator. Have you got notes or research sitting in your draft folder?
Also, I haven’t had it delete any words since 1.3 upgrade. I used to have temporary disappearances of words in an earlier version. But the words weren’t really gone, they had gone invisible. I could hit View -> Show Invisibles and the words would return. They always still counted in the word count. Is there a chance you were retyping it, and it was still there invisible? This could be affecting your word count.
For what it’s worth, my word count is about 200 words more than what the NaNoWriMo website counts. I chalked it up to the difference between word counts.
Mine is very similar as well, not really enough to be concerned about. I’m not sure what is going on with your word count, except maybe it’s a very different software that deals with hyphens differently?
You do realise that you never have to save, right? Scrivener auto-saves every time you stop changing things for 2 seconds. Unlike MS Word and other similar programs, auto-save for Scrivener means it is actually saved, whereas MS Word autosaves in space and occasionally will help you recover it if it crashes.
When you edit stuff, you’ll see a * appear in the title bar. Stop for 2 seconds and you’ll see it disappear. If there is an * in the title bar, it is not saved, otherwise it is. No need to save by yourself.
I think Scrivener (and Open Office) counts hyphenated words as single words, while the nanowrimo word counter counts them as one. In the interest of science, I deleted all hyphens and replaced them with spaces, and the word counts were closer.
Is there any official explanation for how Scrivener does count words? I know I verified that MS Word does count hyphenated words as a single word (which is standard for novels), and that in comparison to hand counts, it’s the only one I find to be accurate so far. I write a lot of exactly 100 word drabbles, so getting the count right matters, and so far, MS Word is ALWAYS right. Which makes me wary of the difference when it’s in Scrivener.
Did you read my other questions and look into them? I still think that your “deleted” words were really invisible and are there getting counted twice to make the scrivener count so much higher.
Yessirree…that was the ticket! Amazing as it sounds, the invisibles show x3!! That’s why it made no sense to me. I knew I had’t written that many more words. Ah well.
YAY! I was plagued with the disappearing text too in the original beta. It was when you said you retyped the missing work that made me suspect this was the case. I love solving a mystery!
By the way, congrats on the win. I just crossed the 50k line myself.
No need to save by yourself.