Request for Accurate Chinese Character Count Support

Scrivener
,
1

I’m a loyal Scrivener user and greatly appreciate its powerful writing tools. However, as someone who frequently writes in Chinese, I’ve noticed that the current word count feature (based on spaces or Latin-centric rules) doesn’t accurately reflect the length of Chinese texts.

Suggestion:
Could you consider adding a dedicated “Chinese Character Count” option? This would:

  1. Count each Chinese character (or CJK unified ideograph) as one unit, ignoring spaces.
  2. Optionally distinguish between汉字, punctuation, and other languages in statistics.

Many writers in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean face this issue, and such a feature would significantly improve Scrivener’s usability for non-Latin scripts.

Examples of Existing Solutions:

  • Microsoft Word and Google Docs already support accurate CJK character counts.
  • Tools like Typora offer language-specific statistics.

Thank you for considering this request! I’d be happy to provide further details or test beta versions if needed.

1 Like
2

Hi there!

I’m pretty new to Scrivener and am having similar concerns. In my search I found that you can toggle word count/character (with or without space) count in File > Options > Editing > Options > Live counts show. I get a slightly different character count than I do in Word but the number isn’t far off.

Hope this helps.