Okay, first, I’ve read in the manual that struck-through text won’t be counted in the word count, but I see no changes when I strike a paragraph through with the word count of the page or the word count of the project.
B) I am certain that I saw a setting somewhere where not counting struck-through words can be turned off or on, but, for the life of me, I can’t find it anymore. This was how I was first hinted that struck-through words don’t count. I’ve checked the manual, but it has nothing about that setting.
Searching this forum (Tech Support Mac) always gives me 9+ plages of hits…Oh! Wait! Just discovered that I can do more advanced search by clicking on the spyglass icon in the search field. Wish that was a little more obvious.
Anyway, striking through words seem to have no effect on my word count, and where the heck is that setting?
With due respect, I’ve searched the manual and cannot find anywhere that says that struck-through text will not be counted towards word count. I’ve always found that, on the contrary, struck-through text is counted. That’s why I use inline annotations instead for deletions I’m not sure are permanent.
If anyone knows how struck-through text can be not counted in the various word counts, I’d be delighted to know about it!
Okay, re-reading the manual, I see it says strike-through will mark text for deletion, so I guess I thought this was handled live in the count.
The way I read it now, though it doesn’t actually say one way or the other, I have to physically tell Scrivener to delete it first, which is not so useful as it doesn’t allow me to see what impact such strike-throughs will have on word counts when I strike big blocks of text but want to keep it around in case I change my mind over the time it takes to write a novel.
And it really isn’t helpful with comparing revisions if that’s true.
Would’ve been a nice feature.
Oh, well.¯_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks.
(Though I swear I saw a setting somewhere, which is why I even brought it up. Musta been dreaming’)
You CAN do what I do, and use inline annotations to mark tentative deletions. It won’t update the “live” word counts (in the editor footer or just hovering over Quick Search) but if you have “Remove Annotations” checked in the Compile settings, it will remove the count from the more detailed stats you get when you click on the footer or look in the project statistics. It helps me, at least; hope it helps you.
Another thing you can do with big blocks of text is break them out into separate sub-documents and exclude/include them from the Compile command. Excluding those documents from the current Editor session will give an updated count in the footer, too.
And as another option that will affect word counts in all interfaces: take a snapshot of your document, and just delete the text from the main editor. You can then compare the snapshot with the current version of the document. To restore deleted text, you can roll back the snapshot (effectively swapping the snapshot for the editor while having the option of creating a snapshot of the editor’s text first), or you can just copy and paste from the snapshot in the inspector to the editor.