Supress Word Counts for Inline Annotations

[hairgamiMaster]

It’d be amazing to have a Preference setting that would “Supress Word Counts for Inline Annotations.” My documents have a lot of flotsam/jetsam floating around as I’m working and because of that, I don’t have a good idea what my actual word count is. I’d love to be able to select all the junk floating at the end of my documents (that aren’t as useful if moved somewhere else like Notes or unprintable documents), tag them as Inline Annotations and have the Word Count update, reflecting the reality those bits of work shouldn’t actually factor into things.

Many thanks for your consideration as always!

[JenT]

While the word count in the footer does include Inline Annotations, if you go to Project → Statistics, that word count will only show the Compiled word count. As long as you have “Remove Annotations” checked in the Compile window, your word count will be accurately displayed there.

[hairgamiMaster]

That’s awesome, thank you. I use the Project Targets frequently to check word counts, which apparently behaves differently. I will use the Project → Statistics as a workaround, if you could even call it that.

Many thanks again!

[AmberV]

You can also click on the stats read-out in the footer bar to get the count for the current session, sans annotations and footnotes, optionally.

[Adam_Smashe]

Sadly, I don’t find any of that helpful. Word counts that should be paid attention to, in my view, are those listed in the ‘total words’ column in the Outliner, and the constant selected document word count at the bottom of the Editor. Annotations are still reflected there.

This is why I don’t annotate. I’d like to use that feature, but having that added to the total words word count, just screws up the word count and makes it inaccurate.

It boggles my mind why the interpretation of ‘total words’ would be that literal. When writing fiction, I can’t imagine an author caring whatsoever about counting words that are in annotations. They are not a part of the story we are trying to tell, so those words should not count.

Since a lot of us use Scrivener to write fiction, it would seem that the logical thing to do would be to put a way to turn that off and on in the preferences. After all, there are ways to get the document titles and annotations to be ignored during compile, which is done for that very same reason—because the author, their agent, their editor, and their publisher don’t want that included, and don’t want that or an inflated, inaccurate word count.

So why not make that an option for the word count in the Editor and the Outliner?

[AmberV]

Yeah, I was just meaning to point out a quick tip for someone that was using a separate tool, without realising you can get that count right in the footer. If you search the forum a bit you’d probably find prior discussions on why that takes a click. Here are a couple off the top:

• Viewing Project Statistics
• Statistics - Just trying to make sense of something

Interestingly enough, the opposing advice is true for those that do want comments and footnotes to be included in real-time counters. For performances reasons, we can’t include linked notes, so one is encouraged to use inline notes.

@AmberV

So overall the difference between Statistics and the real-time stats boils down to that point: real-time stuff must be super fast, since it recalculates with every single keypress. Statistics, being a panel you pull up, can be slower (much slower in large projects), but it will usually be more accurate.

So, you can see why we’d never make a preference that does such a thing.

[tracil]

I would love to see this as an option!

Outliner already has “Word Count” and “Total Word Count” and they’re the same for me even though I would think one of them would exclude annotations. It’s really frustrating not to see the TRUE word count in the Outliner that will be output upon compile!

Since we can already click on the word count in the footer and see the word count there with/without annotations, it should be easy to bring that calculation into the Outliner view. Just a simple toggle in the Options for “Include annotations in the Outliner total word count column” is all we need, since the calculations already exist in the footer of every document.

[kewms]

As noted upthread, Inspector Footnotes and Comments are not included in the word count, so that’s our recommended alternative.

[tracil]

Allow me to explain further why this doesn’t work. First of all, sometimes I want inline annotations to remain EXACTLY where they are, like when I’m reminding myself “This line is foreshadowing for XYZ that happens later… Take it out if you decide not to do XYZ plot point.” That’s something that should never be included in the Compile, nor in word counts.

I could move some of my annotations into Inspector Notes, but I already use Notes for something else - questions to ask beta readers and behind the scenes content that I want to share with readers later. If I try to move my annotations into Notes, then Notes gets REALLY LONG and it’s hard to parse, especially because now I’m using it for 3 different things instead of just 2, which is already a stretch. So… If I try to move what I already have in Notes into Metadata so that I can move my annotations into Notes, well… Metadata is not well suited for long amounts of text. It’s meant for a few words, not whole paragraphs.

[AmberV]

I completely understand why you are using inline annotations, and that’s a big reason for why I prefer them too (among many other reasons). But just to be clear, since it seems this important post above was missed: it’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that it is technically not viable and likely never will be—and that’s especially true at the level you’re talking about, where the software is not merely having to super-efficiently process text based on its formatting in the footer bar, but across potentially many progress bars and count fields in the outliner, simultaneously.

In short, all of the things that make inline annotations such a good tool—having the “meta” text embedded in the text itself—make extracting statistics from all the “not meta” text around it a problem that takes time. Taking time is fine for the Statistics panel, or the popup thing in the footer bar you click on. It’s not fine when it has to happen in between keystrokes or thousands of times a second in overview screens.

[m2foster]

I too would love the ability to limit the scene word count just to the prose itself, not the inline annotations. I find myself using inline annotations more and more, especially as I edit and including those in the scene word count does throw off my goals.

[AntoniDol]

Uncheck the checkboxes in the pop-up when clicking the Word Count centered in the Footer of the Editor.

[m2foster]

They are already unchecked. The inline annotations are still part of the word count. Thanks though.

[AmberV]

You are toggling the checkbox and the number above it is not changing with each click? And this is being done in a context where there is definitely at least one inline annotation? If so, this is a bug that should be investigated.

[m2foster]

Here are some screenshots. The first one does not have any inline annotations and shows a word count of 1842 words in the bar at the bottom of the scene. I then selected the first ten words in the scene and turned them into an online annotation. The second screenshot shows that in red at the top. The word count in the bar at the bottom of the scene still shows 1842 words (red circle).

[AmberV]

Sorry, I’m a bit confused then, as you seem to be expecting the checkbox to change the footer bar, but as noted in this thread it will not, and several references were given as to why. So maybe I am misunderstanding. The numbers in blue look right to me—you have the checkbox disabled, so selecting the 10 words and annotating them would subtract them from the count: 1832.

[m2foster]

I guess I just wasn’t understanding. Basically, I’d like the number at the bottom to be 1832, the actual words in the manuscript. When I check the “include comments and annotations” it gives me 1882 because it’s counting the comments and annotations as well and I’m assuming that is for the overall word count of the manuscript, but I don’t want those words to count, which is why I have it unchecked.

This might seem like something trivial, but allow me to explain why I’m asking for it.

Here I have a whole chapter selected to check on my progress via word-count. It says 2142 words (the box to include comments and annotations is not checked in any of the documents):

To make my point, that second scene (<<Reassess…) contains a huge inline annotation (not a real one) that throws off the word-count of the actual chapter:

As I develop a scene, I drop in these large notes to self that usually have to do why something has to stay a certain way so I don’t inadvertently make an edit I shouldn’t. Over the course of a manuscript they really add up, throwing off the final word-count.

That’s why I was asking for it, anyway.

Thank you for the clarification. I’ll try to keep the limitation in mind.

[AmberV]

Okay, yeah, basically Scrivener offers a lot of features that can cause the text in the editor to diverge from the actual produced amount. For example I write with a lot of <$include> tags, which insert the text of one binder item into another upon compiling. Obviously those won’t be counted! I also use inline annotations heavily, as you do, then there are compile features that add or remove text, such as Replacements, prefixes and suffixes around styles and section layouts, and so on. So honestly I even turn the counter off in the footer bar. It’s a pointless distraction for how I use the program.

If you want it to be more accurate, the only way to really do that is to reign back on how much of Scrivener you use, treat it more like a word processor where you only ever type in stuff that will print, every word of it, and never type in anything that wouldn’t.

Personally, I’d rather use the Statistics panel now and then, than give up a lot of what makes Scrivener so cool.

[jandavid]

@AmberV

I even turn the counter off in the footer bar. It’s a pointless distraction for how I use the program.

How do you turn the counter off? Searching for “word count” in the Scrivener Manual PDF didn’t bring up anything relevant. And on this forum I only found a post referring to it disappearing in scriptwriting mode (but I’m not writing a script ). I very much agree that in the absence of an option to exclude inline annotations, it’s more of a distraction than anything else.

Similar to the use cases described by many of the other participants in this thread, I am using inline annotations extensively for comments to self, potential outtakes, alternative phrasings to be revisited, and so on. I would love to be able to have the word count reflect the actual words I intend to compile, i.e., without inline annotations (ideally with an option to toggle inline footnotes on and off). However, if that is technically not possible for performance reasons – thank you, @AmberV for the thorough explanation (here as well as in some of the other linked threads ) – then I’d rather not have any number visible at all and be forced to bring up the stats manually.

One question, though, regarding performance: If the main issue is that having a live word count visible in the footer bar while typing while excluding inline annotations is too complex, then wouldn’t the solution be to simply delay updating that number? Couldn’t it be solved programmatically by only updating the word counter after being idle for 5 or 10 seconds, for instance? Generally, it seems to me that that would be far more useful than that number instantly reflecting every single word typed. While I’m typing, my focus is usually on what I’m typing, and only every once in a while I glance to the bottom of the screen to see where I’m at.

So it would be nice, instead of clicking the footer to have it calculate the stats, if the last calculation could continue to be shown in the footer – not as the exact live word count, but as a rough orientation of where I’m at (where I was at a few seconds ago), and of which I’m aware that will update only every once in a while (perhaps even with an ability to set the time interval at which it updates, depending on my hardware). Wouldn’t that be the best of both worlds?

Perhaps there could be even an option for the user to choose between having either an exact live word count in the footer, or a rough, delayed word count, the latter with several options of including/excluding inline annotations, footnotes, inspector comments etc.

[AmberV]

If you are looking for settings, but aren’t sure where the setting itself might be, the introduction to each subsection in Appendix B of the user manual explains the intended scope of the tab that it covers, and directs you to other sections for things that might be considered fuzzy settings relating to multiple tabs. In this case, Appendix B.3, which covers the Editing options, is where you want to be, and where you will find how to disable live counts.^[1]

Of course you can also hide the whole footer bar, via View ▸ Editor Layout ▸ (Hide) Footer View.

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1. On Windows this was never implemented properly and as a result there is actually no way to turn them off other than hiding the whole footer bar. ↩︎