Oh no… I think I just found out why my writing is taking so long… is it possibly the case that word count ignores INSPECTOR footnotes??? I kind of relied on the knowledge that footnotes are included, but I noticed that the word count does not change when I fiddle with the inspector comments and footnotes 
. If so, I rocketed straight over my word restriction (like 50% or so)… argh!
It depends on which word count you mean. The one in the footer doesn’t no, although you can click on it to get more details. The project statistics will include whatever you want, though.
All the best,
Keith
Thank you 
. I wasn’t aware of the ‘click-on it’ function in the footer, which is really great! Not so great is that I’m 30% over my target now… well, at least I got something written down, it’s just a matter of distribution now.
All the best
I have Scrivener for Windows and am working on an essay in the Blank template now. I have a lot of inline footnotes, and I note that the Target bar in the footer of all the subdocuments is including the footnotes in the Word Count, even though I have checked the “Exclude Footnotes” box in Project Statistics. This is quite an issue for me, as it is important that I keep track of the word count in all the subdocuments. Please advise.
Having only just discovered this discrepancy between the footer and project stat word counts, I would humbly like to request, for future versions, that any word count, whether footer or project stat, count footnotes if you have elected to include them in your project settings. It is weird and unintuitive to have word counts yielding different results depending on where / how you run them. I wasted a fair bit of time recently trying to work around what I thought was a bug, only to discover this ‘feature’ after I had sent off a manuscript.
[ Edit ]
It turns out that there is a lot of good information about the various word counts in the Scrivener manual.
Despite having used Scrivener for a couple of years, I have just lately begin to experiment with compiler options, and the intersection of word count with the compiler and its options is a new and confusing topic for me.
But I do believe that having parity between how the editor and project counts are performed would be valuable, and I’d really like to be able to exclude inline annotations from the Project Targets count.
Word count is a confusing topic for me as well. There are four ways (that I know of) to get word counts, and each has a unique set of rules and options for including and excluding different kinds of text, and for some but not all counts, documents. For example:
Word count on the editor’s footer can include or exclude for the currently selected documents:
- footnotes, and
- comments and annotations combined,
But word count in Project Statistics can include or exclude these only for the current selection, and has a different set of options for the Draft (which I assume refers to the Draft Folder) than for the current Selection,
While word count in Project Statistics can also count in the current compile group only, and:
-
Word count in Project Targets has its own unique set of options, and
-
Word count in Text Statistics has no configurable options at all.
One of my projects shows these word counts:
-
Editor footer while editing Scrivenings: 24,229, and 23,301 when the mouse pointer hovers over the count (this is the one discrepancy that I do understand, given the performance issues related to including and excluding in real time different kinds of text.)
-
Project Targets: 24,081
-
Project Statistics: 23,325
-
Text Statistics: 24,490
This is really confusing. I have no idea really why these differently-configurable word counts are available, in the places they are in the UI. My question is not “Which is right?” but “From what explicit and implicit inclusions and exclusions are these different counts derived, and how do I: keep track of them; remember what their settings are, and what they mean; and use them to guide my writing?”
And because of the way that I use inline annotations, inspector comments, and footnotes, I cannot use Project Targets, because it does not allow me to include and exclude these different kinds of text. (Perhaps this is related to the performance issues with excluding different kinds of text in real time?)
It would make more sense to me to see all word counts share the same exhaustive set of inclusion and exclusion options, and to have each count retain its own specific settings.
That is to say: each variety of word count would be configurable using all inclusion and exclusion options that are currently available for word count in the editor’s footer, Project Statistics, Project Targets and Text Statistics.
These options would be set through a shared dialog or sheet that lists all inclusion and exclusion options, and that upon clicking an OK button, the selected options would apply the selected inclusion/exclusion options to that specific word count. Scrivener would retain these selections in a project.
This would allow me to set up different kinds of word counts inside my project: for example, one that would include only all text in the currently selected documents / Scrivenings session, and excluding all inline annotations, comments, and footnotes; another that does the same but for the current compile group; and so forth. Allowing me to assign descriptive names to these different word counts, and to export and import them into another project, would be useful too.
Having said all this, maybe this is a harebrained idea, and I’m missing something. Why does Scrivener gave these differently-configurable word counts that are named the way they are named, and placed in the UI where they are? Is there some rationale that I’m missing? Is there some need or purpose behind these differently-configurable, and differently-named word counts? What are their intended uses? Is there perhaps some mixture of utility and technical restrictions that have combined to form these differently-configurable and differently-named word counts?
Like I said, I am really confused. I actually started a sample project just to try to figure out how all of these word count options work and how they report on different kinds of text, but I gave up . . . it’s complicated.
(I just remembered that word count is available in the Outliner as well . . .)
Sorry to go on, I’m just really confused. Please help me understand. Thanks.