Editing Word count (section)

{{Short description|Number of words in a document or passage of text}}
The '''word count''' is the number of [[word]]s in a document or passage of text. Word counting may be needed when a text is required to stay within certain numbers of words. This may particularly be the case in [[academia]], legal proceedings, [[journalism]] and [[advertising]]. Word count is commonly used by [[translator]]s to determine the price of a translation job. Word counts may also be used to calculate measures of [[readability]] and to measure typing and reading speeds (usually in [[words per minute]]). When converting [[character (computing)|character]] counts to words, a measure of 5 or 6 characters to a word is generally used for English.<ref>{{citation|url=http://www.sfwa.org/2005/01/what-is-a-word/|title=Word Counts: What Is a Word?|last=Rothman|first=Chuck|year=2005|publisher=[[Science Fiction Writers of America]]}}.</ref>