Node:Why Count Words, Next:count-words-region, Previous:Counting Words, Up:Counting Words
The standard Emacs distribution contains a function for counting the number of lines within a region. However, there is no corresponding function for counting words.
Certain types of writing ask you to count words. Thus, if you write
an essay, you may be limited to 800 words; if you write a novel, you
may discipline yourself to write 1000 words a day. It seems odd to me
that Emacs lacks a word count command. Perhaps people use Emacs
mostly for code or types of documentation that do not require word
counts; or perhaps they restrict themselves to the operating system
word count command, wc. Alternatively, people may follow
the publishers' convention and compute a word count by dividing the
number of characters in a document by five. In any event, here are
commands to count words.