I have just tried to publish a Flash story. the word count on the editor indicated that the story was 1000 words. Yet, when I came to hit the publish button, I was informed that the story was 1008 words long. I had to remove 8 words which brought the total in the editor to 991 before it was accepted.
The funny thing is, I also added the story as a series, not a chapter series, but one that I wanted linked as being part of a grouped story. The title of that was 8 words.
I don't know whether that was the cause of the problem, but is the system counting the series title as part of the word count? Should it?
Thanks for listening.
DS
I used to be a pervert. In here, I'm normal!
Watch this space...She is really - cumming soon!
I had this problem several times writing micros -- 100 in edit, 101 in preview. I finally figured out that I had inadvertently put in a non-breaking space after the period ending a paragraph, then a normal return. The edit page ignored it, but Preview included it in the count. Once removed, I got 100/100. Perhaps you have done the same or something similar. Depending on what program you write in, you might be able to show all non standard characters or coding.
It's a long-standing minor annoyance, unfortunately. Not every bit of software can agree on what a "word" is. Some count up-to-date as three words, others as one. Might be accidentally counting the series name, as you say: would have to experiment to find out for sure.
The non-breaking space is also a possible culprit as kistinspencil says. I've been burned by that a few times on a Mac as it's very easy to not let go of Option in time when putting in some symbols before hitting space. Option+Space = non-breaking space. Unlikely in a story but you never know, especially if using '#' (Option+3).
Some editors may also count breaks like ~o0o~ or ### as a single word, sometimes more than one. Others might ignore it depending if they see the sequence containing 'characters' or not.
Bottom line is that sometimes word processors and the Lush editor agree (sometimes they don't) but will often disagree with the counter when you hit 'Publish' and will then further disagree with the counter as shown on the front page. Not much can be done about it, sadly.
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Agree. I figured there was nothing to be done to sync edit count with publish count. It's especially frustrating on comps, if you try to hit the word limit exactly and then publish and it looks like to everyone else you were ignoring limit and went over.
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