IM_student_111 Posted January 26, 2022 Report Share Posted January 26, 2022 Hope everyone is holding up strong in these final days before Jan 31! So I have a letter, exactly 1000 words as per my Microsoft Word processor. Program I'm writing it for states that applications with letters exceeding the 1000 limit "WILL NOT BE REVIEWED" (yikes). Spent the last 4 hours trimming my letter down to 1000 words, to my satisfaction. Then pasted it onto the CaRMS portal to realize that they don't have a built-in word counter to confirm the word count... Many other central application apps do this, and for good reason: different word counters count differently, and while the Microsoft Word standard is most common, it is not necessarily universal. My letter in Pages shoots up to 1030 words because hyphenated compound words (like "well-being") count as two instead of one. Popular word counter apps online count em dashes as a standalone word — and I love em dashes. If my reviewer pastes my letter into Pages, I'm screwed. Do I spent another 2 hours to cut 30 more words just for this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edict Posted January 26, 2022 Report Share Posted January 26, 2022 Are you absolutely positive you can't shorten it a bit more? Usually, most reviewers don't care. I can tell you that its highly unlikely anyone is going to comb through apps looking to throw out entire applications based on a word count thats just barely over 1000. However, I think shortening it by 30 words is doable and would give you more peace of mind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IM_student_111 Posted January 26, 2022 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2022 4 hours ago, Edict said: Are you absolutely positive you can't shorten it a bit more? Usually, most reviewers don't care. I can tell you that its highly unlikely anyone is going to comb through apps looking to throw out entire applications based on a word count thats just barely over 1000. However, I think shortening it by 30 words is doable and would give you more peace of mind. Yeah I did just that... Took me a few hours but it's done. Should be right under 1000 words even if you count compound and contracted words separately. As for the em dashes I realized I could just bypass that problem by removing the space I was putting before and after each dash, which is more conform to strict punctuation rules anyway. Definitely feels like overkill for my peace of mind, but hey now I can breathe easy... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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