Regular vs Extended word count.

• Flash Count question - Snow Bunny
  • Regular vs Extended word count. - Administrator (sm)
  • extended word count counts spaces. nm - abbe

The messages you are viewing are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select the boards given in left menu

to use the word count in Word and then divide it by something to get a standard line count for that report. Has anyone done this before? I forgot the way to calculate when working in Word.

Microsoft word line count - what is the name of it and where can I buy it.  Also,on a dictaphone, how can i tell how many minutes of dictation i have left. 

Hi. Does anyone know if number characters show up as word count in MS Word? I'm doing a lot of them in tables, etc. as well as a lot of symbols. Just curious.

Thanks,

Terry

under tools.  Take the number w/o spaces and divide by 65.  That will give you the line count.  Then take the number with spaces and divide by 65.  You will see that the difference is more like 20%.  So making .12 a line w/o is great!  Wish I could find a work that paid that.

I am an IC and will be starting with a new client this week.  Can someone tell me how to get an accurate line count in Word?  I know that have a word/line count in Tools, but I have found that it is not accurate (it usually gives you more lines than you actually typed).  I don't want to cheat anyone, so I am hoping someone can tell me how to get an accurate line count.  Thanks in advance for your help.         Trish

Depends if you are counting gross or cpl.  The gross does count the blank lines but it is an accurate line count.  You can even put on the numbers to show you that it is.  You can do this under file and page set up.  You can also do to sections only.  But you can also take characters with spaces and divide by 65 or whatever character line you are charging.   Other than that you can buy a program that works.  When I used a program I liked Sylcount as you could set it up to count twice for a capital letter,bold, underline, etc.  And you are using two characters to do that.   But it takes a while to get used to and time is money, so I told my docs I was sticking with gross lines, lower rate and easier and less time to count and so we all agreed.  They are happy, I am happy. 

and divide it by 65.  That will give you your line count.  So, if my report had 11,700 characters with spaces, that would equal 180 lines.  Multiple 180 lines x. 0.11 (your cost per line) and that would equal $19.80 for that particular report.

Good luck!

Chickadee

Hello. I just started transcribing for an interpreter who does work for various medical institutions and mainly for foreign pharmaceutical product descriptions. The work is very tedious and time consuming and pay is $15 per 1,000 words. The work involves a lot of  inserting of symbols, outlining, turning off and on bolding, italics, underlining, and doing a lot of indents and tabbing. He said my work was flawless but I feel like I'm making $2 an hour. Any ideas or thoughts on this rate of pay? Being new it's taking me quite a while to do all the extra formatting, etc., and it’s not just straight transcribing. He also mentioned that he does translation and dictation for medical journals and just bought a Dragon program.  I’m assuming he’s doing the easier work on his Dragon program but I’m not that familiar with it. Any additional HELP would be great!!

Under file, properties comes up the word count that shows the lines plus characters with and without spaces and I have no add-ons as I am the MTSO. 

Hi,

The solutions others gave are good, but if I just needed to get the number of lines with typing (and don't need an invoice or a report), I'd use a Word macro.

The other solutions offered have this drawback: If the body of your document contains tables, the count Word gives you is vastly inflated, for Word counts each cell in that table as a line. This is not what the eye sees, and becomes problematic when you try to justify such to your client.

Below is a macro for counting what we at Emmaus call Lines Strict. (i.e. Lines with typing on them, vs Lines Extended that includes the blank lines).

To use it, copy from Public Sub through End Sub, and paste it into your macros along with your other macros. Easiest way of doing this is (after you have copied the appropriate lines):

1. Click Tools | Macros, and select an existing macro.

2. Click the Edit button.

3. Once the Visual Basic Editor opens, press Ctrl+End to move to the bottom.

4. Paste the clipboard contents.

5. Click File | Compile Normal. (If you've pasted things that don't belong, it won't compile.)

6. Click File | Close and Return to MS Word.

Merry Christmas!
vJoe
http://www.mpword.com

OOPS! I looked at the HTML code after I pasted the code into the editor on this board, and it added things that when pasted into the Visual Basic Editor in Word will not compile. Here's the code if you want to retype it, but pasting won't work. If you send me an email, I'll attach the code into a .txt document, and you won't have any problems.  vjoet@attglobal.net

Public Sub GetLinesStrictCount()
    Dim CharsStrict As Long
    Dim Count As Long
    Dim ParaswBlanks As Long
    Dim ParasWOBlanks As Long
    Dim LineswBlanks As Long
    Dim BlankLines As Long
    Dim LinesWOBlanks As Long
    Dim NumOfTables As Long
    Dim NumOfRows As Long
    Dim TableRowCount As Long
    Dim x As Integer
   
    TableRowCount = 0
    NumOfTables = 0
    NumOfRows = 0
   
    ActiveDocument.ComputeStatistics (wdStatisticCharacters)
    ActiveDocument.ComputeStatistics (wdStatisticLines)
    CharsStrict = ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties(wdPropertyCharacters)
    ParasWOBlanks = ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties(wdPropertyParas)
    LineswBlanks = ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties(wdPropertyLines)

    NumOfTables = ActiveDocument.Content.Tables.Count
    If NumOfTables > 0 Then
        For x = 1 To NumOfTables
            With ActiveDocument.Content.Tables.Item(x)
                NumOfRows = NumOfRows + .Rows.Count
            End With
        Next
        TableRowCount = NumOfRows
    End If
   
    If CharsStrict > 0 Then
        ParaswBlanks = ActiveDocument.Range(wdMainTextStory).Paragraphs.Count
    Else
        ParaswBlanks = 1
    End If
       
    If LineswBlanks > 1 Then
        LineswBlanks = LineswBlanks + 1
    End If
   
    If ParaswBlanks = 1 And ParasWOBlanks = 1 Then
        BlankLines = 0
    Else
        BlankLines = ParaswBlanks - ParasWOBlanks
    End If
   
    LinesWOBlanks = LineswBlanks - BlankLines
    Count = LinesWOBlanks
   
    MsgBox "Lines Strict (with typing) = " & CStr(Count + TableRowCount)
End Sub

9.25% -- Bought some clothing yesterday and the subtotal was $159.97. The tax was $14.80. Total bill:  $174.77.

They get us in other ways.

We as MTSOs absolutely have to start the pay lower and I'll tell you why.  Hiring and training is expensive.  We are paying editors by the hour to proof new hires 100% so we actually lose money on every report a new hire does.   3 out of 5 people we hire lie about their experience and are not qualified to do the work so it requires extensive editing and in a lot of cases, total retyping.   Over half of the people hired do not do their required lines or hours per day, some are scheduled to start and just do not even show, do not contact us or anything.  I get emails from people saying they are losing their home, their children, etc., and are desperate for work and then do 100 lines a day.  It is not cheap to advertise, it is not cheap to pay man hours to test and train. So we start lower, and in the 20% of the time we get somebody who 1) does have the required experience, 2) really does want to work and does the required hours or lines, and 3) proofs their own work so it's not a total wreck when we get it, THEN we give raises, and good ones.  

You want to know where all the 10-12 cpl pay per line went?   Get out your map and look at India, Phillippines, and Pakistan.   On the 11 facilities we have, the highest paying to us is 13 cpl.  Try renting an office, keeping the equipment updated, paying employees, etc., on that amount of money.  If we try and get a raise, they talk about other companies who have already contacted them and how they can outsource and pay only 8 cpl total.   I understand now why companies are outsourcing.  We can't find qualified workers or those who even want to work so it's easier for companies to outsource and pay to have the work proofed before being sent on to the facilities.  We do not outsource at all, but we have hired so far 19 people for FOUR positions and only 2 remain.  That's how bad it is for us.

The company I work for pays 11 cents a line...so they are out there! They also do not outsource and they need good transcriptionists....contact me if you want a good company to work for.

*EDITED* - NO E-mail posting allowed within message. Post it within the E-mail field/box while posting message.