There is a problem with the Word Usage Count tool

[mbed...@msn.com]

There is a problem with the Word Usage Count tool in that it doesn't handle punctuation very well. The biggest offender is the Em Dash which doesn't usually have a space before or after it. This causes the words to be compressed into one word. Instead of "Harper--my" being broken up into the two words "Harper" and "my" it compresses them into "Harpermy". Not only does this look like a problem with spelling but it also changes the word count. I have learned that in Europe apparently adding a space before and after is quite acceptable but apparently in the US this is a definite No No! Regardless, the Em Dash should be considered and dealt with appropriately. I would also ask that other punctuation be looked at more critically such as the apostrophe so that it is included as part of the word so that "doesn't" and "doesnt" are seen as separate instances.

Thanks

[Simon Haynes]

If there's certain punctuation which is not being recognised (e.g. curly quotes, M-dashes) you should be able to paste them into the 'punctuation' list in the scene editor settings.

Bear in mind M-dashes aren't supported in the editor window though - there's a Microsoft bug with the rich text control which will save them as N-dashes instead, so the solution is to type two minus signs which the program will convert into a proper M-dash on export.

On Fri, 12 Dec 2025 at 03:40, mbed...@msn.com <mbed...@msn.com> wrote:

There is a problem with the Word Usage Count tool in that it doesn't handle punctuation very well. The biggest offender is the Em Dash which doesn't usually have a space before or after it. This causes the words to be compressed into one word. Instead of "Harper--my" being broken up into the two words "Harper" and "my" it compresses them into "Harpermy". Not only does this look like a problem with spelling but it also changes the word count. I have learned that in Europe apparently adding a space before and after is quite acceptable but apparently in the US this is a definite No No! Regardless, the Em Dash should be considered and dealt with appropriately. I would also ask that other punctuation be looked at more critically such as the apostrophe so that it is included as part of the word so that "doesn't" and "doesnt" are seen as separate instances.

Thanks

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[mbed...@msn.com]

It's not that I have a punctuation mark that isn't recognized but rather how the punctuation marks are being treated by the Show Word Usage Count tool. I entered Father-in-law and it registered that just fine meaning that it understood that father and in and law were three separate words rather than one single word. However, when I used an M-Dash rather than just a single hyphen it removed the M-Dash and collapsed all three words into one. I'm not saying anyone would use an M-Dash in that or similar phrases, but M-Dashes are used. Additionally, the single quote ism not recognized correctly meaning that it seems to be just removed. This leaves words such as "doesn't" to read as "doesnt" which looks like a misspelled word. A misspelling that doesn't really exist.

I've looked at possible solutions and they seem to be straight forward.

[Andrew Applegarth]

Father-in-law is one word.  All hyphenated words are considered a single word.  Creating a single word is the whole point of connecting the individual component words with hyphens.

yWriter used to count them correctly as one word.  I wonder if that broke when I asked for the ability to add hyphenated words to the custom dictionary?

- Andrew

[Simon Haynes]

I see the issue now, I thought you were talking about word counts in general.

Will take a look.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/79b5bf53-766c-4fed-8b71-a172d597c0bbn%40googlegroups.com.

[Simon Haynes]

I wrote the code which breaks apart all the words 19 years ago, and I've not touched it since.  It doesn't have an entry for the m-dash, but I'll add one for the next alpha.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/35bbeb85-a2b4-4d92-afc8-3b6bb0d9f656n%40googlegroups.com.