Round 21 Hour 13

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Ninja penguin 3 to Penguin Command, ninja penguin 3 to Penguin Command, Infiltration is complete, I repeat, infiltration is complete, fic_rush is now in our hands, over!

Comments

[isdon-isgood9.livejournal.com]

*cowers in the corner* Please don't hurt me penguins. I promise to stop getting you drunk for my amusement.

[pitry.livejournal.com]

But we like being drunk. Plea denied!

[isdon-isgood9.livejournal.com]

I knew it!!!

[pitry.livejournal.com]

:D :D

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

Darn it, if the Counter-Insurgency Penguins don't get here soon we'll have to count this insurgency all by ourselves. One insurgency, one, ahahaha.

Toast is toasting and coffee is brewing. And word-count of revised story is 2040 but my writing app tends to be generous and count hyphenated things as two words.

[pitry.livejournal.com]

We've EATEN the counter-insurgency penguins!

Lol. I don't get word counters. I am yet two see two word-counters coming up with the same count. It's ridiculous!

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

My (gorgeous, Canadian hunk of a) first year pol-sci prof used to threaten that if we went over word count he'd just take his scissors and cut the paper off at the end of the count he'd specified.

People believed him. This was when we all turned in essays on actual paper so they really thought he was literally going to sit there with scissors in hand and count under his breath... "4,999, 5,000, 5,001, 5,002. Aha! She's over her word count!" So they were all srs bsns about the word-counters on the Uni computers.

And I was all over here laughing my ass off. But he was hot. And good at trolling first years.

[pitry.livejournal.com]

That... is evil. I mean, one hell of a useful trolling, but still. EVIL.

[http://users.livejournal.com/idlewild_/]

It stopped people from handing in things that were waaaay over word-count, which was what he was really shooting for. All those serious little first years over-achieving with 10,000 words for a 5,000 word paper.

And if they couldn't use critical thinking and figure out the reality of the situation then they were really going to run into problems later!

[lolmac]

Noooo! Don't eat the counter-insurgency penguins!!!

Every word counter uses a slightly different algorithm, so the one thing you can count on is that the count will always vary. Online word counters are worse: most of them count HTML tags as well, so if you format anything (italics, bold, etc.), the word count will inflate. ff dot net inflates all my work by at least 10%, often more.

I use word counters and I like them, but I only expect them to be approximate. I have found that 'approximate' is perfectly acceptable and useful. At least it's way more accurate than page count, because counting pages is like counting buckets -- how large is the bucket? How full? Is my bucket the same size as yours?

I've noticed that when the pros talk wordcount, they say "80,000 words", not "80,176" -- from which I surmise that they are in exactly the same boat, and that high precision isn't a requirement.

[pitry.livejournal.com]

But look! Now there's pie!

Yeah, I don't get the FF.net one. I mean, my Pages one is one of those that count each HTML *character* as a different word, and still the FF.net counter claims more words!

[a-q.livejournal.com]

The most time consuming part of the writing is the research...
All the stuff I've learned today! Word count low, over all trivia knowledge, moderate

[pitry.livejournal.com]

Ah, but you're growing wiser!

[justice-turtle.livejournal.com]

I am here! I have a speech to write for Monday, and a terrible cold in my head, so there will probably be no ficcing this weekend. But I'm here.

(I forgot yesterday evening was fic_rush through spending the whole day on Cracked.com... o_O)

[pitry.livejournal.com]

cracked.com are evil. And they have so many creepy bug articles there!