8

I am using TexShop and was wondering if there is an easy way to find the wordcount in a document ?
The way I do it now is copy and paste the PDF document into Word to calculate the word count. Is there a way I can do this directly from the PDF file in MACOS's Preview ? Or through LaTeX directly ?

Razor
  • 2,691

2 Answers2

10

TexCount will do a word count for you and also break it down per section etc.
Available both as a web-app as well as a download, and comes packaged with TeX Live. Can be invoked in the command line with texcount mytexfile.tex.

Werner
  • 603,163
Ubiquitous
  • 2,566
  • 2
    I've seen that thank you, but I was afraid my code will be stored somewhere and might be marked as plagiarism when I submit my report. – Razor Apr 12 '13 at 18:47
  • 3
    @NLed -- texcount comes with TeX Live, and can be invoked from the commandline (assuming Bash, or equivalent) as follows: texcount mytexfile.tex. It is much better than detex + wc. – jon Apr 12 '13 at 19:22
  • Yes, should have mentioned that there is also a downloadable version. – Ubiquitous Apr 13 '13 at 12:34
9

You could try detex document.tex | wc -w

(detex does a decent, but not perfect, job at eliminating LaTeX commands, if you use such to write part of the text, the count will be off. And I don't remember offhand how it handles accents, i.e. l'H\^opital might give too many words).

vonbrand
  • 5,473
  • Where do I place this command ? – Razor Apr 12 '13 at 17:46
  • 1
    Run it from the command line. detex is part of TeXlive, at least. – vonbrand Apr 12 '13 at 17:51
  • I don't mean to be bothersome, but can you please provide more info ? Where is the command line ? How do I run it ? – Razor Apr 12 '13 at 18:22
  • I don't know Mac that well, but it is a Unixy system. There should be some way to get a terminal where you can enter commands, in that you can cd to where your document lives. Sorry I can't help more. – vonbrand Apr 12 '13 at 18:29
  • Oh okay I got you. Mac uses Terminal. So I cd into the folder and run this ? Will try it now. – Razor Apr 12 '13 at 18:30