THE L&L BLOG / Scrivener for iPad and iPhone

Word & Character Counts in Scrivener for iOS

Sometimes we need a little reassurance to see how far we’ve come since the start of a long project; other times we need to revel in the despair of how far we have left to go. Whichever your poison, we’ve got you covered.

Count words (and optionally characters) as you type.

As you write, cut, edit, or paste text into the editor, the current count for the section you are editing will be updated in the header bar. When you’re not editing, on the iPad the count is always available in the footer. (On the iPhone, whenever you wish to see the count for the section of text you are reading, you need only touch the text to edit it and view the word or character count.)

That is all well and good for individual sections of your text, but what if you wish to view the total count, across all documents set to be a part of your final text? Tap on the stats in the header bar to view the target wheel:

Track draft as well as session goals in one pie chart.

Even if you do not intend to work toward a particular target (words or characters), you can use the basic readout at the top of this panel to get a good estimate of the total count as it stands. Beyond keeping track of the work as a whole you can also set a session goal that will keep a running count of the net word or character count until you start a new session.

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