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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   2642 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 16, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What you seem to want to measure is "how long will it take to read this book"

No - what I want is to know how long the book is. Knowing the word count would answer my question exactly, because the length of a book is its word count, in the same way that the duration of a film is how many minutes it takes up (not how many scenes, not how long it feels - just how many minutes). Knowing the word count wouldn't answer the question of how long I can expect it would take me to read it (in the same way that some ninety-minute films can "feel" longer than some films which are two hours long or more), but it would answer the question of how long it is, which is exactly what I want to know. The word count and the page count are both proxy metrics for "how long would the average reader take to read this book"; the page count is an imprecise proxy metric for "how long is this book", which is the word count.

Why word count and not syllable count?

Word count, syllable count and character count would all be equally valid objective metrics for the length of a book, in the sense of how much content it contains. I used word count because it's a standard metric used in numerous contexts (including, obviously, publishing).

*mora count (taking into account differences in syllable length)

In that case, then I still don't see your objection. The page count is in fact an exact metric for how long the book is, just as word count is. It doesn't matter how the size of the type face, or how it's laid out, a given volume is by definition N pages long. You might prefer the metric of word length, but it seems like most others prefer the metric of number of pages. So we aren't going to be switching any time soon.

The page count is not an exact metric for how long a book is (i.e. how much content it contains), for the simple reason that the same book can have multiple editions with drastically varying page counts. As outlined in the original post.

The length of a book can refer to physical length as well as how many words it contains. Your argument here is like if one was to insist that we can only use mass, not volume, to talk about how big an object is. Both are equally exact measures of bigness (or book length in our case), they just measure different aspects that the term can refer to.

And also, even if I were to concede the point for sake of argument, it doesn't really make sense to me that you are focusing so hard on just one measure as the legitimate one. You said you aren't trying to determine time-to-read, so what then is the purpose of knowing book length with exactitude? Just the aesthetic satisfaction of having a more objective measurement? It doesn't make sense to me to worry about how exact your measurement is when you don't actually gain anything by it.

what then is the purpose of knowing book length with exactitude?

I'm writing a novel and it would be extremely helpful to me to know the word count of some of my favourite novels, so I can see how mine compares to them from a pacing perspective. In much the same way that directors aim to have the inciting incident by the end of the first reel etc..

Ok, but you surely can appreciate that is not a common use case. So the answer to your original question of "why isn't this commonplace" is "because almost nobody cares". As @Lizzardspawn said, what most people care about when they measure book length is to estimate time-to-read. And for that purpose, page count works just as well as word count.

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