Writing: Estimating Word Count in a blog entry

I estimate my word count in a blog entry by counting the words in a single paragraph and then multiplying this by the number of paragraphs. In most cases, I write between twenty-five and fifty words per paragraph. This means that I have to write approximately four paragraphs to get a two hundred word blog entry.

I have found this is the quickest way to estimate the words in a blog entry. I use this method because it takes longer to count the words any other way. I normally make my blog entries early in the morning before going to work. This method allows me to save a little time when making the entry. Word count in a blog entry is not that big a deal and I would much rather use the time to correct spelling and other errors.

I am a little more particular when doing word counts for short stories and novels. This is because the paragraphs in my novels and short stories vary more in their length. For instance, when I write dialogue the paragraphs are much shorter then when I write description. With short stories I usually use the word count feature of the word-processing software program I am using at the time.

Each of these methods give different word counts. However, unless I think I need an exact count they work just fine. If I need an exact word count, I print a hard copy and do a manual count of the words in the document.