Repitition of words in a large document

[Dictionary option/Bob]

As an author I sometimes wish to check how many times I have used a
particular word in a book. Apart from using the laborious 'Find' option,
does anyone know of a better way of doing this? What I would really like is
to highlight a particular word, and for the system to tell me how many times
that word appears in the document in which I am working.

 

[Richard G. Harper]

That would be a feature of your word processor. Asking in a Word newsgroup
may reveal someone who knows how it might be done.

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[Lang Murphy]

As an author I sometimes wish to check how many times I have used a
particular word in a book. Apart from using the laborious 'Find' option,
does anyone know of a better way of doing this? What I would really like
is
to highlight a particular word, and for the system to tell me how many
times
that word appears in the document in which I am working.

You could write a macro to count specific words. You could also do a
find/replace for that word (replacing it with a word you're pretty sure
isn't in the document, like "doink" or "waziwhosit" and get a count of how
many times that word was replaced and then run it again with the original
word.

Not the answer you're looking for... but a workaround.

Lang

 

[DP]

This is not a perfect solution, but maybe if you mess around with it some,
you'll be able to come up with something.
In Word 2007, I just checked out the indexing function.
It will show you the exact PAGES on which a specific word will show up. But
as far as I can tell, it won't show you how many times it appears on a
particular page.
So, with book-sized manuscripts, this might be helpful. It at least will
give you the minimum number of times you've used a word by showing you the
number of pages on which that word appeared.
It also will show you if you're using the word too much, if for example the
word "plethora" shows up on pages 42, 43, and 44.
Getting it to index the word is not a simple task, as far as I can tell.
It's not like you can highlight it and, boom, there's your index. It takes
several steps.

I don't know if the indexing function exists or works in the same way in
earlier versions of Word.
Keep us posted if you find a better solution.

 

[Dictionary option/Bob]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. They all helped in one way or another.
I found my answer by posting a question on Word community site. Suzanne
gave me the solution, which I will repeat here for anyone who wishes to know.

1. Highlight the word that you wish to count.
2. Go to Find.
3. Click on Reading Highlight.
4. Click on Highlight all.
Each occurrance of the word will be highlighted throughout the document, and
a count of the total number of appearances is shown in the Find box.
Brilliant, and this will save me an enormous amount of work!
PS: I am using Office 2007/Word.

 

[DP]

Great! Thanks (to you and Suzanne)!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. They all helped in one way or
another.
I found my answer by posting a question on Word community site. Suzanne
gave me the solution, which I will repeat here for anyone who wishes to
know.

1. Highlight the word that you wish to count.
2. Go to Find.
3. Click on Reading Highlight.
4. Click on Highlight all.
Each occurrance of the word will be highlighted throughout the document,
and
a count of the total number of appearances is shown in the Find box.
Brilliant, and this will save me an enormous amount of work!
PS: I am using Office 2007/Word.