


Is that 2 words separated by the punctuation of a period, or is it one word? To humans it’s one word, but computers need to told how to interpret it.

However, when counting words, issues like domain names () arise. Word counts typically come into play when writing an essay, contest or scholarship entry, or when writing for a newspaper column or magazine article. For example, an ellipsis “…” has 0 words and 3 characters. But do you know what a character is–it’s anything, including spaces, ENTERs / line breaks, letters, and punctuation. If you can read, you know what a word is. In the phrase “I do” there are 2 words and 4 characters (the space counts).
