[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

All of which are much more simply resolved than what constitutes a page. Especially as we move away from physical pages and into digital books where pages don’t actually exist, meanwhile words still do.

Forgot to discuss Footnotes too.

So let's say you wanted a Word Count as a reference to a specific location in a book... where do Footnotes belong?

You could code them at the bottom of the file:

<p>This is a paragraph.[1]</p>

<p>This is a second paragraph.</p>

[...]

<hr />

<p>[1] This is footnote 1.</p>

You could have them within text in an EPUB3 <aside>:

<p>This is a paragraph.[1]</p>

<aside><p>[1] This is footnote 1.</p></aside>

<p>This is a second paragraph.</p>

or you could have Endnotes:

<p>This is a paragraph.[1]</p>

<p>This is a second paragraph.</p>

* * * (Completely separate file) * * *

<p>[1] This is endnote 1.</p>

Let's say you put your cursor in the second paragraph (or the footnote!)... each one of these will give you wildly different results.

Should footnotes even count towards word count? They're arguably not a part of the main text... and may not even be displayed depending on which format you're reading in.

A more "neutral" scheme (like Paragraphs) wouldn't be as wildly variable. (*Although it runs into other hard edge cases... like this footnotes issue.)