Quote:
Originally Posted by Daithi
Word Count is like the metric system for Americans.
When someone refers to a book with a 100,000 word count or a 40,000 word count we don't really know what that means. What is the word count of The Old Man and Sea? 20,000? 40,000? How about Atlas Shrugged? 100,000? 200,000? I don't have a clue.
If we used this system all the time we would get used to it, and it may be better than the current system, but right now it would be like asking me to use liters, grams, and millimeters when I think in terms of gallons, ounces, and inches.
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Correct. However, you don't have to use it "all the time" for very long until you get used to it, and meanwhile you can convert it in your head. E.g., if the average number of characters on a line is 40 (not counting spaces and punctuation) and there are 25 lines per page on some platonic (pocket) book, then the average page has 1 kchars. This makes for very easy conversion. A 314 kchar ebook would have approximately 314 pages on paper.
And as for the SI units, they are
extremely simple to learn. We're talking minutes here, not months or weeks or days or even hours.
There are not many relevant prefixes, and only a handful would become popular, so just learn that k=1,000 and M=1,000,000 and you're
at least halfway there. (I assume people already know how to multiply by powers of 10, e.g. 314*1,000 = 314,000. If they don't, then it's absurdly simple to learn.)