Count Words in LaTeX with TeXcount

Introduction

For anyone writing academic papers, articles, or books in LaTeX, meeting word count requirements is a common task. Unlike traditional word processors, counting words in a LaTeX document can be tricky due to the presence of commands and environments. TeXcount is a powerful command-line utility specifically designed for this purpose. It intelligently parses your LaTeX document to provide an accurate word count, along with other useful statistics.

Quick Command

For a quick summary of word counts in your LaTeX file, run the following command in your terminal:

texcount -inc your_document.tex

Detailed Guide to TeXcount

Installation

TeXcount is a Perl script and is included by default in most major TeX distributions, such as TeX Live, MiKTeX, and MacTeX. You likely already have it installed. You can verify this by opening your terminal and typing:

texcount -v

If it's installed, you will see version information. If not, you should install it through your TeX distribution's package manager.

Basic Usage

The simplest way to use TeXcount is to run it on your main .tex file:

texcount your_document.tex

This will produce a detailed breakdown of words in the text, headers, and captions, as well as counts of headers, floats, and math environments.

Common Options

TeXcount offers a variety of options to customize its output.

Including External Files

If your document is split into multiple files using \input{} or \include{}, you need to tell TeXcount to include them in the count. The -inc flag does exactly that:

texcount -inc your_document.tex

This is one of the most common and useful options.

Getting a Total Sum

Often, you just want the final word count. The -total option will provide a sum of all word counts:

texcount -inc -total your_document.tex

This will give you a clean, single number for the total words.

Character and Encoding

To count characters instead of words, use the -char option. If your document uses UTF-8 encoding (which is standard for most modern documents), it's good practice to specify it with -utf8:

texcount -char -utf8 your_document.tex

Advanced Usage

TeXcount can also be instructed to ignore specific parts of your document. For example, you can add special comments in your LaTeX file to control TeXcount:

• %TC:ignore - Start ignoring text from this point.
• %TC:endignore - Resume counting.
• %TC:insert N - Add N words to the count.

For example, to exclude a paragraph from the word count:

\section{Introduction}
This paragraph will be counted.

%TC:ignore
\begin{comment}
This entire block, including the text inside, will be ignored by TeXcount.
It's useful for notes or sections you want to exclude from the final count.
\end{comment}
%TC:endignore

This paragraph will be counted again.

By mastering these simple commands and options, you can get a reliable word count for your LaTeX documents, making it easier to adhere to submission guidelines.