If your goal is to publish your writing professionally, you need to know how to count the words in your article. Publishers often set standards and limits - for example an article must be between 400 and 500 words.

The old way to do this was to count the words on a line, paragraph, or page, and use that to estimate the entire article or book length. Very tedious indeed.

Using a modern word processor, you can quickly and easily type your document, save it as you work, and always be aware of the word count of your article.

All you need is a word processor - this tutorial will assume that you have access to a copy of Microsoft Word (this comes installed on most new computers).

First, open up MS Word. You may begin typing your article as usual.

Any time that you want to find out the word count of your article, go to "Tools" on the menu bar, and select "Word Count." If you do not see the "Tools" menu, press Alt-T and it will open up.

Once this menu is open, if you don't see "Word Count," press the little down arrow - Word often hides features that you don't use so if you've never used Word Count before it may not be visible.

This will open up a small window. In this window, you will see the Word Count, Character Count, etc of your document. Great information!

To make your life even easier, click on "Show Toolbar" in this window. A small toolbar will appear titled "Word Count." It will show you the word count and it also has a button titled "Recount." Any time that you want to know the word count of your article, press "Recount" and the word count will be updated.

This new toolbar may be in your way. You can drag it to any convenient location by clicking on the gray title bar that says "Word Count." You can also "dock" this toolbar along with your main toolbars at the top of the screen.

Click and drag the toolbar so that it is on top of the toolbars at the top of the screen (where the Save, Print, Font, Size, etc buttons are). You will see the toolbar change shape and it will look integrated into your existing toolbars.

If you ever want to move the toolbar (or re-arrange the other toolbars) move your mouse to the far left edge of the toolbar. Place it over the small area where you see several gray dashes. Your mouse pointer should turn into a four-way arrow. You can now drag that toolbar anywhere you like.

Voila! You now have the word count toolbar integrated into your MS Word interface and you are always one click away from knowing the word count of your article.

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