Maximum word count 3000 (?)

by Penny Cooper
9th May 2017

Hi. Having a bit of a nightmare posting some work. My work is under the 3000 word count (by quite a bit) however, I can't seem to post it. Keep getting the red alert. Any ideas what I may be doing wrong?

Replies

Penny, I see that you have managed to post your work. How many words did you have to shave off to get it accepted?

I have to tell you that I fell asleep while reading it. NOT because it's boring: completely the opposite! It's so pell-mell whacky that it wore me out... I'll get back to it later.

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Jimmy
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Jimmy Hollis i Dickson
13/05/2017

Thank you, Jimmy, for that. Will shave, shave and shave again and see if it helps:)

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Penny
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Penny Cooper
11/05/2017

Hi, Penny!

You're not doing anything wrong. "Shared Work" is notorious for having failed Arithmetic in Class 3 and every year since then. If you'd like to do us all a favour, you could shave ten words off of your story, resubmit, shave 10 more words off and resubmit, and so on... until you finally get it accepted. Then let the rest of us know at which point it was deemed short enough. That would be invaluable information for everybody.

The next writer with a tale that's "close to the edge" could do some fine tuning and give us an answer to the exact word.

... Except that we still won't know whether

hyphenated words are counted as one or two,

using boldface, italics, and/or underlining is subject to tales tax,

empty lines between paragraphs are penalised,

proper nouns pay for advertising.

There has been some talk about whether to appoint a committee to carry out a full investigation using all possible parameters, or leave it as a potential subject for a doctorate thesis.

It may be that 2,900 = 3,000, but don't bet on it.

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Jimmy
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Jimmy Hollis i Dickson
09/05/2017