Counting Gross Lines

A traditional and time honored way of counting lines is to just start counting at the top and work your way down the document. Count each line that has any (even just 1 character) text in it, and you will have a manually obtained gross line count. This count should be very accurate, assuming you can concentrate on what you're doing and don't lose count, but it does have several drawbacks. First, you may easily lose track of your count, especially if you have a long document, the dog is barking, kids are screaming in the background, or you are subject to other distractions. Second, for all but the very short documents, manual counts are very slow and tedious -- and wouldn't you rather do something else with your time? Third, some clients and employers do not want to pay for gross line counts for the simple reason that a line may be just a few characters, and the employer doesn't want to pay as much for that line as for a full line with, say, 60 or 65 characters.

Some line counting systems, such as the one that is built into MS Word, go a step farther and count as a line either a full line of text or a plain carriage return. This may seem reasonable to some, but most employers would probably go through the roof if they paid a full line fee every time you did nothing more that just hit the "Enter" key. So including hard returns when performing gross line counts may not be the most ethical way of doing business.

Rates of pay for line counts also seem to be all over the map -- and I do mean the map. They may vary as a function of state, city size, type of clientele, or for that matter, whether they are even done in this country. Typical rates seem to be in the range of 7 to 12 cents per gross line, assuming blank lines (i.e., those containing nothing but a carriage return) aren't counted.

Counting Lines as a Fixed Number of Characters per Line

Many transcriptionists prefer to bill this way in the misguided belief that they will make more money. At the same time, many employers prefer to pay this way in the equally misguided belief that they will save money. How can that be? Quite simply, it all comes down to how you choose to count characters.

First, lets define what we mean by "Characters per Line". In this counting strategy, a number is chosen (commonly 65) to represent the number of characters that define a line. This number could be anything -- 55, 80, 62, etc. -- it all comes down to an agreement, once again, between MT and employer. So now all we have to do is count how many characters are in the document and divide that number by 65 (or whatever value we have agreed upon) and, Voila, we have a line count. For example, if we count 1,365 characters in the document, then 1,325 / 65 = 21. Therefore the document has 21 lines.

Second, let's decide what we mean by "Characters". Is a character just something that is visible on the screen? What about blank spaces, which require the MT to press the space bar each time? Should thay be counted as well? And what about the tab key? And while we're at it, how about when you make bold, or italicized, or capitalized characters? Should they be counted? Should a capital "A" count as 2 characters rather than 1 since you had to press the shift key to produce it? If we include all these specially formatted and hidden characters, then our 1,325 character document will really end up having a lot more that 21 lines because it really has many more characters. If, for example, it has 43 capitalized letters and 128 bold letters, our character count now goes up to 1,496, and our line count (1,496 / 65) now goes up to 23.

OK, so now we've seen that the character count you get will depend on how you define a character. It could be something as simple as a visible letter or number, or it could be hidden or specially formatted (or any combination of these features).

Counting Bytes

A method which isn't used much any more is the Counting Bytes method. A byte is a unit of storage (to the computer), and can represent a character, such as a letter or a digit. Therefore one would think that counting bytes would accurately yield a count of the number of characters the transcriptionist has prepared. But modern word processing programs make this method useless. A Word document, for example, starts out with almost 20 KB (that's 20,000 bytes) before the first character is ever typed. And additional bytes must be added to account for character formatting, page formatting, images, etc.

So while this techniques had (and has) legitimate value when only counting plain ASCII text, it has no place in the world of today's word processors.

Let's Take a Look at an Example

Here's a bit of sample medical text. What is the line count?

Past Medical History: The patient has a history of three hospitalizations.
He underwent an appendectomy in 1993 at the age of nineteen,
and a salpingoophrectomy in 1983 at the age of nine.
There is a five pack year history of cigarette smoking.
He says he does not use alcohol or recreational drugs,
but then he lies like a dog.
There are no known drug allergies.
Social History: The patient lives at home with his wife of 3 years,
and his two year old Golden Retriever.

The correct answer of course is "E", "any or all of the above". This is because it all depends on whether you are just counting gross lines ("A"), just visible characters at 65 characters per line ("C"), or counting visible, hidden, and bold formatted characters ("D"). (And it also depends on how your browser is displaying this page -- "B".) So as I said back at the beginning, the system you use could be better for you or better for your employer, depending on what you are counting and how you define characters, especially if you choose to count lines as a fixed number of characters per line. We don't take sides in this issue. We just want to provide options so you can decide the best and most equitable counting method for your business.

And in Summary...

Our Abacus software program for MS Word will perform several different kinds of line counts for you. You need to know how products such as ours (or our competitors') work so that both you and your employer/client understand what you are and aren't counting.