Page Counts & Timing - Reader Request to BCs

[TriciaG]

There have been times I've had spare recording time on my hands, so I browse around for some group project in which to read. I encounter a project in which there are page counts rather than word counts. That's no problem; it happens sometimes that you can't get a word count. But I notice that most times, the BC removes the page count when the section is submitted.

Thing is, a page can have 300 words or 3000 words on it depending on how big the type is. Unless I open up the text and take a look, I still have no idea how long a section will take to record, especially in projects where the section lengths vary widely. (If authors were considerate enough to make all their sections 10-12 pages, for example, and the submitted sections were all in the 15-17 minute range, I could judge. But where sections are 5-17 pages, I have no clue!)

My proposed solution and request: BCs, please leave the page count in the notes field for submitted sections. That way we readers can see that a 10 page section runs about 20 minutes, so we can guess that that 15 page one will run about 30.

It's not perfect, of course, as there are differences in reading speed, and there may be diagrams or other content that skews the data, but it would be a good start.

[KevinS]

There have been times I've had spare recording time on my hands, so I browse around for some group project in which to read. I encounter a project in which there are page counts rather than word counts. That's no problem; it happens sometimes that you can't get a word count. But I notice that most times, the BC removes the page count when the section is submitted.

Thing is, a page can have 300 words or 3000 words on it depending on how big the type is. Unless I open up the text and take a look, I still have no idea how long a section will take to record, especially in projects where the section lengths vary widely. (If authors were considerate enough to make all their sections 10-12 pages, for example, and the submitted sections were all in the 15-17 minute range, I could judge. But where sections are 5-17 pages, I have no clue!)

My proposed solution and request: BCs, please leave the page count in the notes field for submitted sections. That way we readers can see that a 10 page section runs about 20 minutes, so we can guess that that 5 page one will run about 30.

It's not perfect, of course, as there are differences in reading speed, and there may be diagrams or other content that skews the data, but it would be a good start.

Good suggestion!

[mightyfelix]

Yes, that's a good point that I hadn't really thought of. I generally leave the page numbers up for the benefit of the DPL (and reader, if they need to make a correction), and then remove it when the section is PL ok. I have to say, I like the "clean" look of a PL ok section with just the run time, but I can see how this would be of help to some readers.

[Leni]

That makes perfect sense. I am not sure what I used to do, but I will pay attention to that now.

[johnb2]

Hi Tricia

If this is an election, I cast my vote for word counts rather than page numbers. Since I read from the screen - pages are on a scroll and mean litttle to me. Words are my thing! I realize nobody asked but thats my viewpoint.


Husband said to wife: If I won the lottery what would you do?

Wife says: I'd take half and split!

Husband says: Here's your $10.00 - hit the road!

[TriciaG]

I think that most BCs use word counts if they can. But some texts make that impractical - they're scanned such that there's no way to copy/paste the text to get a word count. The BC would have to manually count the words on the page to get a word count. We're not going to make them do such a thing.

So yeah - I think 99.99% of us prefer word counts over page counts, but sometimes it's not feasible.

[mightyfelix]

It's not that hard to get an approximate word count, if you estimate count per page (avg words per line X avg lines per page), but I rarely bother to do that. And of course, it doesn't work if you have lots of illustrations and/or diagrams.