'one' is a word
1 is not

'asterisk' is a word
* is not

'ellipsis' is a word
... is definitely not

do not confuse the finger pointing at the moon for the moon itself--
do not confuse the symbol for the object it represents

that smug winking paperclip in MS word needs to learn a few things about word count

I trusted him to count my words, and he led me astray

How I hate him.

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(OpenOffice is free and will not thus lead you astray, but it does count every word in a compound adjective, which seems a bit strict.)