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Features

Quant is a text metric program that counts characters, words, lines and pages from within Microsoft Word 97. Quant adds a number of menu items to Word as well as single button in the main toolbar. Various options are available through these menu items. For example, the user may launch Quant to count the current file, a selected portion of the current file or a list of files.

The main features of Quant are: character count, word count, line count, page count, count selection, count entire file, count a set of files, integration in Microsoft Word.
 

Why Quant?

Whether it is for preparing a quotation or an invoice, determining progress in the translation process, obtaining statistics or integrating text metrics in a quality assurance procedure, every text count must be based on a unit that is independent of the language in which the text is written. The most commonly used counting unit, the word, yields results that can vary up to 30% depending on the language. Consider German technical documents, which use a large number of compound words. Having good text metrics is crucial when dealing with technical documents. Therefore, the number of characters is the only good metric for counting text. Using this counting method, character counts can easily be transformed into standard line or page counts for ease of use.

But what about the character count calculated by traditional word processors, such as Microsoft Word? There are three main reasons for not using this:

1. It does not let the user specify which characters to count and which characters not to count. Quant does.

2. It counts every single character. Consider the case where a document contains sequences of forty or fifty equal signs used for separating sections. Word counts every one of them. Quant provides an option which, when enabled, counts every sequence of three of more characters as only one.

3. It does not let the user specify standard line and page sizes. Quant does.