I just noticed a minor, yet interesting, difference between Sweden and the English world. Places asking for short stories here in Sweden give the maximum length in characters whereas the English speaking counterparts give them in words.
I wonder about the reason for this peculiar difference, not that it matters much for practical purposes.
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In American publishing, the whole basis for it was to know how much space would be taken up by a story.
So, you actually estimated words per page. Theoretically, you were supposed to count the number of words per line for a few full lines to come up with an average number of words per line. Then do lines per page.
This would offset dialog which tends to take up space but have a smaller word/character count.
Also, this is why courier 12pt was considered a standard font. It pretty much averaged 250 *words* per page.
Using the word processor wordcount is the norm now.
I'm not sure why the electronic world has changed the basic need to quickly know how much space a story will take up. Maybe because adjusting the font to fill/fit a particular size is not so difficult with modern printing.
Ah, well I was more into the difference between wanting a character count and a word count. At some 2000 words plus there really shouldn't be much of a difference within the scope of one language.
In Germany, it's characters as well. Probably because we have such long words. :)
Heh, that would also be a reason ;)
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