I have a course blog. Students are required to post 2 substantive analysis posts on the reading for the semester. I stagger these deadlines so that every week there are a few analysis posts each week. These posts should be about 250-500 words in length.

I also have a weekly 200 requirement. All students must post, at least, 200 words to the blog each week. The words can come as a single comment or blog post, or the words can be distributed across a few comments.

Most of the time, I can eyeball a post or a series of comments and know that it has more than satisfied the word count requirement. However, sometimes it looks like a student isn’t coming close to the word count, but I don’t want to just trust my eyes in these cases.

This is where Word Count Plus comes in handy. It’s a Firefox Add-on, and it’s awesome.Installation
1. Go here to install plugin

Check the Word Count of a Single Entry
The simplest use is for counting the words of a single text entry. Here’s how you do it.

1. Highlight the text you want to count
2. Right click on the highlighted text
3. In the menu select “Count Words”
4. That’s it! The word count displays in the far right of the bottom menu bar.

Check the Word Count Across Multiple Entries
Note that I allow my students to distribute their weekly 200 across multiple comments threads. Again, I can usually eyeball a student’s set of comments for the week and know that they’ve met the requirement. However, sometimes my less motivated students won’t come close to the 200. It would be nice to be able to double check and know exactly how far off they were from the 200 mark. To tally a word count across multiple entries – follow the steps above. However, instead of selecting “Count Words” select “Add and Count Words” for each of the separate entries you highlight. It will remember the word counts from each of those selections and provide you with a total in the bottom menu bar.