A small Visual Studio Code extension that counts the words in a LaTeX
document and shows the total in the status bar. LaTeX commands and comments
are excluded from the count, so the number reflects the prose you have
actually written.
Features
Live word and character count for .tex files, shown in the status bar.
Selection mode: when you select text, the counts update to reflect only
the selection (shown with a (selection) label). Multiple selections are
supported.
Ignores LaTeX commands (\section, \textbf, …) and their optional
arguments.
Ignores comments (anything after an unescaped %).
Ignores mathematics ($…$, $$…$$, \[…\], \(…\)) and verbatim
environments.
Ignores the contents of \begin{comment}...\end{comment} blocks in the
document count. (They are still counted if they fall inside a selection.)
Counts the text inside command braces (for example the title in
\section{Introduction}). This can be turned off.
Click the status bar item, or run TeX Word Count: Show Word Count from
the Command Palette, to see the counts in a notification.
The character count excludes spaces (a "characters without spaces" figure) and,
like the word count, ignores commands and comments.
Settings
Setting
Default
Description
texWordCount.countBracedArguments
true
Count the text inside command braces, such as \section{...}.
texWordCount.showCharacters
true
Also show a character count alongside the word count.
Requirements
The status bar item appears for documents whose language is set to latex.
VS Code recognises .tex files as LaTeX automatically; installing a LaTeX
extension such as LaTeX Workshop is recommended but not required.
Development
npm test # run the word-counting unit tests
Press F5 in VS Code to launch an Extension Development Host and try the
extension against a real .tex file.
