Excerpt Word Count

The code below from WPSnipps provides an excerpt character counter, but I’d like to count words instead. Does anybody have an idea of how to do this?

// Excerpt character count
function excerpt_count_js(){
      echo '<script>jQuery(document).ready(function(){
jQuery("#postexcerpt .handlediv").after("<div style="position:absolute;top:0px;right:5px;color:#666;"><small>Excerpt length: </small><input type="text" value="0" maxlength="3" size="3" id="excerpt_counter" readonly="" style="background:#fff;"> <small>character(s).</small></div>");
     jQuery("#excerpt_counter").val(jQuery("#excerpt").val().length);
     jQuery("#excerpt").keyup( function() {
     jQuery("#excerpt_counter").val(jQuery("#excerpt").val().length);
   });
});</script>';
}
add_action( 'admin_head-post.php', 'excerpt_count_js');
add_action( 'admin_head-post-new.php', 'excerpt_count_js');

Answers:

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Method 1

Sorry for reading wrong your question @siouxfan45!

here is the right answer:
just a little improvement in your code and you can count words!

just change these two lines:

jQuery("#excerpt_counter").val(jQuery("#excerpt").val().length);

to this:

jQuery("#excerpt_counter").val(jQuery("#excerpt").val().split(/Sb[s,.'-:;]*/).length - 1);

Words with single quote like “don’t”, “it’s”, “I’d”, “won’t”…will count as two!
If you want them to count as a single word, then you will want to change the .split() to this:

.split(/S+b[s,.'-:;]*/)

Hope I’m right this time!

Method 2

While implementing this great answer (thanks!) I worked out what I think is a nicer way of displaying the number than the weird inactive field used by the original code. This shows just “Word count: $word_count” right below the textarea. The code below also incorporates KBRckr’s code to count contractions (don’t) as one word.

<?php
/**
 * Use jQuery to add a word counter to the excerpt box
 *
 * Should attach to all post screens and indicate the number of words just below the #excerpt textarea
 */
function gv_excerpt_word_count_js() {
      echo '
     <script>jQuery(document).ready(function(){
jQuery("#postexcerpt #excerpt").after("Word Count: <strong><span id='excerpt-word-count'></span></strong>");
     jQuery("#excerpt-word-count").html(jQuery("#excerpt").val().split(/S+b[s,.'-:;]*/).length - 1);
     jQuery("#excerpt").keyup( function() {
     jQuery("#excerpt-word-count").html(jQuery("#excerpt").val().split(/S+b[s,.'-:;]*/).length - 1);
   });
});</script>
    ';
}
add_action( 'admin_head-post.php', 'gv_excerpt_word_count_js');
add_action( 'admin_head-post-new.php', 'gv_excerpt_word_count_js');
?>

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