単語 / 字

pacerier said:

Is it true that 単語 is an abstract entity of a word and 字 is a physical entity of a word? E.g. if i want to look up a word in a dictionary it is 辞書で単語を調べる but if i were to say the dictionary has 500 words it will be 辞書に字が５００ある

<on a side note, for the above sentence, is it better to use ある or its kanji equiv >

Click to expand...

pacerier said:

in japanese essays, do we usually count the number of words? like in english, we say an essay of 1500 words, how will the number of words in a japanese essay be counted?

Click to expand...

Toritoribe said:

Generally, the number of letters/characters is used when describing the size of articles.
e.g.
以下の文章を200字以内に要約せよ。
Write a summary of the following sentences in no more than 200 characters.
One of the reasons why the number of words isn't used in Japanese is the difficulty to count it. For instance, no one can answer which one is correct in the following examples.
1 収録されている
2 収録されて/いる
2 収録/されている
3 収録され/て/いる
3 収録/されて/いる
4 収録/され/て/いる

Click to expand...