The number of characters contained in an output document (or an input document when translating into Japanese) must first be counted whereby spaces are included. The character count is then divided by 50 to obtain the number of standard lines.

In the case of MS Word files, the number of characters can be determined simply by clicking [Tools] and selecting Option [Word Count] - Characters (with spaces). Please note, however, that text inside boxes is not counted by this function and must therefore be counted separately.

Besides, we use a dedicated program to count PowerPoint and other graphic-based files. Even when an original is available only as a hard copy, an accurate estimate can be produced by scanning and subsequent OCR (optical character recognition).

A minimum charge applies when the line count is very low.