Word Count for a Selection in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word bristles with useful keyboard shortcuts. Many are well known, but some obscure shortcuts deserve to be rescued from oblivion. One of these (CTRL-SHIFT-G) displays word statistics for a text selection.

Select the text whose words you want to count, and hit CTRL-SHIFT-G. A small window pops up with text statistics for the selection. I use the word count, but also shown are the character count, line count, etc. In my example (see the above image), I selected the middle paragraph, for which the reported word count is 129.

The word count for the selection is also shown in the Word status bar at the bottom of the page (129/318 in this case, 318 being the total word count), but I've noticed that in large, complex documents with many images, equations, and tables, the word count is displayed in the status bar only after a delay, but is instantaneously displayed with CTRL-SHIFT-G. Also, the status bar displays only the word count for the selection, and not bells and whistles such as the character count, line count, etc.