Many students who are to appear for the IELTS exam seem confused about the word counting in IELTS. It can be because of the wrong information provided on the internet. Also, there are certain myths revolving around this matter like you can’t write more than 250 words in IELTS Writing Task 2, or in IELTS Writing Task 1 you need to write more than 200 words to achieve a high band score.
To provide you with some clarity, here are the word count rules in IELTS.

• No matter how small, each word matters. Every tiny word, including prepositions like on, in, and at and articles like a, an, and the, is also tallied.
• Words with hyphens, such "state-of-the-art," "self-improvement," and "fine-tune," are all regarded as one word.
• Numbers, times, and dates are also regarded as words. For instance, the sentence "5000 people present in the auditorium at 6:30 pm on December 25, 2019" has twelve words, yet the terms "5000," "6:30 pm," and "December 25, 2019" are also regarded as three distinct words.
• Numbers written with symbols are not tallied. For instance, 99.9% does not count the % symbol, whereas 99.9 is counted as a word.
• Compound nouns (the nouns that are joined together to make a single word) are counted as one word only. For example- the words skyscraper, grandmother, and grasshopper are counted as one word. There are also various compound words that are separated with a hyphen like a mother-in-law, this is also counted as one word. On the other hand compound nouns that are written separately like training room, fire drill, and swimming pool are counted as separate words. For example- the sentence, “The bookkeeper stacked the books neatly in the university library.” has 10 words. The dates that are written in the way ‘14th November’ is counted as one number and one word and not as a single word.
• Nouns that are combined to form a compound word (a word that is counted as one) are not counted separately. The terms "skyscraper," "grandmother," and "grasshopper," for instance, are all regarded as one word.
• A hyphen is used to divide some compound words, such as "mother-in-law," which is also treated as one word. Conversely, distinct words are counted for compound nouns that are written independently, such as swimming pool, fire drill, and training room. For instance, there are ten words in the statement, "The bookkeeper stacked the books neatly in the university library."
• When a date is written as "14th November," it is counted as one word and one number rather than as a single word.
• Every word—including those enclosed in parenthesis—is tallied. Additionally, some people are perplexed as to whether terms like "the," which are used multiple times in a sentence, would all be counted. Yes, a word is tallied the number of times it appears in a sentence.
• Finally, contractions like I'm, it's, we'd, and we'll are tallied as a single word. I am, it is, we would, and we shall, on the other hand, are counted as two distinct words. When writing for the IELTS, it's best to avoid using too many contractions.

Talking about the word limit, it is recommended that you write 150-180 words for Task 1 and 250-280 words for Task 2. Word counting alone will not help you get the desired score in the IELTS exam. There are various other skills that serve the purpose. To develop such skills and learn useful tips and strategies to score high in the IELTS exam, join the best IELTS Institute, Indowest