Number of words in a non fiction book (song, cartoon, quote)
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Nope. The appendix wouldn't count towards the total.
Any book can be as long as it takes to tell the tale. But most nonfiction (sparsely illustrated) would run around 40,000+ words. But exceptions abound.
Ask a lemming for advice and you'll end-up falling off a cliff.
That old, "factoid", has been soundly debunked, and this summary from Wikipedia is factually correct, as far as I can determine:
Lemmings have become the subject of a widely popular misconception that they commit mass suicide when they migrate. It is not a mass suicide, but the result of their migratory behavior. Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat. In such cases, many may drown if the body of water is so wide as to stretch their physical capability to the limit. This fact, combined with the unexplained fluctuations in the population of Norwegian lemmings, gave rise to the misconception.[SIZE=2][9][/SIZE]
The misconception of lemming "mass suicide" is long-standing and has been popularized by a number of factors. It was well enough known to be mentioned in "The Marching Morons", a 1951 short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth. In 1955, Disney Studio illustrator Carl Barks drew an Uncle Scrooge adventure comic with the title "The Lemming with the Locket". This comic, which was inspired by a 1953 American Mercury article, showed massive numbers of lemmings jumping over Norwegian cliffs.[SIZE=2][10][/SIZE][SIZE=2][11][/SIZE]
This same act was also used in the Apple Computer 1985 Super Bowl commercial "Lemmings" and the popular 1991 video gameLemmings, in which the player must stop the lemmings from mindlessly marching over cliffs or into traps. In a 2010 board game by GMT games, Leaping Lemmings, players must maneuver lemmings across a board while avoiding hazards, and successfully launch them off a cliff. The 1994 short film"Lemming Aid" portrayed a group of misfits attempting to save lemmings from mass suicide, (a guinea pig was used as a substitute for a lemming). American cartoonist Stephan Pastis's popular comic strip Pearls Before Swine had a few strips starring four lemmings in a humorous gossip and confessions just before they are about to jump over a cliff.
Because of their association with this odd behavior, lemming "suicide" is a frequently used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences. This metaphor is seen many times in popular culture, such as in the video game Lemmings, and in episodes of Red Dwarf and Adult Swim's show Robot Chicken. In the eighth episode of season 1 of Showtime's The Borgias, the Pope's second son Juan refers to the college of cardinals as lemmings when they flee the Vatican in anticipation of an impending French invasion. The Blink 182 song Lemmings also uses this metaphor, as does the unrelated song of the same name by English progressive rock band Van der Graaf Generator (from their 1971 album Pawn Hearts), and the 1973 stage show National Lampoon's Lemmings starring John Belushi and mocking post-Woodstockgroupthink.[SIZE=2][14][/SIZE]
OP, a non-fiction book has to be long enough to actually be a book. There is no word count requirement, except that amateur writers occasionally have a tendency to think that a rather short work qualifies as a book.
Appendix doesn't count in the word count.
I've always wondered how people came up with a word count, anyway. I can't figure out a way to get my word processor to give me a word count and I am for sure not going to go through a work and count them by hand.
OP, a non-fiction book has to be long enough to actually be a book. There is no word count requirement, except that amateur writers occasionally have a tendency to think that a rather short work qualifies as a book.
During one of his campaigns, somebody asked Abe Lincoln (in a probable reference to his height and the unusual length of his limbs), "How long should a man's legs be?". Honest Abe's response was, "Only long enough to reach the floor".
Similarly, a book needs to be long enough to cover its topics/character development/plot elements properly.
There is no set length/word count, other than the reality that a really slim volume is not likely to qualify as anything more than a booklet.
I've always wondered how people came up with a word count, anyway. I can't figure out a way to get my word processor to give me a word count and I am for sure not going to go through a work and count them by hand.
If you are using Microsoft Word, just go to the pull-down menu labeled, "spelling".
One of the items in that pull-down menu should be, "word count".
I'm confident that other word processing programs have a similar feature, so if you tell us which program you use, someone can probably tell you where to locate the, "word count", feature of that program.
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