Word.

It used to be that a word wasn't a word unless it had three letters in it. "Unless it had three letters in it" is a word-count of four. Then Microsoft Word came along and counted words such as "it," "to," "be," "in," and "a" as words.

At this point journalists and sub-editors came to blows in newsrooms the world over, and editorial departments fell into chaos in the War of the Word Count.