I was writing a novel and on my Open office 2.4 the word counts were close to
what I had. But on 3.0 they were way off.

Example
"One two three. 
Four five six, seven, eight nine ten.
Eleven
Twelve, “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,” Sixteen.
Seventeen, eighteen nineteen, “twenty, twenty one.”

Was counted as 24 words.  Multiply that by 50,000 words and you can see how much
it inflates the actual count.