You may notice a different word count in Turnitin when a file is submitted as a Word document and when the same file is submitted as a PDF. This is because both word counts come from different sources. When a Word file is submitted, the word count we use comes from MS Word. On the other hand, when a PDF is submitted, the word count comes from our analysis code based on the text extracted from the PDF.
Since these are two different sources, it is possible that the word count in Turnitin is different. Generally, the word count from Word is accurate for languages that use Latin alphabet characters like English. However, for some languages that use other alphabets like Thai and Japanese, MS Word does not always give an accurate word count, which creates differences between Word and PDF word counts.