counting how many words are in abstracts

web/app/templates/abstracts.html

   <div class="row">
     <div class="col m-5">
       <p class="h1 text-center">Reading Fragments</p>
-      <p class="mt-2 text-center">a <span id="time"></span> minute read out of 662781 minutes reading time</p>
+      <!-- The following total reading time is based on the calculation of approx. 43,647,513 words in all the documents divided by 200 as the average reading speed of 200 wpm -->
+      <p class="mt-2 text-center">a <span id="time"></span> minute read out of 218238 minutes reading time</p>
       <a href="{{ url_for('main.index') }}" class="h1 text-left"> ⇽ </a>
     </div>
   </div>

word_count.py

             content = file.read()
             #text = rtf_to_text(content)
             words = content.split()
+            substring = '\\'
+            # remove elements from list that contain given string
+            words = [item for item in words if substring not in item]
+            substring = '}'
+            # remove elements from list that contain given string
+            words = [item for item in words if substring not in item]
+            substring = '{'
+            # remove elements from list that contain given string
+            words = [item for item in words if substring not in item]
+            substring = '/'
+            # remove elements from list that contain given string
+            words = [item for item in words if substring not in item]
+            substring = '('
+            # remove elements from list that contain given string
+            words = [item for item in words if substring not in item]
             total += len(words)
-            #print(text)
+            #print(words)
 
 print(total)