Using Spreadsheet to quantify a text source

Here a getting started with Google Spreadsheet and its functions to collect some quantitative information from a given text.

To measure the length of a text, where A1 is the cell that contains the actual text:

=LEN(A1)

To count the characters:

=COUNT(A1)

To count words:

=COUNT(SPLIT(A1, " "))

To count occourrence of a specific word:

=COUNT(SPLIT(A1, "Rome"))

To count accourrence with edge cases, such as words with puctuation:

=COUNT(SPLIT(A1, "Rome*"))