Generally speaking, when a publishing house counted the number of words, they did not include spaces. This is because in writing, spaces are often used to separate the paragraph and sentence to provide more information for the reader to better understand the structure and content of the article. Therefore, when counting words, only the length of the text is usually counted, and the existence of spaces is not considered. Of course, in some special cases, the publishing house might consider the contribution of spaces in the word count. For example, if the number of spaces in an article is relatively small or some spaces are used to emphasize certain content, the publishing house may treat some spaces as part of the text and deduct the corresponding number of words from the word count. In short, under normal circumstances, the publishing house did not include spaces when counting the number of words. However, the specific situation may vary depending on the publishing house, the publishing industry, and the literary work.