17. How Many Words? A publisher has discovered that the number of words contained in new manuscripts is approximately normally distributed, with a mean equal to 20,000 words in excess of that specified in the author’s contract and a standard deviation of 10,000 words. If the publisher wants to be almost certain (say, with a probability of .95) that the manuscript will have less than 100,000 words, what number of words should the publisher specify in the contract?