Why is the word count different when I submit the critique?
If you quote the story in your critique, this word count will be deducted from the total critique word count through a heuristic feature applied to the text which tries to dig out segments which are a part of the story rather than a part of the critique.
For example, if the story contains the segment "Once in a blue moon I would go out and hunt mice" and your crit has the segment "sometimes during a full moon I would go out and party" the logic might infer that "moon I would go out and" is a part of the story and not the crit and would automatically deduct 6 words from the crit.
If you are around the 150/300 word boundary (which is the only thing that really matters in regards to this), and find that you've been unduly penalized, please send us a message and we'll look into it.