diff --git a/src/wp-includes/pluggable.php b/src/wp-includes/pluggable.php
index 3b81242f4d..5edef2d0c5 100644
--- a/src/wp-includes/pluggable.php
+++ b/src/wp-includes/pluggable.php
@@ -1739,7 +1739,7 @@ if ( ! function_exists( 'wp_notify_moderator' ) ) :
 			$comment_author_domain = gethostbyaddr( $comment->comment_author_IP );
 		}
 
-		$comments_waiting = $wpdb->get_var( "SELECT count(comment_ID) FROM $wpdb->comments WHERE comment_approved = '0'" );
+		$comments_waiting = $wpdb->get_var( "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $wpdb->comments WHERE comment_approved = '0'" );
 
 		// The blogname option is escaped with esc_html on the way into the database in sanitize_option
 		// we want to reverse this for the plain text arena of emails.