How Many Words on a Page?

How many words on a page?

For anyone who has taken the time to manually count the number of words on a page of paper, you know it’s both time consuming and frustrating. There has to be a better way. Fortunately, word counters can easily give you the information for your own writing, but what if you need to know the exact number of words for a particular page? Getting this information is a bit more difficult.

There could be a number of reasons you want to know how many words are on a page. Many times it’s because you have an assignment which requires you to write a certain number of pages, so you’d like to know how many words are needed to fill a page. The problem is there’s not a definitive answer to this questions because there are so many factors that go into calculating the number of words on a page.

For those looking for a general rule of thumb, you can estimate that there are about 250 words on a page double spaced, or 500 words on a page single spaced. This is a rough estimate and the true number of words on the page is likely to be more or less. This may not be a big factor for the single page, but if you are estimating for a lot of pages, the actual number can be significantly different than the estimated number.

If you know some basics about the writing and the page, you can get a much more accurate estimate by using a Words per Page calculator. This will allow you to input the font type (Arial, Calibri, Comic Sans MS, Courier, Times New Roman or Verdana), the font size, and whether the page is single or doubled spaced. Using this information and the number of words, the calculator can give a more accurate estimate than using the rule-of-thumb estimate. You also have the option of using the “type your own Words” function to get the estimated number of pages for your writing.

Another reason you may be searching for how many words there are on a page is you may want to know the number of words for a particular page on the Internet. Since web pages aren’t limited to the size of a standard sheet of paper, the actual number of words on the page can vary wildly, and are often much larger than a typical paper page. In cases like this, you can use a Website Page Word Count calculator.

To find out this word count information, you simply input the URL of the website’s page for which you need to know the number of words and the calculator will tell you exactly how many are on that particular page. Even better, it will also give you a list of the words used on the page including how many times each word is used.

(Photo courtesy of Murray Barnes)

    • Just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Being able to manipulate pages can be useful for good reasons, not just to increase page count. There will be time when you will need to fit important information into a certain page count, and this can be a useful skill to know.

  • So if I get an essay assignment which says it should be 5 pages, I can change the font and font size and make whatever I write longer or shorter? isn’t that cheating in a way?

    • This sure is helpful if you get an essay where they only specify it must be 5 pages. That doesn’t happen often these days. I find that you will always need a word count. teachers are too smart to let you manipulate how much you write by changing the page to your advantage.

  • This is helpful especially when you need to estimate how many pages you will need when printing your work. Thank you for all this information.

  • Just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Being able to manipulate pages can be useful for good reasons, not just to increase page count. There will be time when you will need to fit important information into a certain page count, and this can be a useful skill to know.

  • This sure is helpful if you get an essay where they only specify it must be 5 pages. That doesn’t happen often these days. I find that you will always need a word count. teachers are too smart to let you manipulate how much you write by changing the page to your advantage.This is helpful especially when you need to estimate how many pages you will need when printing your work. Thank you for all this information.Just because you know how to do something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Being able to manipulate pages can be useful for good reasons, not just to increase page count. There will be time when you will need to fit important information into a certain page count, and this can be a useful skill to know.

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