1,000 words is about two pages single spaced, or four pages double spaced, on A4 paper in a 12-point font. It takes about four minutes to read silently and five to read aloud.
Those are the usual rules of thumb: 500 words to a single-spaced page and 250 to a double-spaced one. The real number moves with the font, the margins and how much dialogue there is, since short lines of speech leave white space. The table below uses the rules of thumb, so treat each figure as a guide.
Words, pages and reading time
| Words | Pages, single spaced | Pages, double spaced | Paperback pages | Reading time | Reading aloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | Half a page | 1 | 1 | 1 minute | 1 minute |
| 500 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 minutes | 3 minutes |
| 750 | 1.5 | 3 | 3 | 3 minutes | 4 minutes |
| 1,000 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 minutes | 5 minutes |
| 1,500 | 3 | 6 | 5 | 6 minutes | 8 minutes |
| 2,000 | 4 | 8 | 7 | 8 minutes | 11 minutes |
| 2,500 | 5 | 10 | 9 | 11 minutes | 14 minutes |
| 3,000 | 6 | 12 | 11 | 13 minutes | 16 minutes |
| 5,000 | 10 | 20 | 18 | 21 minutes | 27 minutes |
| 10,000 | 20 | 40 | 36 | 42 minutes | 55 minutes |
| 20,000 | 40 | 80 | 73 | 1 hour 24 minutes | 1 hour 49 minutes |
| 50,000 | 100 | 200 | 182 | 3 hours 30 minutes | 4 hours 33 minutes |
| 80,000 | 160 | 320 | 291 | 5 hours 36 minutes | 7 hours 17 minutes |
| 100,000 | 200 | 400 | 364 | 7 hours | 9 hours 6 minutes |
How the table was worked out:
- Single and double spaced: A4 paper, 2.5 cm margins and a 12-point font, at 500 and 250 words a page.
- Paperback pages: 275 words a page, the middle of the usual 250 to 300 for a novel in paperback.
- Reading time: 238 words a minute, the average speed of adults reading non-fiction silently in English. Fiction is read a little faster, at about 260.
- Reading aloud: 183 words a minute.
The reading speeds come from a review of 190 studies by the psychologist Marc Brysbaert, "How many words do we read per minute?", published in 2019. Any one reader may be much faster or slower.
Why the number of pages varies
- The font. A wide font fills a page sooner than a narrow one, even at the same size.
- Spacing and margins. Double spacing halves the words on a page. Wider margins take a few more lines away.
- Dialogue and lists. A page of short lines of speech holds far fewer words than a page of long paragraphs.
- Headings and breaks. Each new chapter or section that starts on a new page leaves part of a page empty.
So when a teacher, editor or competition sets a limit, it is almost always in words, not pages. Words are the same whatever the font.
Manuscripts for publishers
A manuscript sent to an agent or a publisher is traditionally double spaced, in a 12-point font, with wide margins. At about 250 words a page, an 80,000-word novel is a manuscript of some 320 pages, and the same book fills about 290 pages of a paperback. Agents and publishers judge length by the word count, so give it in your covering letter.
Speeches and talks
Most people give a talk more slowly than they read aloud, with pauses, at around 130 to 150 words a minute. So:
- A 3-minute talk is about 400 to 450 words.
- A 5-minute talk is about 650 to 750 words.
- A 10-minute talk is about 1,300 to 1,500 words.
Read your talk aloud with a clock running. It is the only count that matters on the day.
Pages and words in Retroprose
Retroprose counts in words, and shows pages as a guide.
- Word count. Tools, Word count gives the words in the document, and in the text you have chosen. Footnotes count. Markdown marks and link addresses do not.
- Word goals. Ctrl+F8 sets a goal for the document, such as 1,500 words for an essay, with a bar that fills as you write.
- Page lines. A line across the screen marks where each page ends, with the number of the next page, and the status line shows the page you are on. They count 80 characters to a line and 54 lines to a page, as a typed page would. A Word file or a PDF uses real fonts, so its pages can break in other places.
- Print preview. Shift+F7 shows the pages laid out with a template, in real fonts, before you export.
- Reading time. Under the outline, the document stats Hard disk edition give the reading time and the time to read aloud, as you write, along with the words in each section, the sentences and the reading ease.
To see how long your own piece is, paste it into the demo, with no account, and choose Tools, Word count.