School and university
| Type | Typical length |
|---|---|
| Common App personal essay | 250–650 words (650 is the maximum) |
| College supplemental essays | Often 150–350 words; check each prompt |
| High school essay | 300–1,000 words |
| Undergraduate essay | 1,500–5,000 words |
| Research paper abstract | 150–250 words |
| Undergraduate dissertation | 8,000–15,000 words |
| Master's thesis | 15,000–50,000 words |
| PhD thesis | 70,000–100,000 words |
Most universities allow a margin of about 10% above or below a word limit, but some treat the limit as strict. Read your assignment brief, and check whether references, footnotes and appendices count.
Work and business
| Type | Typical length |
|---|---|
| Cover letter | 250–400 words (under one page) |
| Professional email | 50–125 words |
| Press release | 300–500 words |
| Executive summary | About 10% of the full report, usually under 1 page |
| LinkedIn post | Up to 3,000 characters (roughly 400–500 words) |
| Resume | One page for most early-career roles; two for senior roles |
Online content
| Type | Typical length |
|---|---|
| Product description | 50–300 words |
| News article | 400–800 words |
| Blog post | 800–2,000 words |
| In-depth guide | 2,000–4,000 words |
| Meta description | About 150–160 characters |
There's no ideal word count for search engines. Google's guidance is to write for people, so a page should be as long as it needs to be to answer the question fully, and no longer. A 600-word article that answers the question beats a 3,000-word article padded with filler.
Fiction
These category lengths are the ones used by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association for its awards, and they're widely used across publishing:
| Category | Word count |
|---|---|
| Flash fiction | Under 1,000 words |
| Short story | Under 7,500 words |
| Novelette | 7,500–17,500 words |
| Novella | 17,500–40,000 words |
| Novel | 40,000 words and over |
In practice, most debut adult novels published today are 70,000–100,000 words. Young adult novels are usually 50,000–80,000 words, and fantasy and science fiction often run longer, at 90,000–120,000 words.
Speeches and presentations
Most people speak at about 130 words per minute in a presentation, a little slower than conversation. Use that to plan your script:
| Speaking time | Approximate words |
|---|---|
| 1 minute | 130 |
| 3 minutes | 390 |
| 5 minutes | 650 |
| 10 minutes | 1,300 |
| 20 minutes | 2,600 |
Wedding toasts and best-man speeches work best at 3–5 minutes. Leave time for pauses, laughter and slides.
Check your length
The word counter shows your word count, reading time and speaking time as you type, and lets you set a word goal. For social posts and form fields with character limits, use the character counter. Converting from pages? See How many words is a page?