Word count for essays

When I started writing in the 1970s, counting words in an essay really meant making a rough estimate. The words had been typed on paper, and no software could me help count what was there.

Yes, we were primitive.

Today, text is data, and composing your essay in a word processor is the easiest way to get an accurate word count for essays and papers.

Microsoft Word shows the word count in the status bar. Google Docs shows the word count after you select Word Count from the Tools menu. Most leading word processors show the count in both ways.

After you read this post, you will know how to use a range of reliable software to count words, as well as how to answer common word-counting questions that could help you avoid mistakes and misconceptions.

Using Eight Leading Word Processors to Count Words

The leading word processors have similar approaches to showing you the word count for your essay or paper.

Most leading word processors, such as Microsoft Word, display the word count in the status bar. The status bar lies below the editing area of the document.

Click the word count in the status bar to view a popup with extended information such as the number of pages, the number of characters, the number of paragraphs, and the number of lines.

Other word processors that display the word count in the status bar include

• LibreOffice Writer,
• Apache OpenOffice, and
• WPS Office.

In contrast, Google Docs does not display the current word count by default.

To make Google Docs show the word count while you edit, do the following:

1. Select Word Count from the Tools menu.
   
2. A popup will display the current word count and other statistics.
3. Tick Display word count while typing.
   
4. Click OK to close the popup.
5. A floating word count combo box will appear near the bottom of the editing area.
   

Other word processors that offer a Word Count item in the Tools menu include

• Microsoft Word for the Mac,
• LibreOffice Writer,
• Apache OpenOffice, and
• WPS Office.

Word processors that don’t have a Tools menu place their Word Count command elsewhere.

In Microsoft Word for Windows and in Microsoft Word on the Web, there is no Tools menu: the Word Count button is on the Review tab of the ribbon.

In the Pages word processor, on the Mac, get the word count in the following way:

1. Select Show Word Count from the View menu.
   
2. The word count will appear and remain at the bottom of the editing area.
   
3. Hide this word count information again by selecting Hide Word Count from the View menu.

The following table summarizes how leading word processors allow you to count the words in your essays, papers, compositions, or other documents.

Counting Words in a Section or Subset of Your Document

What if you don’t want to count all the words in your document? For instance, what if you want to count only the words in a single sentence, paragraph, or section of your essay? You can do that.

Count the words in a subset of your document by first selecting the text you want to count, then look at the word count in the status bar or choose Word Count from the Tools menu to find out the number of words in the text selection.

Inserting Word Count Automatically

A teacher or editor may require you to include the word count for your work in the document itself.

Of course, you could simply type the current word count into the document before you submit it — and nothing is wrong with that.

However, some word processors allow you to insert a special field that will display the word count and dynamically update with changes.

In Microsoft Word, insert the word count field into the document with these steps:

1. Place your text cursor in the document where you want the word count to appear.
2. On the Insert tab of the ribbon, click the Field button.
   
3. The Field dialog box will pop up. Select Document Information under Categories, then select NumWords under Field Names.
   
4. Click OK.

In LibreOffice Writer, insert the word count field into the document with these steps:

1. Place your text cursor in the document where you want the word count to appear.
2. On the Insert tab or menu, click Field.
3. The Fields window will pop up. In the Type list, select Statistics. In the Select list, select Words.
4. Click the Insert button.
5. Click the Close button.

Using Online Tools to Count Words

If you are composing in an application that doesn’t tell you the word count, you can use an online tool in your Web browser to count the words in the text.

To use an online word-counting tool, do the following:

1. Select text in the document and copy it to the clipboard.
2. Switch to the browser tab that contains the online tool and paste from the clipboard into the edit area on the page.
3. The online tool will display the word count and usually other statistics about the text as well.

I tested eight online word-counting tools using text that I had previously word-counted using Microsoft Word.

The following six online tools gave the same word-count total as Microsoft Word:

• www.charactercounteronline.com
• www.numberofwords.com
• tools.codesnail.com
• www.easywordcount.com
• wordcounter.net
• wordcounter.io

All the words in your essay contribute to the word count, even short ones. This includes

• personal pronouns (I, he, she),
• definite and indefinite articles (the, a, an),
• prepositions (at, in, for),
• numbers, both spelled out (seven) and written in numeric form (9,672),
• acronyms (CIA, NAACP).

Initials written with a space separating them from other text count as individual words. Thus, George H. W. Bush counts as four words.

Hyphenated words (check-in, know-it-all, father-in-law) are counted as one word.

Contractions (won’t, couldn’t) count as one word.

Numbers combined with symbols such as a dollar sign ($42) or percent sign (99%) count as one word.

Footnotes and endnotes are not usually included in a word count, but Microsoft Word will count them by default.

To prevent Microsoft Word from counting words in footnotes and endnotes, do the following:

1. Click the word count in the status bar to bring up the Word Count dialog box.
2. Untick the checkbox labeled Include footnotes and endnotes.
3. Click the Close button.

If you are assigned essays with both a word count target and footnotes or endnotes, check with your professors or teachers to find out their rules for whether to count words in footnotes and endnotes. If you don’t have time to check, assume that the text in footnotes and endnotes should not be included in the word count.

Normally, bibliographies and references would not be included in your word count.

Microsoft Word counts the words in captions (e.g. below figures, charts, and pictures), and this is likely to be the correct behavior in most situations.

The title and title page material should not be included in the word count.

Whether headings, and subheadings should be included in the word count depends on the policies of the instructors, schools, or clients involved. The decision to count headings will matter more in compositions where headings are more numerous, such as in advanced academic writing (e.g. theses). In such cases it is especially important to find out what the rules are ahead of time and adhere to them.

Words in direct quotations, including shorter quoted text or longer, block-quoted text, should be included in the word count. Whether you are quoting too much is likely to matter when judging the quality of the essay, so don’t quote more simply to drive up the count!

If your instructor or institution has rules about word counts that differ from your word processor’s word counting behavior, you may opt to individually select and count the allowed parts, then total all the counts. Another option is take the word count provided by your word processor, then subtract an estimate of the word count of the parts that should not be counted.

How Close to the Target Word Count Must You Be?

Many instructors and institutions have a “10% rule,” meaning that your word count may be within 10% of the target word count in either direction.

Using the 10% rule, an essay for a 500-word assignment should be not fewer than 450 words and not more than 550.

Why Do We Count Words?

Teachers, schools, and publications have good reasons for specifying target word counts for writing.

One thing to understand is that a word count requirement is almost always a required range of word counts (often ranging from 10% below to 10% above the stated requirement).

This means that there is an implied minimum word count and an implied maximum word count for the assignment.

So, we will divide this answer into three parts: good reasons to require a range of word counts, good reasons to specify a minimum word count, and good reasons to specify a maximum word count.

Good reasons to specify a range of word counts:

• Some professions (and academia) often require word counts on writing, making writing to a specified length a valuable skill to learn.
• Instructors are able to grade essays more fairly in comparison to each other when they are approximately the same length.
• Different types of writing simply require different lengths: a novel is longer than a novella; a novella is (usually) longer than a short story.
• Different genres require different lengths.
• A publication may have a length of article that fits its brand or satisfies its audience.

Reasons for minimum word counts:

• Teachers want students to engage with a topic at adequate depth. A certain length for the essay is a proxy for that.
• Teachers want students to learn to write with sufficient evidence and level of detail.
• Teachers want students to learn to organize larger amounts of material.

Good reasons for maximum word counts:

• Readers and scorers may have limited time and a great many essays to read.
• Teachers want students to learn to write concisely.

How to Count Words in Handwritten Text and Other Hard Copy Material

Occasionally you may need to estimate the word count of text, even in the 21st century.

Reasons to estimate word counts:

• You may prefer (or be required) to write drafts of your essays by hand and need to know if you are close to the target word count.
• You may write journal entries daily and are wondering how many words you have written in the past year.
• You may be curious to know how many words are in a published book.

Below I explain one method of estimating word count for short works, such as school essays, and a second method for longer works, up to novel length.

To estimate the number of words in a fairly short essay, do the following:

1. Calculate the average number of words in a full line (count the total number of words in five to ten full lines and divide by the number of lines you counted).
2. Count the number of full lines in the essay.
3. Calculate the total number of words in full lines (multiply the average number of words in a full line by the number of full lines).
4. Simply count the number of words in all partial lines.
5. Estimate the total number of words in the essay by adding the number of words in full lines to the total number of words in partial lines.

Using this method on a short essay, I came within 3 words:

• The essay had 48 full lines.
• I calculated an average of 14 words per full line.
• The number of words in partial lines was 69.
• Microsoft Word reported that the essay had 738 words.
• 14*48+69 = 741 words. Close!

To estimate the word count for a longer work, do the following:

1. Find a page with average word density (i.e. an average number of partial and full lines for this book — use your judgment after thumbing through the book).
2. Count all the words on this average page.
3. Multiply the count of words on this page by the number of pages in the book.

Using this method, I was able come within 2.1% of the reported word count for J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Two Towers.

• According to lotrproject.com, The Two Towers has 156,198 words.
• My edition of the novel has 443 pages (after subtracting 14 pages for table of contents, maps, and so forth).
• The “average” page I picked out had 353 words.
• 443 * 353 = 152,849. Fairly close!

Of course, if you choose the wrong “average” page your estimated total word count may miss the mark by a great deal. To improve the accuracy, you could count the words on three pages of average density and divide by three.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to be as quick as possible, you can pick out any half page that seems to have the right density, count the words in that half page, and multiply by two to get the average density for a page.

Essay Word Counter: The Best Solution to Getting the Right Length of Your Essay

When working on your assignments, you can only be sure of getting the best grades by strictly following all the instructions. “I have to do my coursework to the top of my abilities” is a thought that might instill worry in you. But one of the requirements in most assignments, word count, is fairly easy to keep track of. As you’re writing an essay, it is important to stick to the required word count for this particular type of paper. But how do you know it? How many words in an essay? Here are all the answers:

How Many Words are in My Essay?

It depends on the type of essay you are working on. For example, a one-page essay should be approximately 550 words or longer, depending on your department’s requirements. However, if you have been writing your essay and have probably hit midway, it might be important to check the number of words to assess progress. This is critical to ensuring your writing stays within the recommended length. To know the number of words for your essay, you should consider using the essay word counter.

How Many Words Is the Average College Essay?

An average college essay is 400-700 words, which is about five paragraphs. When you see the length requirements for a difficult paper you might immediately think “I just want to pay someone to do my essay.” But don’t worry, sometimes even a 1,000 words isn’t that much when you enjoy your topic and do the research. Make sure to pay special attention to your lecturer’s instructions because some might require specific pages or paragraphs. However, the 400 – 700 words range sound wide, right? This range is meant to cater for writers who prefer either short or longer paragraphs.

Even though the answer to the question, “how many words in a college essay?” is distinct, you need to ensure that all the key points on your topic are covered. For example, when writing a persuasive essay, make sure to bring out the main points and counterarguments.

Once you are through writing the college essay, you should make sure to confirm the number of words using a reliable tool, such as the essay word counter, before submitting it.

How Many Words Is the Common App Essay?  

Like an average essay, an application essay is another flexible type of write-up of 250-650 words, which students write when seeking admission to colleges of their choice. Ensure to be extra careful when determining how many words is a college essay for admission because it is part of the grading system.

When writing an application essay, do not simply assume that shorter is always better. Instead, you should think of how many words is a good essay, which allows you to express your personality, writing skills, and passions. We recommend that you target 500 — 600 words. To know this, you need to use the word counter tool, which is fast, reliable, and accurate.

How Many Words Is a Two Page Essay?

Now that we have answered the question “How many words is a 5 paragraph essay?,” it is time to move on to the next one, a two page essay, which starts from 500 words. However, it is very important to consider whether your paper is single or double spaced.

A single page which is single-spaced should be about 500 words or 250 words if it is double spaced. When working on two pages, you need to hit double the number of words you would do for a single page, meaning 1,000 words single spaced or 500 words double spaced. To be sure that your paper is within the right range, make sure to use the online word counter for essay.

How to Use Our Word Counter for Essay

Whether you are working on a short or a longer essay, the first thing is determining how many words should a college essay be. For example, you should have the answer to the questions, “How many words should a 5 paragraph essay be?” and “How many words is the average essay?” by looking at the prompts given by your teacher. Then, make sure to use the essay counter tool. Here is a demonstration:

• Write your essay and format it well
• Visit the online word counter on their website
• Copy the entire text of your essay, and paste it on the word count interface

The good thing about using the word counter tool is that it allows you to do more than check the number of words. In addition, you can check grammar and improve your writing. Grammar is as important as word count, and should also be at the best level possible. And if after all of this you’re ever thinking “I should get a professional to do my paper for me,” and you actually do, then you won’t have to worry about following all the instructions, because the writer will do all the work for you!

You have probably heard of the word counter tool. However, hearing is not the end of it all; do you know how to use it? Let us explore that bit by bit:

An essay word counter is an online-based application tool that enables you to determine the number of words in your essay accurately. It saves you the agony of having to count the words manually. With this tool, you can know if you have achieved the required number of words or not and thus act accordingly. 

With an online word counter, you can determine the following:

How Many Words is The Common App Essay? 

The current range for a common app essay is 250-650 words. It is an essay used when one is applying to more than one or two colleges.

Since this essay is rather short, your primary focus should be on coming up with a great single personal statement in the fewest words possible. You should note that the online app does not anything under 250 words or more than 650.

How Many Words is a College Essay?

College essays range from 200-600 words. It is because most of them are on a single-spaced page.

However, there are some cases where the recruiting officers might stipulate the number of words to use for you. Therefore, you have to keenly read the prompts or instructions to ensure that you are within the set limit. If, for example, you ordered a college essay and are thinking “When I pay someone to write my essay will the wordcount be right?” you can double check using our tool, and make sure it is the right length.  

How Many Words Should a 5 Paragraph Essay Be?

A standard five-paragraph essay should range from 250 to 500 words long.

Why is this so? Because of its rigid structure which comprises of an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. To achieve this, you will need to have three supporting points, each of them having three sentences of evidence. It provides the required amount of detail to justify the main point.

How Many Words is a Two Page Essay?

A two-page essay has an approximate of 1000 words. However, this depends on the structure and formatting of your paper.

For this case, your essay will have single-space to achieve the two pages. With 550 words double spaced, you can still arrive at a two-page article. From this, you will realize that the font size, spacing, margins used and the paragraph length will affect this type of essay.

How Many Words is The Average College Essay?

“I need to write my essay for college! How long should it be?”

An average essay should be five paragraphs long, which is approximately 400–700 words long.

It, however, depends on the educational level, topic, department, course, and lecturer’s instructions. Such an essay has three paragraphs (introduction, body, and conclusion.) The average article has a short introduction and determination to achieve this length.

How Many Words is a Good Essay

A high-quality essay should be approximately 500 words. For you to achieve this, you should have each paragraph at about 75-125 words, consisting of 3-5 written sentences. It offers you more flexibility enabling you to make the most out of it. 

The word count for an essay is as easy as pie to use. Here is how to use the word count tool in determining “how many words are in my essay.”

How to Determine Word Count in Word (Microsoft Word)

A word counter tool is directly built-in MS Word. It is one of the most straightforward features to use. Here is how you can achieve this painstakingly:

Firstly, launch the Microsoft Word application to a blank document and start typing.

Next, move the cursor on the menu bar and select the “Review” tab at the top of the navigation bar.

Lastly, click on the “Word Count” option appearing on the left-hand side of the navigation bar.

The online word count tool is the simplest to use. All you have to do is to key in the word count site on the address bar and then copy and paste your text on it. As simple as that and you are good to go!

As you’ve determined the required word count, check it with our free word counter — and if you still fail to meet the professor’s requirements, turn to our writers for help. “Who can write my paper?” is something you won’t be wondering about anymore. 

Skip the Writing, Enjoy the Results

Who is this word-counting tool for?

This tool is made for anyone who needs to keep a count of their word, characters, sentences and paragraphs automatically. From teachers, students to bloggers, SEOs and content writers. For writing assignments or meta descriptions with specific word counts.

What is the best word count for SEO?

Many might suggest the longer the content, the better for ranking. But that’s a misunderstanding from studies, like Backlinko citing that the “average Google first page result contains 1,447 words”.

The length of your web copy should first be determined by how helpful the content is for your users’ needs – whether that’s getting an answer to a question or simply showcasing a product.

By checking the top ten results that rank for your main keyword and doing keyword research to understand which other words people search for, you can calculate how long your content should be, and whether you can answer the user’s intended search better.

Remember: word count is not indicative of quality!

Usually, written assignments go with a word limit that you’re not supposed to overdraw. If you’re working in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, you can easily track the word count in real-time. However, if you take, for example, a PDF file, the task is not that simple as, generally, PDF readers don’t have a built-in word counter. In WowEssays.com’s collection of writing assistance utilities, you will find a super simple and extremely helpful word counter tool online. It is meant to help you with multiple aspects of any text’s quantitative analysis absolutely for free!

How to Find Out How Many Words Are in My Paper

Using the WowEssays.com’s words counter tool is as far from rocket science as it only gets – all it takes is three easy steps:

1. Copy and paste or type in the text you want to analyze in the utility’s window.
2. The calculator will instantly display the results – you don’t even have to press any buttons. You will get:
   • The number of words
   • The number of characters – with spaces
   • The number of characters – without spaces
3. In case you need to get another paper or essay word count, just hit the «Clear All» button and paste the new chunk of content.

That’s it! Such a simple operation will let you stay within the assignment’s word count limit. On the other hand, it can let you see that you should add more text in order to adhere to teachers’ requirements.

Features of the WowEssays Words Counter for Essays

Now, when you know how to count words and characters in a text fast and easily, let’s take a closer look at the features our free online word counter possesses and the benefits it provides.

• It’s fast – the results are presented in a blink of an eye as soon as you paste the text or as you type the words in.
• It’s free – you mustn’t pay a dime to use our word counter – or any other educational or writing assistance tool, for that matter.
• It’s precise – every letter, every number, every punctuation mark, every symbol will be counted and included in the calculation results.
• It handles multiple text formats – any chunk of text that can be copied and pasted into the counter’s window – be it in MS Word, Google Docs, PDF, etc. – will be cleared from formatting elements and analyzed properly.
• It’s safe –we display the counting results instantly without saving the texts you type in or paste, hence ensuring complete content security and users’ confidentiality.

The combination of the above-mentioned features and benefits makes WowEssays.com’s online word counter arguably the best option to use if you need to see how your high school project, college essay, or university coursework is represented in numbers.

Word Count for Essay Is Just One of WowEssays’ Free Tools

In case you haven’t noticed, let us stress out that our essay service has far more to offer than just a character and word counter for essays – this is a full-fledged writing assistance resource. The collection of helpful and easy to use utilities students of all academic levels can exploit to improve their writing counts almost two dozen items, including but not limited to:

• Topic Generator
• Citation Generator
• Essay Editor
• Grammar Checker
• Readability Checker
• Spell Checker
• Case Converter
• Grade Calculator
• and other free educational tools!

Also, there’s no way we can overlook the WowEssays’ vast essay examples database. Actually, our entire project started as a free sample collection that students could use as a source of inspiration, content presentation ideas, and high-end writing practices.

Such comprehensiveness makes WowEssays.com a valuable support resource for students from all walks of life who need versatile and effective yet absolutely free writing assistance tools. Whether you need to figure out how many words does my essay have, put citations in line with the required format, check the grammar and readability, or calculate your grades, WowEssays.com is arguably the best place to go to!

Going Beyond Free Word Counter Online: WowEssays’ Paid Services

Not only is WowEssays more than just a word counter website with dozens of other free utilities. It also provides a wide range of advanced writing assistance services at a reasonable cost. These features would be highly appreciated by students who find themselves in desperate need of quick practical help. Upon your request, we can:

• Deliver unique model papers and original academic samples crafted from scratch by experienced writers according to customer’s instructions.
• Professionally edit and thoroughly proofread any paper users send us to bring it in line with the strictest standards and best writing practices.
• Run any piece of content through a powerful anti-plagiarism checker and send back a report.

In case you wish to learn more about how fast and easy it is to get effective writing help from pro writers and editors, just get in touch with our customer managers. They will gladly explain to you all the nuances 24/7.

In case you are ready to address WowEssays’ affordable and practical writing services right now, just hit the button below and fill out a simple online form!

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