Words to pages calculator

How the words to pages calculator works

The calculator uses the average words per page for each combination of font, font size, line spacing, and page size. These averages are based on standard 1-inch margins all around. Different fonts pack words differently — Times New Roman is slightly more compact than Arial at the same point size because it is a serif font with narrower letterforms. Courier New is a monospace font where every character takes the same width, resulting in fewer words per line than proportional fonts at the same size.

Word count to pages conversion chart

The figures below assume 12pt Times New Roman with 1-inch margins on letter paper — the default that school, university and most publishing submissions expect. Single-spaced pages hold about 500 words; double-spaced pages hold about 250. Use the calculator above to adjust for a different font, point size or page format.

Pages to words, in reverse

The conversion runs just as often the other way, when an assignment or brief is specified in pages rather than words. At the same 12pt Times New Roman default, multiply double-spaced pages by 250 and single-spaced pages by 500. So a 5-page double-spaced essay is about 1,250 words, a 10-page paper about 2,500, and a 15-page paper about 3,750. Handwritten pages are far less dense — typically 150 to 200 words each — which is why two handwritten pages shrink to barely one typed page.

Whenever a target is given in pages, it is worth confirming which spacing is meant before you start writing, because the answer differs by a factor of two. Everything else — headings, block quotes, footnotes, a bibliography, figures — adds length on top of the raw word count, so a real document usually lands slightly over the estimate rather than under it.

How many words per page by setting

With 12pt Times New Roman, single spacing, and standard margins on letter paper: approximately 500 words per page. Double spacing halves that to 250 words per page. At 12pt Arial single-spaced: approximately 480 words per page. At 12pt Courier New single-spaced: approximately 400 words per page because its wide monospace characters take more horizontal space. Larger font sizes reduce the word count — 14pt single-spaced fits roughly 400 words per page compared to 500 at 12pt.

Where page-count conventions come from

The familiar "250 words per double-spaced page" standard is a relic of the typewriter. Manual typewriters produced pages of remarkably consistent density, and editors demanded double spacing so they could write corrections between the lines — publishing contracts, submission guidelines and school assignments all grew up around that manuscript format. Word processors made actual density variable, but the conventions stuck: teachers still assign "five double-spaced pages" expecting roughly 1,250 words, and publishers still estimate book length at 250 words per manuscript page regardless of how the final typeset book flows.

This calculator starts from a word count you already have. To get that count from a draft, paste it into the word counter, which also reports characters and reading time; the character counter is the one to use when a limit is expressed in characters rather than words. For the other two questions that usually accompany "how long is this" — how dense the prose is and how hard it is to read — see the sentence counter and the reading level checker.

Frequently asked questions