Words to pages calculator
Find out how many pages your word count fills. Choose your font, size, spacing and page format.
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.
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.
Frequently asked questions
How many pages is 1000 words?
Roughly 2 pages single-spaced or 4 pages double-spaced, assuming 12pt Times New Roman with 1-inch margins — the default settings for most school and university submissions. Switching to Arial loses a little density, Courier New loses a lot, and moving up to 14pt stretches the same 1,000 words to about 2.5 single-spaced pages. Set your exact font, size and spacing in the calculator above for a figure tailored to your document rather than the rule-of-thumb average.
How many words are on a page?
Around 500 words on a single-spaced page and 250 on a double-spaced one, with 12pt Times New Roman and standard margins. That 250-word figure is the publishing industry's standard manuscript page and the basis of most page-count conventions. Handwriting is far less dense — a handwritten page typically holds only 150 to 200 words — which is why a two-page handwritten assignment converts to barely one typed page.
How many pages is a 5000 word essay?
About 10 pages single-spaced or 20 pages double-spaced at 12pt Times New Roman with 1-inch margins. Headings, block quotes, footnotes and a bibliography all add length beyond the raw word count, so a real 5,000-word academic paper usually lands a page or two over the estimate. If your instructor specified a page count rather than a word count, confirm which spacing they expect — it changes the required words by a factor of two.
How many pages is 500 words?
Just about 1 page single-spaced or 2 pages double-spaced with standard 12pt settings — which is why "write a one-pager" and "write 500 words" are treated as the same assignment. A 500-word piece is also the classic length for a college application essay, a cover letter that fills the page, or a short blog post that takes two to three minutes to read.
How many words is a novel?
Most adult novels run 70,000 to 100,000 words, with genre fiction (thrillers, romance, mysteries) clustering around 80,000 to 90,000. Young adult titles typically run 50,000 to 80,000, novellas 20,000 to 50,000, and epic fantasy regularly exceeds 120,000 — A Game of Thrones is roughly 290,000 words. In manuscript format at 250 words per double-spaced page, an 80,000-word novel is a 320-page stack, which is why agents and publishers discuss books in words, not pages.