How many pages is 1,000 words?
1,000 words is about 1.4 pages single-spaced, 2.2 pages at 1.5 spacing and 2.9 pages double-spaced, in 12 pt Times New Roman with 1-inch margins on US Letter paper. The calculator above shows how that moves when you change anything.
Quick answers
Pages for common word counts, in 12 pt Times New Roman with 1-inch margins on US Letter paper. The number is the most likely page count, and the range is where the middle 80% of measured pages land.
| Words | Single-spaced | 1.5-spaced | Double-spaced | Rule of thumb (500 words/page single, 250 double) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | 0.4 0.3 to 0.5 | 0.5 0.5 to 0.7 | 0.7 0.6 to 0.9 | 0.5 / 1 single / double |
| 500 | 0.7 0.6 to 0.9 | 1.1 0.9 to 1.4 | 1.5 1.3 to 1.9 | 1 / 2 single / double |
| 1,000 | 1.4 1.3 to 1.8 | 2.2 1.9 to 2.8 | 2.9 2.5 to 3.7 | 2 / 4 single / double |
| 1,500 | 2.2 1.9 to 2.7 | 3.3 2.8 to 4.2 | 4.4 3.8 to 5.6 | 3 / 6 single / double |
| 2,000 | 2.9 2.6 to 3.6 | 4.4 3.7 to 5.6 | 5.8 5.1 to 7.4 | 4 / 8 single / double |
| 5,000 | 7.2 6.4 to 9.1 | 11 9.4 to 14 | 15 13 to 19 | 10 / 20 single / double |
| 10,000 | 14 13 to 18 | 22 19 to 28 | 29 25 to 37 | 20 / 40 single / double |
| 50,000 | 72 64 to 91 | 109 94 to 139 | 146 127 to 185 | 100 / 200 single / double |
| 80,000 | 116 102 to 145 | 175 150 to 223 | 234 203 to 296 | 160 / 320 single / double |
How many words per page?
In 12 pt Times New Roman with 1-inch margins on US Letter, a single-spaced page held about 690 words, a 1.5-spaced page about 457 and a double-spaced page about 342. The familiar rule of thumb of 250 words per double-spaced page is closer to a typewriter font: 12 pt Courier New held 242. A proportional font such as Times New Roman fits more characters on each line.
Why other sites say 4 pages
Many sites say 1,000 words is about 2 pages single-spaced or 4 pages double-spaced. That is the 500-and-250 convention, and it is a fair description of typewriter-style text: 12 pt Courier New double-spaced held 242 words per page in our measurements, close to 250. In 12 pt Times New Roman, which fits more characters on a line, we measured 342, so 1,000 words came to 2.9 pages rather than 4.
Several things push real documents toward the lower, more familiar numbers:
- Headings and title lines. A title, a byline or a chapter heading takes up lines that hold no body text, and chapter openings often start part-way down a page.
- Paragraph spacing. Recent versions of Microsoft Word add space after every paragraph in a new document by default. When we added 8 pt after each paragraph, double-spaced pages held 311 words instead of 342, and single-spaced pages held 583 instead of 690.
- Dialogue. Short lines of speech end early and leave white space, so dialogue-heavy text holds fewer words per page than dense prose.
To be plain about our own figures: they are for continuous prose with no extra paragraph spacing. Paragraphs were kept exactly as the authors wrote them, with a half-inch first-line indent, no space between paragraphs, and no headings, title lines or chapter breaks in the measured passages. If your document has any of those, expect fewer words per page than the measured average, and use the lower end of the range.
What changes the answer
- Font and size. Double-spaced, going from 12 pt to 11 pt raised the count from 342 to 384 words per page, and 14 pt dropped it to 238. Arial 12 pt held 316.
- Line spacing. This is the biggest lever. Single spacing holds roughly twice as many words as double.
- Margins. 1.25-inch margins instead of 1-inch cut double-spaced pages from 342 to 293 words.
- Page size. A4 is slightly taller and narrower than US Letter and held 347 words double-spaced, against 342.
- Dialogue and white space. Short lines of dialogue, scene breaks and chapter openings leave blank space, so dialogue-heavy pages hold fewer words than dense prose.
How we calculate this
These numbers are measured, not assumed. We took passages of about 3,500 words from each of six public-domain novels from Project Gutenberg (Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) and laid them out in Chromium 149.0.7827.55 inside page-sized boxes. Each layout used whole lines per page, left-aligned text, half-inch first-line indents, no extra paragraph spacing and kerning off, which is how Word sets text by default. “Single” spacing is the font’s own line height, like Word, and 1.5 and double are multiples of that.
For every combination of font (Times New Roman, Arial, Courier New), size, spacing, margin and page size we counted the words on each full page. A word is any run of text between spaces that contains a letter or a digit. The figure shown is the average of the per-book means, and the range is the 10th to 90th percentile of individual pages. Calibri is not part of the data, because it was not installed on the computer used. The paperback layouts are approximate: printed books use different typefaces, margins and chapter openings than a word processor does.
Your own document will differ with its headings, images, tables and how much of it is dialogue. Treat the result as an estimate, and check against your word processor’s page count when it matters.
Using the converter for novels, essays and stories
An 80,000-word novel runs about 234 double-spaced manuscript pages. A 5,000-word short story runs about 15. A 2,000-word essay is about 5.8 double-spaced, or 2.9 single-spaced. If you are not sure how long a book should be, see how many words are in a novel by genre, with sources and real novels measured word for word. For something to write, try the writing prompts or the writing prompt generator, and the name generators will help you name your characters.
Ready to start drafting? Read how to write a book, with an outline template and a finish date calculator.
Writing for the screen? See how to write a screenplay, with an annotated example scene and a script length calculator.