You’re looking at your assignment sheet that says you have to write a 1000-word essay, but how long are 1000 words? The number sounds a bit scary, but is it much? How many pages do you need to fit a thousand words? First, that depends on several things:
- Double or single spacing
- Font size and type
- The size of margins
- Header and footer
Usually, you are supposed to write an essay following a specific formatting style (APA, MLA, etc.). If that’s the case, you don’t have much choice when it comes to your document’s settings. But, let’s say that you’re using a conventional font — Times New Roman 12pt — and your margins are set to default.
In such a case, we can estimate that:
The medium length of a 1000-word essay is two single-spaced pages and four double-spaced pages.
The table below is a reference you can use for papers that are 600, 750, 800, 1000, 1200, 1500, 2000, 2500, and 3000 words long and use the same formatting as we described above.
How Else Can I Check My Essay’s Length?
There’s another way to check how many pages your paper will take. Most word processors, be it MS Word or LibreOffice, display the number of pages and words when you write something. That information is usually located at the bottom of the program’s interface on the left-hand side.
Note: If you can’t stretch your essay to 1000 words, read this article — How to Lengthen an Essay.
To see how long your 1000-word essay will be in pages even before writing, you can try a “dummy” article method. Take a random article from any source and make it 1000 words long. You can use any word counter tool for that. Then, insert that text into a word processor of your choice and look at the page count it shows. If you must use a particular style, change all formatting settings accordingly first.
Mini-FAQ
Usually, you would get a range of 800–1000 words, so here’s an 800-word sample with explanatory comments provided by Massey University. Two more examples of a 1000-word essay can be found in this detailed step-by-step writing guide by Charles Darwin University. Besides the samples, it also offers great writing tips for students.
The principle stays the same. You can read our article on how to write a basic essay to learn more. Also, you can take a look at this structure outline provided by Dr. Dianne Fitzpatrick from La Trobe University, who gives a rough estimate on how many words each part should take.
It will take you about four to five hours to write a 1000-word essay if you want to go for quality, which implies planning and proofreading. It’s hard to name just one number. It depends on a set of things like how much research you have to do, how good you are at writing such assignments, how quickly you can type, and how thoroughly you prepare.