WritersLockWord Count Chart Printable
Seventeen word counts, three spacings, one page.
A one page conversion chart: seventeen common word counts, from 100 up to 10,000, each converted to a page count at single, 1.5 and double spacing. The formatting it assumes is printed at the top of the sheet rather than buried, so a student can check whether it applies to the document they have been set.
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Free for personal and classroom use. Print as many copies as you like. Please do not resell or redistribute the file itself.
How to use this chart
Read the strip at the top first, every time. It names the font, the point size, the margins and the paper the numbers were worked out for, and if your brief specifies something else then the chart is the wrong chart for your document. That sounds like a disclaimer and it is actually the instruction: page counts are not a property of a word count, they are a property of a word count plus a formatting setup, and most of the arguments about "but my essay is only three pages" come from two people using different setups and assuming there is one right answer.
Then find your count in the left column and read across to your spacing. If your number is between two rows, the chart is linear, so halfway between two rows is halfway between two answers. Nothing on the sheet rounds up: a count that fills 3.2 pages is printed as 3, because a student who trusts a rounded-up number and hands in a short essay does not come back.
For teachers setting the assignment, the useful direction is the other one. Decide the page count you actually want, read the word count off the chart, and set the assignment in words. Words are unambiguous, they survive a change of font, and they cannot be gamed by anyone who has discovered 1.15 line spacing and a 13 point margin.
Why this is a handout rather than a link
The question this chart answers gets asked hundreds of times a term, almost always by a student three days out from a deadline, and almost always to someone who has answered it before. A link solves that for the student who is already at a computer with the tab open. A photocopied sheet on a noticeboard, in a handbook, or stapled to the back of an assignment brief solves it for the other thirty.
It also survives the places a link does not. School networks block domains, library PCs lose sessions, and a chart taped inside a folder still works during an exam when phones are in a tray at the front. Paper is not a nostalgic choice here; it is the format with the fewest ways to fail.
The trade-off is honest: paper cannot recalculate. If the brief specifies Arial 11 with 1.5 spacing and half inch margins, this sheet will be wrong and no amount of squinting fixes it. That is what the address at the foot of the sheet is for, and it is why the assumption is printed in nine point type at the top rather than seven point at the bottom.
What is on the sheet
- The assumption stripA banded line under the title naming the font, size, margins and paper. It is the first thing on the sheet because it is the thing that decides whether the rest of it is true for you.
- Three words-per-page figuresSingle, 1.5 and double, given their own line. These are the numbers people memorise, and they let you use the sheet without reading a row.
- The conversion tableSeventeen counts from 100 to 10,000 against three spacings. The 1,000 word row is banded and boxed with heavier rules, because it is the question that gets asked most.
- What moves the numberFour lines at the foot on font, spacing, margins and why a real document with headings and dialogue runs slightly longer than any estimate.
- A working addressThe foot of the sheet carries the address of the free calculator, so a copy that has been photocopied twice and handed to somebody else still says where to get an answer for a different setup.
Printing notes
- US Letter and A4, both portrait — and unusually for this pack, the two files carry different numbers. Each one is calculated for the paper it is printed on, because a reader reaching for the A4 file is working in A4 and a chart that quietly assumed Letter would be wrong for exactly the person who needed it.
- It is the most photocopy-tolerant sheet in the set: no fill, no fine hairlines inside the table body, and every figure at nine point or larger. It was drawn on the assumption that the copy anyone actually reads is a second or third generation one off a departmental machine.
- The banded 1,000 word row is carried by heavier rules above and below as well as by the tint, so the row stays findable when the tint copies to a flat grey or drops out entirely.
- Print at 100% with "fit to page" switched off. Scaling a reference chart is harmless to the numbers but it shrinks the assumption strip, which is the one line on the sheet that has to stay readable.
If you want to go further
More free printables
Frequently asked questions
What formatting is this chart based on?
Times New Roman at 12 point, one inch margins, and the paper size of the file you downloaded — US Letter or A4. It is printed at the top of the sheet. Continuous prose is assumed, so a document heavy with headings and dialogue will run a little longer.
Why do the Letter and A4 versions show different numbers?
Because they are different pages. A4 is narrower and taller than US Letter, and at one inch margins it holds slightly more text per page, so the same word count fills fewer A4 pages. Each file is calculated for its own paper rather than scaled from the other.
Can I use this chart in a class handout or a course handbook?
Yes, that is what it was drawn for. Free for personal and classroom use. Print as many copies as you like. Please do not resell or redistribute the file itself. If you are including it in a handbook, the address at the foot of the sheet is worth keeping — it is how a student with a different formatting brief gets a correct answer instead of guessing.
What if my assignment specifies a different font or spacing?
Then this sheet is the wrong tool and it says so at the top. Use our free words to pages calculator, which lets you set the font, size, spacing, margins and paper, and prints the assumption alongside the answer so you can check it against your brief.
How accurate are the page counts?
They are close for continuous prose and deliberately never rounded up. The estimate assumes lines that fill to the margin, so anything that leaves white space — headings, dialogue, block quotes, lots of short paragraphs — pushes a real document slightly longer. If you are near a hard limit, check in the word processor itself.
The chart is the easy half. The words are the hard half.
Knowing that 1,000 words is four pages has never once made anybody write them. WritersLock locks your distracting apps until the day’s writing is done, so the count goes up on ordinary days instead of the night before.
Free 3-day trial in the app. The sheet above is free either way — no email, no account, no watermark.