Assignment word goal
Set the range your brief asks for and watch the gap close while you write.
Your text stays in your browser.
Track a minimum or maximum word count.
Your text at a glance
Reading and speaking times are estimates.
Assignment goal
Set a minimum, a maximum, or both, and the progress bar appears here.
Paragraph balance
Word ranges exist because length is a proxy for depth. Going under usually means something was left unexplored; going over usually means something was left unedited. Both are worth catching before you submit, not after.
This page keeps the range in front of you while you work, and adds the two things a bare counter leaves out: how many pages that is, and whether your paragraphs are wildly uneven.
The number your word processor shows and the number your marker counts are rarely the same figure. What separates them is a set of local rules about citations, footnotes, quotations and appendices — worth finding on the day the brief arrives rather than the night before it is due.
How this tool counts
Set a minimum, a maximum, or both. Progress is measured against the minimum when there is one, because that is the target you are working towards; the maximum shows up as an overflow figure once you cross it.
Paragraph balance reports your shortest, longest and average paragraph, and flags any paragraph running more than twice the average. That is a structural observation, not a style judgement: a paragraph three times the length of its neighbours is usually two paragraphs.
Nothing here suggests content. It reports distance from a target — closing the distance is the writing, and that part is yours.
Why the range exists, and what a marker reads into it
A word range is a description of the shape of an answer, written before the answer exists. A 1,500-word question wants one argument developed properly. A 4,000-word question wants several, plus the tension between them. The number is the person who set the question telling you how much room they think it deserves.
That is why the two directions fail differently. Arriving 400 words short of a 2,000-word minimum is rarely read as economy; it is read as a section that never got written — the objection you did not answer, the second example you did not find. Running 400 words over is read the other way round: everything went in and nothing was chosen between.
Neither reading is automatically fair. Some short essays are short because they are efficient, and some long ones are long because the material genuinely resisted compression. What matters is that the count is visible before a single line has been read, and your first page then has to overturn whatever it suggested.
The tolerance convention, and why you must never assume it
Plus or minus ten percent is the most commonly cited margin in higher education, and it is cited often enough that students treat it as an entitlement. It is not one. It is a departmental habit, and plenty of departments do not have it.
Which convention applies to you is answerable in about a minute. Read the brief, then the module handbook, then the assessment regulations, in that order. If none of them says, ask the person who will mark the work and keep the reply in writing. Until you have one, write to the stated number rather than to a margin you are guessing at.
| Treatment | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| A stated tolerance, often ten percent | The brief or handbook names a margin. Inside that margin, nothing happens. |
| Hard ceiling with a penalty scale | Marks come off in bands — a fixed deduction, or a percentage for each band above the limit. |
| Reading stops at the limit | Anything past the cut-off is not marked. A conclusion that falls beyond it effectively does not exist. |
| No separate penalty | Length is judged as part of structure and selection rather than deducted as its own item. |
What is counted, and what is usually left out
The figure your word processor reports is the figure for your whole document. The figure that decides whether you passed the limit covers only the parts your department has chosen to include, and those two can differ by several hundred words.
In-text citations are the item worth settling first, because they move the total more than people expect. A heavily referenced piece can carry two hundred words of author names and dates, and on a 2,000-word ceiling that is ten percent of the allowance spent inside brackets.
Once you know what is excluded, paste only the counted parts into the box above. Counting a reference list towards the limit and then trimming body text to compensate is a common mistake, and it costs four hundred words you were entitled to keep.
| Part of the document | Usually counted? |
|---|---|
| Body text | Yes |
| In-text citations, such as (Almeida, 2019) | Usually yes |
| Indented block quotations | Usually yes |
| Headings and subheadings | Varies, often yes |
| Footnotes and endnotes | Varies — discursive notes often yes, reference-only notes often no |
| Abstract or summary | Usually no |
| Reference list or bibliography | Usually no |
| Appendices | Usually no |
| Tables, figures and their captions | Usually no |
| Title page, contents page, declarations | No |
Planning a word budget before you write
A budget is worth ten minutes at the planning stage because it answers a question drafting cannot: whether what you intend to say fits in the space you were given.
Three arguments and a counter-argument inside 1,500 words leaves each argument roughly 275 words — one claim, one piece of evidence, one or two sentences of analysis. If that looks thin written down, the plan has too many arguments in it, and that is far cheaper to fix in a plan than in a finished draft.
Treat the split below as a first allocation rather than a contract. Sections earn words by the work they do. If the counter-argument turns out to be the interesting part, take the words from background instead of defending a proportion you invented before you had read anything.
| Section | Share | 1,500 words | 2,000 words | 3,000 words |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introduction | 10% | 150 | 200 | 300 |
| Background or context | 15% | 225 | 300 | 450 |
| Main argument, across all sections | 55% | 825 | 1,100 | 1,650 |
| Counter-argument and response | 10% | 150 | 200 | 300 |
| Conclusion | 10% | 150 | 200 | 300 |
Paragraph balance, and what a long paragraph usually hides
Academic paragraphs tend to settle somewhere around 100 to 200 words: long enough to make a claim and support it, short enough that the claim is still in view at the end. That band shifts by discipline and by writer, so it describes what is common rather than prescribing what is correct.
More useful than any absolute figure is the spread inside your own piece. A run of forty-word paragraphs usually means claims are being made and then abandoned, and it is one of the few structural faults that adding words genuinely repairs.
The opposite case is the one the panel above flags: a paragraph running past twice your average. In a finished draft that normally means one of four things.
- Two points are sharing a paragraph. The second one is invisible to anyone skimming topic sentences, which is exactly why splitting it pays.
- Evidence has been stacked without analysis. Three quotations in a row followed by one sentence of comment makes a long paragraph out of thinking that has not happened yet.
- A block quotation is sitting inside it. That inflates the count without inflating the argument, and it is the paragraph most likely to shrink under editing.
- It is genuinely one long move — a full worked example, a careful definition, a piece of close reading. This is common, and the flag is simply wrong. Confirm that, then ignore it.
The last hour, over or under
This is the situation the panel above is really for: the draft is finished, the count is wrong, and the deadline has not moved.
If you are short of the minimum, the instruction narrows to one line — do not add words, add content. Four places usually hold the missing material: the claim you asserted and never evidenced, the objection you steered around, the quotation you introduced and did not interpret, and the paragraph flagged as overlong, which becomes two paragraphs with two topic sentences the moment you split it. Writing the second topic sentence is what tends to surface the point that was missing.
Padding reads as padding. Anyone marking their fortieth version of the same question recognises a sentence written to reach a number, and hitting the minimum that way usually costs more than being fifty words short would have.
If you are over the maximum instead, cut in roughly this order.
- The part of the introduction that restates the question. Whoever set it does not need it read back to them.
- Signposting that describes the essay instead of advancing it. Sentences announcing what the next section will do can almost always go.
- Quotations you could paraphrase. Forty-five words of quotation used to establish one point is usually fifteen words of paraphrase plus a citation.
- Hedges piled on hedges. A phrase that stacks three qualifiers before it reaches its verb is several words of nothing.
- Whole sentences, last of all. Deleting one sentence is faster than shaving four words off five sentences, and it is the only cut that reliably improves the paragraph as well as the total.
A worked example
A brief asks for 1,500 to 2,000 words. You have written 1,180 across 6 paragraphs.
- Progress towards the minimum
- 79%
- Words remaining
- 320
- Words over the maximum
- 0
- Estimated pages (double-spaced)
- 4.7
- Longest paragraph vs average
- 412 vs 197 words
You are 320 words short, and one paragraph is carrying more than twice its share. Splitting it is likely to be the honest way to find some of those words.
Frequently asked questions
Does a word range usually include the bibliography?
Usually not, and it often excludes footnotes, the abstract and the title page too. Conventions differ between institutions — the brief or the style guide will say, and it is worth checking before you count.
How close to the limit is safe?
Most markers treat a stated range as firm. Landing a little inside the top of the range leaves room for the sentence you add at the last minute without pushing you over.
What does the paragraph flag actually mean?
Only that one paragraph is more than twice your average length. Sometimes that is correct and deliberate. It is flagged because it is usually worth a second look, not because it is wrong.
Will this write the missing words for me?
No. This tool measures and plans; it does not generate, rewrite or complete anything. That is a deliberate product decision, so it stays safe to use on work you have to submit as your own.
Is ten percent over the limit always allowed?
No, and treating it as a guarantee is how people lose marks they did not need to lose. A ten percent margin is a common departmental convention rather than a general rule, and some institutions apply a penalty scale from the first word over instead. The margin only exists for you if something in writing says it does.
Do in-text citations count towards the word limit?
In most schemes they do, because they sit inside your sentences. The reference list at the end is a separate matter and is usually excluded. Across a heavily referenced essay the difference is often one to two hundred words, which is enough to change whether you are inside a 2,000-word ceiling.
The brief gives one number instead of a range. How much leeway do I have?
Treat a single number as a target and find out separately what happens either side of it. Departments that state one figure usually have a tolerance written somewhere in the handbook, but the size of it varies and some have none at all. Until you know, aim within a few percent of the number given.
Is falling short of the minimum worse than going over the maximum?
Often, yes. Going over shows the work was done and not edited; falling well short shows the work was not done, and there is no way to mark content that is not there. A piece 20 percent under the minimum typically also lacks the depth the marking criteria are looking for, so it loses marks twice.
Should I set the goal to the minimum or the maximum?
Set both. Progress runs against the minimum, which is the number you need to reach, and the maximum sits there as the ceiling you will be told about once you cross it. If your brief names only one figure, put it in as the minimum and use the pages estimate to sanity-check the shape of the document.