The Standard Answer
The classic conversion assumes the formatting teachers and editors have standardized on for decades: 12pt Times New Roman, one-inch margins, on US Letter paper. Under those settings, a full page holds roughly 500 words single-spaced and 250 words double-spaced. That's why a "2-page double-spaced essay" means about 500 words, and a "10-page term paper" means around 2,500. The quickest way to check where your draft stands is to paste it into our word counter and divide.
Conversion Table
| Assignment | Word Count | Single-Spaced | Double-Spaced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 page | 250–500 | 1 page = ~500 words | 1 page = ~250 words |
| 2 pages | 500–1,000 | ~1,000 words | ~500 words |
| 3 pages | 750–1,500 | ~1,500 words | ~750 words |
| 5 pages | 1,250–2,500 | ~2,500 words | ~1,250 words |
| 10 pages | 2,500–5,000 | ~5,000 words | ~2,500 words |
| 20 pages | 5,000–10,000 | ~10,000 words | ~5,000 words |
What Changes the Count
Font choice moves the needle more than most people expect. At the same point size, Arial fits about 5–10% fewer words per page than Times New Roman because its letterforms are wider, while Calibri — the longtime Microsoft Word default — lands close to Times. Verdana is wider still, and Courier New, a monospaced font, fits dramatically fewer. Point size matters even more: dropping from 12pt to 11pt adds roughly 10–15% more words per page, and moving to 14pt cuts capacity by a similar margin.
Margins and paragraph style do the rest. Widening one-inch margins to 1.25 inches removes about 10% of the words a page can hold, which is why margin-fiddling is the oldest trick for stretching a short essay — and why professors specify formatting precisely. Frequent short paragraphs, block quotes, and headings all reduce effective words per page too, since each paragraph break leaves unfilled line space. Handwritten pages are their own world: most people fit only 150–250 handwritten words on a page, so a "5-page" handwritten assignment is far shorter than a typed one.
Why Word Counts Beat Page Counts
Because all those variables are so easy to game, nearly every modern institution has moved from page counts to word counts. The Common App essay caps at 650 words, journals specify manuscript lengths in words, and publishers estimate finished book pages from word count (a standard trade book prints at roughly 250–300 words per page). When you're given a page target instead, convert it with the table above, write to the word count, and confirm with the word counter — then check how long it takes to read aloud with the reading time calculator if it doubles as a presentation. For platform caps and every other length benchmark, the word count chart has the complete reference.