: Re: Why am I getting so many words per page? (Note that I use OpenOffice but this question should apply to MS Word as well) It's common knowledge that the average word count for a page is around

@Nickens642

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In the old days of typewriters with fixed-size fonts, a page was 8.5 x 11 inches, we set 1.25 inch margins left and right and 1 inch margins top and bottom. Most typewriters gave 10 characters per inch horizontally, so 6 inches between the margins gave a 60 space line. They had 6 lines per inch, so 9 inches between the margins gave 54 lines. A "standard word" was considered 6 characters, so 60 characters per line equals 10 words, times 54 lines per page single-spaced is 540 words. Double-spaced would be 270 words.

You really got a little less than that because you typically had a ragged right margin, and you often had short lines, such as at the end of a paragraph. So I guess 250 words for a double-spaced page is about right.

Modern word processors are much more variable. There are many different font sizes and possible line spacings. So the number of words per page varies widely.

Still, if you set your font to something with fixed spacing, like Courier, at 12 point font size, and set paragraph spacing to 24 points, you should get about 250 words per page.

But why do you care?

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