How many pages is 1000 words?

The default length of a piece written for the internet. Here is the page count for every format, and how to structure it.

Quick answer

A thousand words comes to 2 pages with single spacing, 3 pages at 1.5 spacing and 4 pages double-spaced, measured in 12-point Times New Roman with 1-inch margins.

Single-spaced

1.5 spacing

Double-spaced

Worked out with this site's words to pages calculator, not copied from someone else's table.

What writing 1,000 words actually means

A thousand words is the working default of online writing. It is a complete blog post, an eight-minute talk, and roughly four and a half minutes of reading — long enough to say something, short enough that a reader will finish it in one sitting without deciding to.

The jump from 500 is bigger than the arithmetic suggests. At 1,000 words there is finally room for real structure: a problem stated, two or three sections that develop it, and a close that lands. This is the first length where the text needs visible organisation. Two solid pages of unbroken prose is where readers start skimming, and skimming is much easier to survive if you have given them subheadings to skim.

1,000 words by typeface

From a thousand words on, the typeface starts showing up in the total. Garamond and Verdana differ by more than a page and a half double-spaced on identical text. If you are handing in something printed and the brief is expressed in pages rather than words, the font stops being a matter of taste.

Typeface	Words per page	Single	1.5	Double
Times New Roman	500	2	3	4
Arial	460	2.2	3.3	4.3
Calibri	475	2.1	3.2	4.2
Verdana	380	2.6	3.9	5.3
Garamond	520	1.9	2.9	3.8

The distance between the most compact and the widest font in this table is 1.5 pages double-spaced on identical text. That is why serious guidelines name the typeface: without it, a limit stated in pages does not mean very much.

What the point size does

A thousand words is where most people first notice that point size decides whether a paper "reaches" the required length. The visual difference between 11 and 12 point is almost nothing on screen and a full extra page in the printout — which is precisely why style guides pin the size down instead of leaving it open.

Size	Single-spaced	Double-spaced
10 pt	1.4	2.8
11 pt	1.7	3.4
12 pt	2	4
13 pt	2.4	4.7
14 pt	2.7	5.5

What gets written in 1000 words

Standard blog post

The most common length in professional publishing: enough to develop one topic without exhausting it.

Short class essay

The usual assignment when a syllabus asks for "three to four pages" double-spaced.

Eight-minute talk

At an unhurried speaking pace, a thousand words is about eight minutes at the lectern.

Book or film review

Room to summarise, judge, and back the judgement with two or three specifics.

Feature news piece

The mid-length newspaper story: reporting plus context, short of a full investigation.

Documentation chapter

One self-contained section of a manual, course or knowledge base.

How long 1,000 words takes to read

Four and a half minutes at an average pace. That is the figure publications print under the headline, and it is also roughly where drop-off begins: readers who bail on a 1,000-word article usually do so around the two-thirds mark, when they have got the point and the piece keeps going.

6 min 40 s

Slow reading

150 wpm

4 min 33 s

Average reading

220 wpm

3 min 20 s

Fast reading

300 wpm

7 min 42 s

Read aloud

130 wpm

5 handwritten sides, counting 200 words per side. By hand it comes to about five sides, a length that now shows up almost exclusively in timed written exams.

How to structure 1000 words

Three blocks of 300, with 100 either side

The split that works most reliably: a 100-word opening, three sections of roughly 300, and a 100-word close. If one section keeps growing past 500, it is almost always two ideas wearing one heading.

This is where subheadings become mandatory

Two pages of continuous prose on a screen is a wall. The same text under three subheadings can be surveyed in five seconds, and readers decide to read things they have already surveyed.

Filler hides best at exactly this length

In 500 words padding is obvious; in 1,000 it blends in. A blunt test: delete any single paragraph and reread. If the piece still says everything it said before, that paragraph was filler and you have just bought 150 words for something real.

Measure the pace you can actually keep

NaNoWriMo's 50,000 words in thirty days works out to about 1,667 a day, and most people who try it discover their sustainable rate is well under that. A thousand finished words is a solid day's output for a piece that has to be researched, not a warm-up.

A note on the reading time: 4 minutes 33 seconds is what it takes to read a thousand words straight through, but on a screen most people do not read, they scan. A well-subheaded 1,000-word piece gets "consumed" in under a minute by someone hunting for one fact — that is a legitimate use, and it is worth writing so that it works.

Other lengths

Every figure has its own page, with its own table and its own list of typical documents. If yours is not here, the words to pages calculator takes any number and any format.

500 words 1,500 words 2,000 words 3,000 words 5,000 words 10,000 words

Frequently asked questions

How many pages is 1000 words double-spaced?

Four pages in 12-point Times New Roman with 1-inch margins. In Arial at the same size it comes to about 4.3 pages, since Arial takes slightly more width per character. This is the standard format for printed coursework under both MLA and APA.

How many pages is 1000 words single-spaced?

Two pages in the same 12-point Times New Roman format. Single spacing is the norm for business documents, reports and anything meant to be read on screen; the double-spaced version exists so that a marker has room to write between the lines.

How long does it take to read 1000 words?

Between three and seven minutes depending on the reader: 6 minutes 40 seconds at a slow 150 words per minute, 4 minutes 33 seconds at the average 220, and 3 minutes 20 seconds at 300. Read aloud at a comfortable presenting pace it runs a little over seven and a half minutes.

Is 1000 words a good length for an article?

It is a sensible default for a topic with defined edges. There is no universally optimal length — what decides it is whether the question has been answered. A thousand-word piece that fully settles the question outperforms a three-thousand-word one that circles it.