Writing fiction is a lot of work. There are a million things to consider while writing a novel: character development, pacing, story arc, word choice, etc. Every page contains hundreds of decisions for the writer to make. Sometimes the decisions are easy and the pages flow like the Colorado River after the spring thaw. Other times a single word or a mark of punctuation can cause hours of consternation. That’s just how it goes.
There’s one thing, though, that should be straight forward, a no-brainer, a thing that makes you go, “duh.” That thing is word count. It’s pretty self-explanatory. Word count. Count the words; put the total on the cover page. No problem, right?
Not quite. Word count depends on one thing: how the piece is formatted. You thought it was going to be the number of words in the manuscript, didn’t you? I did, but I was wrong. In the world of publishing, what matters is how much space those words will fill. A novel that has a lot of dialog will require more pages than another novel with the same number of words but very little dialog. For that reason, when submitting to an agent (or other industry professional) the approximate word count is used.
How is this number arrived at? Simple: multiply the number of pages by 250 words per page. That number (250) is contingent upon how the pages are formatted. Using 12-point Times New Roman font (or Times, if you have it,) and with 1-inch margins on all four sides, 250 words per page is assumed. If, however, you use 12-point Courier New or another monospaced font (a font where each character takes up the same space, no matter how wide or narrow it is) the words per page is assumed to be 200.
This can create quite a discrepancy in the word count of a piece. For example, the book I’m editing right now is 377 pages when using Times New Roman. That calculates out to 94,250 words. If I re-format the manuscript with Courier New, it fills 551 pages, which calculates to 110,200 words. That’s quite a difference! To someone who works in publishing, those two numbers mean the same thing: how many pages the finished product will be.
Are you using 8 1/2 by 11 inch when discussing word count? I know that in a standard mass market novel, there is just under 250 words per page on average.
Hey, Don. Yes, standard manuscript format uses 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages. I’ve read that sometimes publishers will use a smaller typeface so they can cram more words on each page, in order to use fewer pages (which saves money.) Writers, though, should always use a 12-point font, with 1″ margins.
My understanding was that the standard and expected font is Courier New, 12point, and 250 words per page was the estimate for that font.
Where did you hear about the 200 word average for non-proportional, Mike? I’d like to follow up on that.
Thanks,
Tracy Cooper-Posey
Tracy, I found that info in this post on Anne Mini’s blog. She says:
“…word count estimation is predicated upon these typefaces. The Times family is estimated at 250 words/page; Courier at 200.”
That seemed logical to me, because if I estimate my Courier New-formatted manuscript at 250 words per page, it comes to 138,000 words, which is almost 50% more than the Times New Roman estimate.
Admittedly, Anne is the only person I’ve heard that from. I’ll try to get verification from another source and follow up.
Thanks for the question.
Mike:
I heard back from my agent this morning. She has been in the business for nearly 40 years, and has wide connections.
She says that as far as she is aware, editors still expect to see manuscripts in Courier New, 12 point.
And they do still use 250 words per page to estimate the word count of a page of Courier New text.
I would suggest that even if editors are starting to accept manuscripts printed in Times Roman, authors stick with Courier New for now. Given that neither my agent nor I had heard of using proportional fonts or the 200 words a page rule, and that every author I know still submits using Courier and 250 words/page, it isn’t common enough practice yet to make the change safely.
An author could end up submitting to an editor who only expects Courier New. The editor may wonder if the author knows anything about the business at all, if they can’t get the formatting right. That’s not going to make her review of the manuscript an empathetic one. It’s not worth the gamble, in my opinion.
Cheers,
Tracy Cooper-Posey
Tracy, thanks for the follow up. I’ve been using 12-point Courier New for my book manuscript since the beginning (many years ago.) I even still adhere to the 2-spaces-after-a-period rule. Unfortunately, that means that my 551-page book computes to 138,000 words, which is way too long for a debut novel. Looks like I might need to invest in a box of red pens.
I’ve never been a fan of Times New Roman, but as one might expect with the proliferation of Word, it has become common (again, I’m not in the industry, but from what I’ve read, that’s the case.) I’m with you, though. It’s safer to submit in Courier New. Perhaps agents aren’t as fussy about that as editors, but why chance it? Anything that is going to be read by a professional reader should be as easy on their eyes as possible.