"How many words should this be?" is one of the most common questions in writing — and the honest answer is almost always "it depends on the format." A blog post and a tweet don't share a word count target, and neither do an essay and a resume. This guide breaks down realistic targets for the formats people write most often, so you can check your own draft against a sensible range rather than guessing.
Blog Posts and Articles
Search engines don't reward length on its own, but topics that need real depth tend to need real word count to match. As a practical range:
- News or update posts: 300–600 words
- Standard how-to or explainer posts: 1,000–1,800 words
- Comprehensive guides: 2,000–3,500 words
The better question than "how many words" is "have I actually answered the question completely?" — padding a thin topic to hit a number usually hurts readability without helping rankings.
Academic Writing
Essays, dissertations, and coursework almost always come with an assigned word count or range from the institution. General academic conventions:
- School essays: 500–1,500 words, depending on grade level
- University essays: 1,500–3,000 words for standard assignments
- Dissertations: typically 8,000–15,000 words at undergraduate level, considerably more at postgraduate level
Most institutions allow a 10% margin above or below the stated limit — check your specific brief, since this varies by school.
Resumes and Cover Letters
| Document | Target length |
|---|---|
| Resume / CV (under 10 years experience) | 400–600 words (1 page) |
| Resume / CV (10+ years experience) | Up to ~1,000 words (2 pages) |
| Cover letter | 250–400 words |
Recruiters typically scan a resume for seconds before deciding whether to read further, so scannability and relevance matter more than filling the page.
Social Media and Web Copy
- Meta descriptions: ~150–160 characters before Google truncates them
- Twitter/X posts: 280 characters maximum, though posts under 100 characters tend to get more engagement
- LinkedIn posts: 1,300–2,000 characters perform best before the "see more" cutoff
- Facebook posts: under 80 characters for the highest engagement, though longer posts work for storytelling content
- Instagram captions: up to 2,200 characters allowed; the first ~125 characters show before "more"
How to Check Your Own Word Count
Rather than counting manually, paste your draft into our Word Counter tool to see live word count, character count (with and without spaces), sentence count, and estimated reading time as you type or edit — all processed locally in your browser. If you're checking against a hard limit for a specific platform (a tweet, an SMS, a meta description), the Character Counter shows a live pass/fail bar for the most common limits. And if you want to show readers how long a piece will take, the Reading Time Calculator compares slow, average, and fast reading speeds side by side.