How Many Pages Is 1,000 Words?
2 min readUpdated October 4, 2026
Short answer
1,000 words in pages
Times New Roman 12pt with 1-inch margins, the usual academic setup.
| Spacing | US Letter | A4 |
|---|---|---|
| Single spaced | 2 pages | 1.9 pages |
| 1.5 spaced | 2.7 pages | 2.6 pages |
| Double spaced | 4 pages | 3.8 pages |
By font
US Letter, 1-inch margins. Google Docs starts in Arial 11pt; Word used Calibri 11pt for years before switching to Aptos.
| Font and size | Single spaced | Double spaced |
|---|---|---|
| Times New Roman 12pt | 2 | 4 |
| Arial 12pt | 2.3 | 4.6 |
| Arial 11pt | 1.9 | 3.9 |
| Calibri 12pt | 2.1 | 4.2 |
| Calibri 11pt | 1.8 | 3.5 |
- Paragraphs
- About 7 (5 to 10, at 100 to 200 words each)
- Characters
- About 5,800 including spaces
- Reading time
- 4 minutes 12 seconds at 238 words a minute
- Speaking time
- 6 minutes 40 seconds at 150 words a minute
- Handwritten
- About 4 sides of lined paperin average handwriting, about 250 words a side
Check your own numbers
4
Pages · double spaced
Every spacing
1,000 wordsAlso worth knowing
Estimates assume 12pt Times New Roman or Arial with 1-inch margins on US Letter or A4.
Why the number moves
A page is a fixed amount of space; a word count is not a fixed amount of text. Four things change how much of that space 1,000 words fills.
Font. Fonts differ in width at the same point size. 1,000 words in 12pt Times New Roman takes about two single-spaced pages; the same text in 12pt Arial runs closer to 2.3, because Arial’s characters are wider. Courier — still required by some screenplay and legal formats — is wider again.
Size. 11pt instead of 12pt fits roughly 19% more text per page, because the letters shrink in both directions. 10pt fits over 40% more. This is also the most obvious way to fake a page count, and markers who have read a thousand essays can see it immediately.
Margins. 1-inch margins are standard. Widening them to 1.25 inches loses about 13% of the text area on a Letter page.
Structure. This is the big one and it is usually ignored. A 1,000-word essay in three long paragraphs fills less space than 1,000 words broken into eight paragraphs with two subheadings, because every break leaves white space. A document with block quotes, a table or a bibliography will run a page longer than the estimate.
1,000 words in MLA and APA format
MLA format means 12pt Times New Roman (or another readable font), double spaced, with 1-inch margins, so the double-spaced figure above is the starting point: four pages of text. Two things add to it:
- The heading. Your name, instructor, course and date, then the title, take about five double-spaced lines on the first page. That pushes 1,000 words just onto a fifth page.
- Works Cited. It starts on a new page, so a 1,000-word MLA essay with sources is usually five pages plus a Works Cited page.
APA student papers add a separate title page at the front and a References page at the end, so the same 1,000 words is a title page, four pages of text and a References page: six sheets in all.
If the brief is in pages, write to words
A page limit is genuinely ambiguous, because the person setting it cannot control your font. Convert it to a word count with the pages to words calculator and write to that instead. A word count is measurable while you write; a page count only becomes real once the document is formatted, and then it moves every time you add a heading.
If you are trying to reach a length rather than cut to one, the honest route is more content — an example, a counter-argument, an explanation of why the point matters. The readability checker will show you where a section is thin.