Quote From teek:
Right, word count now stands at 15,1216, a grand total of 942 words today. It does include references I'm afraid, but given only a few hours were spent specifically on the thesis I'm pretty happy.
Normally footnotes/endnotes would be included in a PhD thesis word count, but not a final bibliography. Not sure which of those you mean by references.
Good luck with the rest of the words. I was too short in my thesis (my department subject expects 80-100K and I came in at 70K), but was reassured by various academics (including the one who is going to be my internal) that it would be ok.