Hi friends,

Word count is just killing me the whole of last week. I have approx. 3000 words in literature review, but still my supervisor needs more and not very specific about word count. What do your friends suggest for literature word count.

I am sure my Masters' dissertation topic is quite open and can support more than 80 references in literature, but I believer there should be a limit for Masters'

May I have some suggestion at masters level.

*Bump* - can any masters students offer some advice on appropriate word count for Lit review?

======= Date Modified 14 Jun 2012 15:24:01 =======
Did your uni not give you some guidelines for writing the dissertation? my guideline says 3,000 but I have combined one of my analysis chapter to cover all the topics in lit rev so I have written 6000. a draft has gone to my supervisor and she seems fine about it! everything crossed it should be fine. some of my mates have written 4000. hope this helps
:-)

When I did my MSc dissertation a few years ago the word count for the whole document was 15,000 and I used approx 3000 of those words in the introduction/literature review and I also had approx 80 references for the whole dissertation. For you this will probably depend on how long the finished dissertation is expected to be but I would imagine 5000 words would be the upper limit for a literature review at Masters level.