Hey,

I am in the process of writing an analysis chapter and have just realised it is going to end up being VERY long - about 15-20 thousand words, so it got me thinking about the overall word count. I have been aiming for 100, 000 words, but am now thinking that this doesn't sound like a lot!! :$

My research is in social psych and I use transcript data so that will artificially inflate my word count

What is everyone else aiming for? Or what have people ended up with? Just interested :p

xx

I'm aiming for 80 000 words... and have been warned my thesis must not go over 100 000 words. I'm in education. Not sure if its different for other subjects.

May not be relevant, but in my experience, qualitative projects often have an increased word limit for all of the transcribing. So if you're meant to do 100,000 for a quantitative, I guess this would be higher...

The guidelines here are for 80, 000, but it more of a hard science uni so I think the limit has been drawn up with quantitative work in mind. Picture says 1000 words and all that!!
xx

Aren't there different lengths for different departments/disciplines at your uni? There are at mine. I'm a humanities student and have been told to aim for 80-100,000 words. I'm going to come in a bit short, but have been told that's ok. Also my supervisor said he'd always prefer to read a too-short thesis than a far-too-long one, and he'd look more kindly on the former.

Blimey all these long theses! Mine is just submitted at 37,000. I did a molecular biology stylee and write concisely.

I'm in social sciences, and it's also 80000-100 000. I'll be doing 100 000 - and also using transcription data. You can't get your words down with a really good edit?

Eeek, I'm with The Ace! I was thinking 35-40,000 words would be me done. Again though, molecular biology and probably plenty of graphs ;)

I think it is a difference between disciplines. I don't know anybody who has done a social science thesis in less than 75, 000!

I am still aiming for 100, 000 - will have to be harsh with the editing though I think - I'm a concise writer too! I obviously have far too many interesting things to say for my own good ;-)

Can you put any of it in an appendix...or as endnotes, neither of these count, I already have one appendix and loads of endnotes, and expect there will be loads more! :$. mine has to be no more than 80,000, but they say they never actually count them!