As it stands, my lit review is going to end up somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000 words. The word limit for the thesis is 80,000 but I can apply for an extension to 100,000 and I've been told that such applications aren't generally refused as long as the supervisor supports them. I'm in the social sciences. Should I try to cut my lit review or can I get away with that many words?

It doesn't sound absolutely tragic- mine is expected to be c.15,000 (+/- 10%) for instance. But prob not over 20,000- I don't think it should be that different to a chapter, for which the latter figure would be pretty large anyway!

Where are you in your candidature? At the beginning or nearing the end? If the former, you'll be reworking/writing that literature review after you do data analysis (if this is an interview/content analysis/study type PhD).

You should try and reduce the words. The mark of a strong academic, and writer, is the ability to say something in one sentence that others say in 5. This will be good practice when you begin to write journal articles where editors are strict with word counts. Quantity does not equate to quality. Getting your point across in as few sentences/words as possible is ideal

Have you finished the rest of your chapters yet? If the overall word count is too long then start thinking about cutting it down. I have a similar problem - I'm sciences and my word count is 50,000 and my lit review is about 17,000 and my supervisor keeps giving me comments like 'expand this by another page' etc when it's already too long! I had it nice and succinct before he told me to expand everything... I'll need to have a word with him I think! But better to have it long and cut it down than the other way around! It means you really look at your wording and content and only keep the best of it =)

Mine is about 1/4 of the total PhD, so yeah it is one of the longest and hardest chapters to deliver in a satisfactory quality.

My literature review was quite long, but my thesis was on an interdisciplinary topic.

I had the same problem, chopped mine down to 14k words. I'm going for 'easily digestible' with my PhD, with the idea that I actually want them (supervisors / examiners) to read all of it.

Thanks for your replies everyone. It's good to know others are facing the same issues. I'm coming to the end of my PhD and revising the lit review in the light of my findings. So far I have only seen points to add not points to take away, and like Caro's supervisor, mine tells me to add something every time she looks at it. I am going to go through it very carefully to try to find areas where it can be cut down. I am fully aware that quantity doesn't equal quality but I don't think I've been particularly wordy in dealing with individual points. I've just covered a lot of ground because it's a complex interdisciplinary topic. Somehow I will at least get it below 20,000 words though.