i know this is propbably different for every thesis - but I'm trying to gauge approximately how many words I should be thinking of for my appendices and bibliography (as they're included in my final word count)...anyone got any idea??? thank you!

Yep, this is different for every thesis, so it's impossible to give a generalised answer.

I have not concerned myself with the length of bibliography as it's not within my word count, but I imagine it is something like 7,000 words.

My appendices are fairly short, something like 5,000 words. Whether the examiners shall bother reading the appendices is another matter!

The editing function isn't working for me :-(

thanks missspacey - that gives me some idea - I had thought my biblio was too big at approx 4,000 words but can relax now!

I dont think you should worry yourself about this - write it and then see how many words there are and cut down if you have to although unless you are adding refs in for the sake of it the bib will be as long as it will be! you cant start taking out key refs to make it shorter. You dont have to have appendices at all you know - just see if there is anything that can logically be put in there to avoid spoiling the flow of the thesis. Theres no way to generalise on this - depends on your subject. i have only two pages of appendices with sites amps on them - about 50 words - everything else was in the main body. i find the word limit for theses is generally more than generous so just write and see how it goes when you get there after checking each chapter length. Your examiner will not thatnk you for a thesis which is two words shorter than the limit he wants it as short as possible. If it is coming down to appendices counts then you probably need to write more concisely.

Thanks Cheep - but I actuallly have the opposite problem - I tend to write quite concisely so I'm more concerned about reaching the minimum word count! The minimum PhD word count for my university is 75,000 - so I suppose I was wondering if I could do something like a 60,000 word thesis with 15,000 (of relevant!) words in the appendices - or would this mean that my thesis was more likely to be considered as an MPhil? My supervisors haven't suggested that either the 'quality', or quantity, of what I've written to date hasn't been of PhD 'standard' - but as I get closer to imagining completing the thesis, I feel that I want to just get to the point rather than adding lots of waffle to reach the word count.

Oooh! Ive never heard of a minimum word count - what a scary prospect, think I would have found that tough too actually. Well in that case - my bibliography was 9,000 words which I think is pretty standard although maybe on the large side (people in my field publish a lot) - my whole thesis was around 97,000 (near my upper limit but then i can waffle on! and in my viva they asked me to write a bit more after having said it was the largest thesis theyd had!) and like I said the appendices accounted for very little - i guess if you were close you could always add additional info into the appendices - i originally had some info in there which was more for the examiners interest (species summaries and crop histories etc..) which i took out in the end. I reckon 10,000 for both sections tops.
Good luck with it - so glad Im not in your shoes again - its worth it though!

Thanks Cheep - that's really useful info.

Love to know how the PhD has been 'worth it'?

I'm feeling just now that its been a terribly indulgent and enjoyable, but basically worthless waste of time - I'm now even more anti-social and 9-5 work-shy than I was 3 years ago! - and I'm not quite sure what I've learnt except how to skim read lots of books and procrastinate!