education · 2 min read · United States
Ten double-spaced pages is five single-spaced pages
Ten double-spaced pages is five single-spaced pages. Double spacing puts half as many lines on a page, so it holds half as many words, and the conversion between the two is simply a factor of two. In the standard academic format, Times New Roman 12 double spaced, a page holds about 250 words, so ten pages is roughly 2,500 words. Change the font and the word count changes: Calibri 11 fits about 275 words a page and Arial 12 about 235.
Ten double-spaced pages is five single-spaced pages. Double spacing puts a blank line between every line of text, so a page holds half as many lines and therefore half as many words. The conversion is a factor of two and nothing else.
That part is easy. The part that causes the argument is the other direction: how many words is ten pages? A page is not a quantity. It is whatever fits, and what fits depends on the typeface.
| Font | Double spaced | Single spaced |
|---|---|---|
| Times New Roman 12 | 250 | 500 |
| Arial 12 | 235 | 470 |
| Calibri 11 | 275 | 550 |
Times New Roman 12 double spaced is the one most people mean when they say "a page", because it is what American academic formatting has settled on. At 250 words a page, ten pages is 2,500 words and fifteen pages is 3,750.
The font gap is worth more than a page
Write 3,750 words in Times New Roman 12 double spaced and you have fifteen pages. Write the same 3,750 words in Calibri 11 and you have 13.6. The text has not changed and the requirement has not changed, but one of them meets a fifteen-page minimum and the other does not.
This is why a page count is a poor way to specify length and why most departments now say both. If you are given a page count and nothing else, the question to ask is which font, and the answer is almost always Times New Roman 12.
Word counts do not care about any of this. If a brief gives you a word count, ignore spacing and font entirely: 2,500 words is 2,500 words whatever it looks like on the page.
The quick version
- Double to single: halve it. Ten double-spaced pages is five single-spaced.
- Single to double: double it. Five single-spaced pages is ten double-spaced.
- Times New Roman 12: about 250 words a double-spaced page, 500 single.
- Fifteen double-spaced pages is roughly 3,750 words in that format.
None of these are exact, and they cannot be. Headings, block quotes, a bibliography and a figure all take space that the arithmetic knows nothing about. They are close enough to plan with, which is all a page estimate has ever been for.