When writing a 1200-word essay, it’s useful to understand how many pages your piece will produce, especially if you must deliver a certain page count.
There are lots of situations where page count matters, whether you’re a student completing an important academic paper or college assignment, a blogger writing an article, a journalist covering news articles or a business professional focusing on technical content. In this piece, we show you how many pages a 1,200-word piece delivers and what crucial factors impact the end result.
1200 Words – The General Page Count Rule
One 1200-word academic writing essay typed up on A4 in Google Docs or Word, single-spaced using standard, 1-inch margins and Arial font type (12-point font size) without headers, bullets or numbering delivers 2.4 pages of text. As soon as you change the layout to double-spacing, your piece grows to 4.8 pages of text. However, there are other aspects that also change the quantity of pages.
Let’s look at the topic in depth.
Critical Factors That Alter The Amount of Pages a 1200-Word Essay Produces
We’ve already touched on line spacing formatting style but it’s important to look at it in greater detail.
Most essays of 1200-words use single-spaced pages. However, often college assignments ask for double-spaced pages to give tutors enough space to write their commentary. It’s important to check the brief, if you have one. If you don’t have a college essay brief, stick with single-spacing which is the preferred spacing for many essays.
- Font Families Change Page Count
Using certain fonts make a difference. The most commonly used standard fonts are Times New Roman and Arial because they provide best readability. If in doubt, use these fonts unless otherwise specified. Another font that is widely accepted is Calibri. Slightly smaller than Times New Roman font and Arial font, Calibri reduces the page count for 1200 words and delivers 2.2 pages of A4 text (12 point size).
Verdana is another widely-used font family but it is larger than Times New Roman and Arial, therefore page count using this font produces 3 pages of text.
- Font Size Changes Page Count
The larger your font size, the more pages you end up with and the same applies vice-versa. The smaller your font size, the less pages you end up with. Generally, 12-point font size is acceptable but sometimes, a 1200-word essay may use 11-point size.
It’s rare that you’d write your entire essay in anything larger than 12 point, but you might increase your header size which would add slightly more to your page count. Books, for example, use smaller font size because of the cost of printing. The more words on a page, the cheaper a book is to produce.
Your margin size also makes a difference! Standard 1-inch margins are the most commonly used margin space. As soon as you adjust the margin size (increasing the size or reducing the size of margins), the page count increases or decreases accordingly.
- Paragraph Spacing Settings
Some writers like to add line spaces in-between their paragraphs, for example, double spaces rather than one space. Others like to indent their opening paragraphs or all their paragraphs. The extra space builds page count so if you’re restricted to 2.4 pages for 1200-word essays, don’t indent your paragraphs.
Extra spacing in terms of paragraphs, won't usually be required for a 1200-word college essay unless specified but it might be required for some academic essays.
- Videos, Images, Graphs and Tables
Lots of bloggers use images and videos in their 1200-word documents. While this is commonplace, the addition of media alters the end page count result. The more images and videos you use, the greater the page count.
The same applies to college students inserting graphs and tables etc. to illustrate a point.
If you've never inserted media into a piece, this useful article gives you a step-by-step guide.
If you insert a bulleted or numerical list, expect your 1200-word essay to grow in page count. This is because these list types take up more space than paragraphs. Lists may be used for certain subject matter such as product reviews for example.
The same applies to headers. Bloggers often breakup text using headers and these add space so bear this in mind if you must stick to a specific page count.
- Handwritten Paper Assignments
Many college papers require handwritten pages and obviously, this affects page count. If your assignment is a handwritten paper, remember that handwriting is, on average, twice the size of Arial or Times New Roman in 12-point size, so expect approximately 5 pages of A4.
However, everyone has different handwriting styles. If you have large handwriting, you might produce more pages. It just depends on your writing style. Also, Some people write more words on a line than others, so this could also alter the end result. Keep handwriting neat and tidy, if you're concerned about the quality of your handwriting, this useful video could help you improve legibility.
What About Writing Time?
Everyone has different writing time - and some people might take less than two-hours to complete an entire paper, whereas others might take significantly longer. It depends on typing and writing speed and how well you know your topic. If you're in exam conditions, practice writing a 1200-word paper beforehand to make sure you have enough time to complete your task.
Keeping an Eye on Word Count Using Originality AI
It’s a good idea to keep an eye on your word count as the number of words used in a 1200-word essay makes a difference! You may want to try an online word counter tool to help you, such as Originality AI.
This is an amazing tool that gives you word count, sentence count and character count in real time thanks to certain tool algorithms. Lots of students and professionals use this reputable online word counter calculator tool which also detects AI-generated content and plagiarism.
Finally
For any 1200-word, single-spaced essay expect an accurate estimate of 2.4 pages of A4 in Arial 12-point size using standard, 1-inch margins, no headers, bulleted or numbered lists or images and videos.
With any type of essay, as soon as you change margin size, introduce double-spacing, images, videos, lists etc., the page count increases. Use an online tool (such as Originality AI) and preferred spacing to help you generate the right amount of pages. Never use AI-assisted writing for any essay, especially academic writing tasks.
