Section B: Specific Regulations - Oxford Brookes University.

An electronic word count should be indicated clearly on the cover sheet (electronic submissions only). This includes the main text, quotes, footnotes and appendices (except where this is an illustrative reference): only your bibliography is excluded from the word count. Essays and dissertations that are over the word limit will incur a penalty.

The word count must include everything within the main text of the Dissertation: this includes the abstract and contents page, lists of tables and illustrative material, and any tables, diagrams, subtitles, and footnotes and references which are included within the main text.

My last masters asked for 12k as a dissertation word count whereas my current one is asking for 16k give or take 10%. The above is fine with me because I feel on track with my project and I'm looking forward to doing it but I just find it interesting that wordcounts vary so much from one course to the next.

CONSIDERATION ONE Word count issues. Most students run out of words when writing up. At the start of the process, especially if you're an undergraduate doing a dissertation for the first time, 10,000, 12,000, or 15,000 words (and up) sound like a lot, but they soon get eaten up.

The dissertation should be 9000 words: the word count does not include footnotes, bibliography or appendices. The usual rules apply about wordcount as per all other essays - tutors will allow a discretionary 10% short-fall or extension of the word-length. However, a tutor will stop reading an essay once the 10% extension has been reached.

You are required to enter the word count of your work here. Word counts are set for a reason. Assignments submitted below the word limit are unlikely to contain the academic breadth and depth required. Those submitted over the word limit indicate an absence of important editing and synthesising skills. For that reason, penalties apply if word limits are not adhered to.

Why is there a word count? Word counts are part of the challenge of academic writing for several reasons: To suggest a level of detail: with one topic, you could write a 100 word summary, 1,000 word essay, 10,000 word dissertation, or a 100,000 word PhD thesis! The word count gives an indication of the level of depth you are expected to go into.

The word count for dissertations does not include the bibliography, cover sheet, abstract (if required) or appendices; the word count includes: in-text references, tables of contents, quotations, footnotes, list of figures, captions and all other elements of your submitted dissertation.

You need to check whether or not the appendices count within the word limit for your dissertation. Items that can usefully go in the appendices are those that a reader would want to see, but which would take up too much space and disrupt the flow if placed within the main text.

Dissertations and theses may contain many chapters and hundreds of pages. It is of vital importance when submitting your final document for marking that it looks professional.

Dissertation seminars. Word limit. The dissertation must be between 5,000 and 12,000 words, inclusive of footnotes but excluding bibliography and prefatory matter. It is expected to embody a substantial piece of study on a given topic. Quality is not correlated with length, but it is difficult to write a first-class dissertation in 5,000 words.

The word count of the dissertation (text only) should be entered at the bottom right-hand side of the page. Abstract Each copy must include an abstract or summary of the dissertation in not more than 300 words, on one side of A4, which should be single-spaced in a font size in the range 10 to 12.