PhD, Uni of Manchester, word limit is officially 80,000, thesis is currently 82,000

thanks in advance!

You should ask your supervisor. I'd suspect not though. PhD theses don't generally have percentage over-run allowances like undergraduate essays.

Don't give your examiners any reason to give you more complicated corrections. It's better to cut out unnecessary words before submission than after the viva in a corrections period. 2000 words should be easy to trim out of 82K.

think you're right... what about appendices and references?

Your university should specify what the rules are for counting them.

Generally though appendices and bibliography don't count to a word count, but footnotes or endnotes do.

Check with your supervisor again for clarification.

Hi!

although the limit in my uni is 100K, it is a general recommendation not to go above 60K or 200 pages (without the appendices). More and more people bind the appendix as a different volume.

Having said that, I never managed to be in the word limit, and it is going to be so much fun next year when I am trying to cut the monster in half....