I have read that the maximum number of words for a thesis is 100,000. How does this breakdown in terms of the number of words per section and is there a minimum number of words?


Cheers in advance Stephen

Ideally each chapter should be around 8,000 - 10,000 words. Though, it is not unusual to have chapters with 15,000. Longer chapters are harder to structure. If your chapter is longer than that try breaking it into two diffrent chapters.

I havemnt heard of a minimum length, in physics and mathematics thesis could have 20,000 - 30,000 words and be less than a hundred pages. It depends on your area, try getting a few thesis of your area from your library (or just look online, there are some available), and see what is the usual length. At the end the minimum length is what has to be in the thesis, enough words to demonstrate that you made a contribution to knowledge, and to be a work that can be published.

Good luck!

Guidelines for thesis length, including maximum and minimum lengths, vary by university and department/discipline. You should ask your prospective supervisor(s) about this, because the same subject at different universities can have different rules, and different subjects within the same university can be radically different. In my department the minimum length is 80K and maximum 100K. I'm actually going to come in under this minimum length, but have been advised that it will be ok, though I'm taking steps to make it look better, adding appropriate appendices, though they don't count for total length.

Thanks for that athos78 and BilboBaggins, I have just been trying to gauge how much effort I will need to put in!!

T.S. Eliot said "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter", and I think the same applies to a thesis. A lot of words doesn't necessarily mean a lot of content. A concise writer aims to communicate information with the least amount of words: as Professor Strunk says, "Rule #17: Omit Needless Words".

I have a 130 page science thesis here that is just outstanding--a pleasure to read. Next to it is a 250+ page thesis which has less data, but is obviously longer, largely because the writing is not as concise--not a pleasure to read.

Writing mostly in the passive instead of the active voice will also make a thesis much longer than it need be. Also, students who are insecure about whether they have done enough work tend to write excessively long theses (IMHO). Two of the least productive students in our group have written 350+ page theses (70,000+ words) yet don't have enough work in there to publish a single paper. Most science theses are about half that length (35,000 - 40,000).

The most impressive thesis I've seen was European (from Sweden I think) and extremely thin. I thought my supervisor was kidding when he brought it out into the lab and announced its brilliance. When we looked inside, it pretty much consisted of a TOC then five chapters, each one a 1st author paper.

Don't get caught up in thesis length or word count. The goal is to say everything you need to with the least amount of words.