How Many Words on One Page? We Measured 8 Fonts at 3 Sizes

The rest of this post is the full table, what moves the number most, and why a designed One-Pager holds far fewer words than any of these.

Words per page: the full table

US Letter, 1 inch margins, single spaced, no space between paragraphs. Each cell shows the range across our two test documents (one with short paragraphs, one with long ones).

Arial and Helvetica give identical counts on every row. That is by design: Arial was drawn to match Helvetica's letter widths, so a document never reflows when one replaces the other.

Double spaced: about half

Double spacing doubles the height of every line, so a page holds roughly half as many words.

You will often read "about 275 words" for a double-spaced page. In our measurements, 12 pt Times New Roman held 370. The gap is the line height: we used each font's own built-in line height, the way a browser does, and some word processors add more space on top of that. Treat any single number as a range, and test your own document if a word limit is strict.

What changes the count most

1. Spacing. Single to double spacing cut the words by 45% to 50% in every font.
2. Font size. Going from 12 pt to 10 pt added about 30% more words in Arial (603 to 782 on the short-paragraph document).
3. Margins. At 11 pt Arial, half-inch margins held 1,034 words, 1 inch margins held 811, and 1.25 inch margins held 709.
4. The font. At the same size, Times New Roman fit about 25% to 30% more words than Verdana. Wide, open fonts are easier to read on screen and take more room.
5. Paragraphs. A document of short paragraphs lost up to 150 words a page against one of long paragraphs, because every paragraph ends on a part-empty line.

Paper size matters least: single spaced, an A4 page held 1% to 7% more words than Letter in the same font. We compare the two in Letter vs A4.

A designed One-Pager holds far fewer words

A page of plain text and a One-Pager are different things. We counted the words on our own designed One-Pager templates: the shortest held 88 words, the median held 134, and the densest held 308. That is a fifth to a half of a single-spaced page.

Edit this template

About 90 words. The numbers carry the message, so the sentences can stay short.

Edit this template

About 210 words, near the top of our range, and it still reads in under a minute.

The space goes to headings, numbers set large, charts, timelines and white space, which is why a reader takes in a One-Pager in under a minute. We timed that against published reading speeds in how long it takes to read one page, and we explain what a good word count is for each kind of One-Pager in how many words a One-Pager should have.

How we measured

• Texts: two public-domain documents from Project Gutenberg. The Declaration of Independence (short paragraphs, 1,324 words) and Federalist No. 10 (long paragraphs, 2,973 words).
• Page: US Letter (8.5 x 11 in) and A4 (210 x 297 mm), 1 inch margins, no space between paragraphs.
• Spacing: single means each font's own line height; double means twice that.
• Method: Google Chrome laid out the text, and a script added words one at a time until the next word would push past the bottom margin. Calibri was measured with Carlito, a free font with the same letter widths.
• Date: 11 October 2026.

Fit your words on one page

Have more to say than a page can hold? Drop your document into the free AI One-Pager generator and it cuts it down to one designed One-Pager, or start from one of the MakeOnepagers templates and fill in your own words. Your first One-Pager is free with the AI One-Pager Generator, no account needed.