Quick question Sam, not sure if you'll know this or not but it's worth a try:
for the Nat 5 English portfolio, is there a strict word limit of 1000?
On the SQA info sheet online it says that "each piece should be of no more than 1000 words." However, this isn't emboldened or underlined in any way at all as it is on the Higher portfolio sheet, which could imply that it isn't a strict boundary.
Obviously going well above would be insensible but what if a piece happened to be around 1030 words? Would marks be deducted?