masters dissertation word count: how much was yours?

Reply 20

JamesManc

15

6,000 done the results section will plagiarise all of the rest

Reply 21

LeoNelson

yes, i will do.

Reply 22

AAgrace

8

My MA was 15k.

Reply 23

Manitude

20

Mine had a limit of 10k plus 10%. In the end I think mine was about 9600.

A small word limit doesn't necessarily mean a poor dissertation. It encourages concise writing which is a useful skill in academia. Unfortunately it's one that quite a few academics don't seem to have got the hang of.

Reply 24

madamemerle

10

Mine was 20k words, which, when you get down to it, is not very much at all. It took me about a month to write in total, with a much longer research time front loaded.

Reply 25

Klix88

17

Original post

by Manitude

A small word limit doesn't necessarily mean a poor dissertation. It encourages concise writing which is a useful skill in academia. Unfortunately it's one that quite a few academics don't seem to have got the hang of.

Agreed. The ability to write to a brief was emphasised by my Masters diss supervisor. We weren't penalised for delivering under the word count as long as our supervisor agreed that it was appropriate. However there were specified percentage penalties for going over the word count.

Reply 26

Manitude

20

Original post

by Klix88

Agreed. The ability to write to a brief was emphasised by my Masters diss supervisor. We weren't penalised for delivering under the word count as long as our supervisor agreed that it was appropriate. However there were specified percentage penalties for going over the word count.

That's similar to what I had. I think it was a 10% mark penalty for every 10% you went over the limit (though the first 10% was fine). However my supervisor told me in no uncertain terms that he wasn't going to count how many words I actually wrote unless it was clearly too much. Obviously I was very careful to make sure I had the right amount of words stated on the cover sheet as I had no idea if the second marker would be so lenient!

masters dissertation word count: how much was yours?

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