How long?

[hannahsaunt]

Imagine you get to have a year off your job to accompany your dh and dcs to the other side of the world.

Work say go, have a good time, we'll keep your post open with the same terms & conditions but we want you to spend 3 of the 12 months completing a research project of your choosing (but relevant to your post) in the local equivalent to your new home. And we'll pay you your normal salary for the three months that you are 'working'. (HOW GOOD is my employer!!!).

How many words should the project be? The exchange place of work hasn't fulfilled all that it said it would do for the three months making it much harder. But I have also found it really hard working from home, doing things around school hours, generally not enjoying the stress that has been generated in trying to tease apart a not terribly co-operative place of work.

Someone today suggested it shouldn't be more than 30 pages in total. Eeek. How many words is that for the main text (assuming 3 or 4 pages deal with title, index, references etc).

[Whizzz]

sorry can't help but bumping for you in the hope that someone can !

[hannahsaunt]

Sounds good. Am at 3,200 words now with lots more to write so fingers crossed that it will be relatively substantial (and useful) (and worth them letting me go).

[hannahsaunt]

Using 1.5 spacing might help me too

[clerkKent]

You could look at it two ways.

A) If you have 60-65 working days to produce a piece of work, how long should it be? A longer report is more 'value for money' iyswim.

B) Who is it for and how long is their attention span? Is anyone going to read it? The shorter the better if you want it to be read.

So go for a 2-3 page summary and put everything else in the appendices. Will it be delivered in hard copy? If so, spend more time on presentation (thick paper, colour, pictures etc). If not, there is even less chance it eill be read in total.