I’ve attempted to look this up, and have a rough estimation of how many pages can be recommended. For a standard journal size that’s college ruled, it depends on what one does for their journals. For single-spaced sorts of deals, it’s around 500-600 words. As for a regular-style double-spaced deal, it’s 250-300 words, from what I found. It can be around 100-500 words as an average, so about 750-900 words should be a good target.
Now, this can be a guideline, which is quite malleable when you think about it for a second. I just wrote over 1k today as a result of this, considering that I’m just the type of guy who will sit down and just do stuff.
Recap
- Single-spaced: 500-600 words
- Double-spaced: 250-300 words
- Target: 750-900 words all things considered, but can be adjusted if necessary
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Oh, I forgot to mention the page rule portion. Yes, a lot of people still use college rule paper. Personally, I used to prefer narrow ruled paper. The thing is, there are a lot of variations throughout the world… See an article like How Far Apart Are Lines on Notebook Paper? A Complete Guide to Ruling Standards to get an idea.,
It’s so nice to see someone else who likes narrow ruled paper! Took a while to find sometimes but it was worth it
When I was in school it wasn’t too hard to find narrow rule - almost any stationery store or drug store would have narrow ruled paper.
These days I’m generally around 7-8mm width. I started writing with a fountain pen a few months ago, so having a bit more space works better.
This is why I was suggesting around 300–350 words per page. I didn’t want to go with the standard 500 words per page (which I’ve known since college), and I felt that 250 would be a bit on the low side.
So, the idea of 300–350 words per page was to not over burden new users, while still making the goal significant.
Another reason for the 300-350 goal was the proliferation of different paper sizes. I feel like more people are likely using A5 sized notebooks, whereas in the past they were more likely using A4.
In the end, I don’t think emphasizing the word count or the page count is the important aspect for this event. There are two things that I think are more important:
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The writing should be significant to the author. IE, you want to write about something that is important to you, and may even take you out of your comfort zone a bit.
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The frequency of the writing. While not everyone can do every day, getting into as regular of a groove with writing a journal is important. I suggested in the introduction guide that I’ve reached the point where I don’t feel quite right if I don’t write something every day. That’s the kind of thing I hope this event will help others with.
That’s why I said it was a flexible rule of thumb. I get it otherwise, knowing that I don’t use college ruled stuff that often.
Sure, just thought I would share my reasoning for coming up with the 300–350 words that I put in the original announcement.
Also, something else that I forgot to mention… If we went by 500 words per page, that would mean that a daily entry would be around 1500 words. 1500 words is within 200 words of the FediWriMo goal of 1666 words. I didn’t want to have a goal that was too close to the FediWriMo goal for writing a journal.
Yeah, I could certainly see why. Good thing we have the 300-350 word/page rule of thumb to begin with.
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