(11 Nov 2014, 1:28 pm)Adam wrote The brief thing said it was only meant to be 2,000, but that's excluding all tables (of which a large chunk of the assignment was in), references, bibliographies, appendices, contents pages, fancy front covers and so on. My official word count that was declared on the front page was 2,138 (we are allowed +10% of word limit, so effectively it's 2,200). The example we were shown was 45 pages long, but our lecturer did say that was too much.
I'll share a sneaky tip when it comes to table and graphs.
When importing from Excel into Word they become part of the word count. This can have implications if a word-count is specified and the assignment has to be submitted in both electronic and hard copy. To get around this, I exported all my tables and graphs as images then pasted from file back into Word. As images are not 'words', this circumvents any word-count problems. Be warned, there are some professors/lecturers who'll mark you down for exceeding the word count.