The number everyone wants but nobody agrees on

[donaldhere]

I get asked how many words should a literature review be more often than almost any other dissertation question — and what I've found is that students asking it are usually either worried they've written too little or convinced they need to pad it out, and both instincts tend to lead to weaker work. The honest answer is 20–30% of your overall word count, which scales with your dissertation — so a 5,000 word paper needs roughly 1,000–1,500, a 10,000 word dissertation around 2,000–3,000, and a 15,000 word one closer to 3,500–4,500.

But honestly the word count is the last thing you should be thinking about — write until you've mapped the field, identified the gap, and set up your research question clearly, then check the count. If you're way over, cut the sources that aren't pulling their weight. If you're under, you probably haven't gone deep enough into the debates that matter most to your argument