Ask a lecture hall of UK students whether footnotes count towards the word count and you will hear confident, opposite answers — and both camps can be right, because they study under different rules. Footnotes are the least standardised element of the British word count. The reference list is excluded almost everywhere, the body text included almost everywhere, but footnotes sit in a genuine policy split: some universities count every word of them, some exclude them, and some draw a line down the middle of the footnote itself. Run your draft both ways through the Word Count Leeway Checker and you will at least know how much depends on your university’s choice.
This guide will not pretend the split away with a tidy “usually not”. It sets out the three positions UK institutions actually take, explains why the type of footnote matters, shows you the handbook wording to search for, and tells you what to do when your own documents leave the question unanswered.
The honest answer: three policies, all in live use
The first policy counts footnotes in full. Under this rule, the word count includes all words in footnotes and endnotes, alongside headings, quotations and in-text citations, with only the bibliography and appendices outside. Published institutional regulations using exactly this formulation exist and apply to ordinary coursework, not just theses. On this rule, a footnote is simply text that lives at the bottom of the page, priced like any other text.
The second policy excludes footnotes entirely. Here the limit governs the main text only, on the reasoning that a footnote system — in law, history or English — would otherwise punish students for citing properly: a single full OSCOLA or MHRA footnote can carry thirty words of publication detail that have nothing to do with the essay’s argument. Departments using footnote referencing heavily are the natural home of this rule.
The third policy splits the footnote. Citation content — author, title, publisher, page — is excluded, but discursive content, the sentences where you qualify, explain or argue, is included. This is the most logical position and the hardest to administer, because it asks whoever checks the count to read the notes and classify them. It exists in real regulations, and produces the most confusion, because a student can follow every instruction given about “footnotes” and still not know whether their particular notes qualified.
No honest guide can tell you the proportions in which UK universities divide between these positions; nobody has conducted that census, and anyone quoting you a percentage is inventing it. All three are current, all three are defensible, and the only version that matters is the one in your own assessment documents.
Citation footnotes are not discursive footnotes
Even where a policy never mentions the distinction, markers think in it. A citation footnote is apparatus: it exists so a reader can find the source, and its length is dictated by the referencing style, not by you. A discursive footnote is writing: a historiographical aside, a definition you chose not to interrupt the paragraph for, a counterargument parked below the line, a translation note that adds interpretation. The first kind is the price of the referencing system. The second kind is part of your essay by any honest description, merely wearing a smaller font.
This is why the split policy exists, and why students on inclusive courses get into trouble innocently. They hear, correctly, that “footnotes are just references”, write three footnotes that are actually miniature paragraphs of analysis, and discover that several hundred words of argument were sitting inside their count all along. Audit your own notes with one question: if this footnote were deleted, would my argument lose anything? If yes, it is essay text — count it, wherever your policy puts pure citations.
The subjects this hits hardest
For Harvard-style subjects, this whole question is a footnote in itself: citations sit in the text, the notes are rare and short, and the numbers involved are trivial. The exposure concentrates where footnote referencing is the house style. Law students using OSCOLA cite cases, legislation and commentary in notes that can accumulate into thousands of words across a dissertation, and a case citation’s full title alone is not short. History adds archival references, manuscript shelfmarks and source criticism that properly belongs in notes. English and modern languages students using MHRA carry full first references, short forms thereafter, and edition notes — the mechanics are set out in our guide to MHRA footnotes explained — and discursive notes are a respected feature of the style, not an abuse of it.
The practical consequence is uneven risk. A psychology student can ignore this question and lose nothing. A final-year law or history student who guesses wrong can be wrong by an essay’s worth of words across a dissertation, which is why these departments are also the likeliest to have written their position down. If your subject uses footnotes as its main citation method, treat finding the rule as part of the assignment, on the same footing as finding the sources.
Footnotes and endnotes: same question, different address
Students sometimes ask whether converting footnotes to endnotes changes the answer, as though moving the notes to the end of the document moved them out of the count. It does not. Endnotes are footnotes with a different postal address: policies that include one include the other — institutional wording habitually names them in the same breath — and policies that exclude citations exclude them in either position. Word, too, treats the two identically for counting purposes.
The one real difference is human, not arithmetical. A marker reading page by page meets footnotes as they arise; endnotes are consulted in a bunch — or, candidly, sometimes not at all. If your notes carry material your argument needs, a footnote puts it under the marker’s eye at the moment it matters. Choose the format your style guide specifies, and let the counting rule fall where it falls.
Word will give you two different numbers
Part of the confusion around this question is manufactured by the software. Microsoft Word’s everyday total — the figure on the status bar as you type — does not include footnotes and endnotes. Open Review, then Word Count, and tick “include textboxes, footnotes and endnotes”, and the same document produces a second, larger total. Neither figure is wrong; they answer different questions. The trouble begins when a student compares their status-bar figure against a university rule that counts footnotes, or panics over the dialogue-box figure on a course that excludes them.
So make the software match the rule, not the other way round. Once you know your policy, settle on the corresponding Word figure and use it consistently, from first draft to the declared count on your submission. If your policy is the split one, neither Word figure is exactly right: read the notes, classify them once, and count the discursive ones by selecting them. Tedious, but done once, early, it removes the question from your final week — and that week is better spent on the writing itself, as our guide on how long to write 2,000 words makes plain.
How to find your own university’s rule
Start with the assessment brief, then the module handbook, then your school or programme regulations, and search the text rather than reading cover to cover. The search terms that surface the relevant sentence are “footnotes”, “endnotes”, “included in the word count” and “excluded from the word count”. What you are looking for is a list — nearly every institution publishes one — stating what the count includes and what it leaves out. Read both halves: the inclusions tell you about footnotes directly, and the exclusions tell you about the reference list and appendices, which are separate decisions, as our guide on whether references count in the word count sets out. Do not let a clear answer on one smuggle in an assumption about the other.
Two traps recur. The first is borrowing another course’s rule: handbook wording is often written per school or programme, and the history department’s exclusion may not extend to a joint-honours module administered by politics. The second is the well-meant forum answer — “they never count footnotes here” — which describes one module, one year, possibly one imagination. Regulations also change between cohorts; the document attached to your assessment outranks every recollection.
When the rule is ambiguous: ask, in writing, before the deadline
Sometimes the documents genuinely do not say. The brief gives a limit, the handbook lists inclusions that omit footnotes from both lists, and the regulations are silent. In that position the correct move is unglamorous and decisive: email the module tutor or programme team and ask the question in terms that can be answered in one line — “For the 3,000-word essay, are footnotes included in the word count, excluded, or included only where they are discursive?” Ask early enough that the answer can still change your draft, which means when you start writing, not the night before submission when no reply can help you.
Writing matters for two reasons. A written answer is evidence if a penalty is later applied under the opposite interpretation, and asking in writing forces the question to be answered precisely rather than waved at in a seminar. If no answer arrives and the deadline forces a decision, count the stricter way — include the footnotes — or, where the split policy seems likely, include the discursive ones. Being modestly under a limit has never cost a student what being over it has.
The one thing not to do
Whatever your policy, do not relocate argument into footnotes to shrink a body count. Where footnotes are excluded, they are excluded as apparatus, on trust; an examiner who finds the essay’s real reasoning running along the bottom of the page in nine-point type will not admire the ingenuity, and some courses treat it as circumventing the limit rather than a formatting choice. Where footnotes are included, the trick fails arithmetically anyway. Let your notes do their honourable work — citations, provenance, asides — and the essay becomes easier to mark well.
Footnotes pushing your essay over the line?
If your notes have quietly become a second essay underneath the first, United Academic Help can help you decide what belongs in the text, what belongs below it, and what should not survive at all. We support law, history, English and other footnote-heavy subjects with essays, coursework and dissertation chapters from £20 per 1,000 words, and the price is agreed in full before any work begins. Order through the website, write to team@unitedacademichelp.uk, or message us on WhatsApp through our contact page — tell us your referencing style and your deadline, and we will take the counting problem off your desk too.
Frequently asked questions
Do footnotes count in the word count at UK universities? There is no single UK answer. Some universities include all footnote words, some exclude footnotes entirely, and some exclude citations within footnotes while counting discursive notes. All three policies are in current use, so your own assessment handbook is the only authority that settles it for your work.
Do endnotes count if footnotes do not? No — policies and Word treat endnotes and footnotes the same way. Moving notes to the end of the document changes where the marker reads them, not whether they count.
Does Microsoft Word include footnotes automatically? Not in the status-bar total you see while typing. Open Review, then Word Count, and tick “include textboxes, footnotes and endnotes” to see the all-in figure. Decide which of Word’s two totals matches your university’s rule, and use that one consistently.
What if my handbook does not mention footnotes at all? Ask the module tutor or programme team by email, early enough for the answer to change your draft, and keep the reply. If no answer arrives before you must submit, include the footnotes — or at least the discursive ones — in your count; submitting under the limit is the safer error.
Can I put extra argument in footnotes if they are excluded? That is precisely what the exclusion is not for. Excluded footnotes are trusted to be citation apparatus; markers who find the argument itself in the notes will mark the practice down, and some courses treat it as circumventing the limit.
Do MHRA and OSCOLA footnotes get treated differently? The referencing style does not decide the question — your institution’s word-count policy does. But footnote styles generate far more note text than Harvard-style courses, so students using MHRA or OSCOLA have far more riding on the answer and should confirm it first.