The upper limit is 4000 words for all extended essays. This upper limit includes the introduction, the body, the conclusion, any quotations and footnotes and / or endnotes that are not references, but does not include:
The RPPF (reflections which you have up to 500 words)
acknowledgements
the contents page
maps, charts, diagrams, annotated illustrations and tables (see note below about tables)
equations, formulas and mathematics
the references/bibliography
appendices
headers (note - this is headers and not headings. Headers are items that you might choose to repeat at the top of each page)
Essays in excess of 4000 words are subject to penalties and examiners are not required to read material in excess of the word limit.
Your extended essay should be clearly written in a formal academic style, appropriate to the subject(s) from which the topic is drawn. Given that the extended essay is a formally written research paper, it should strive to maintain a professional, academic look.
To help achieve this, follow this formatting guidance.
Font size 12 and 1.5 line spacing—this helps the examiner with on-screen marking.
Page numbering (mandatory), beginning with the first page following your contents page.
Anonymity—there is no student, supervisor or school name anywhere in the file submitted.
A file size smaller than 10 MB. Consider the size of embedded images, which may add considerably to the file size, and optimize them if needed. Note that the reflection and progress form (RPF) is uploaded separately and is not part of the overall file size of the essay.
Submitting your extended essay in the required format will help set the tone of the essay and will aid readability for on-screen assessment by examiners.
Whilst tables do not count in the word count, we need to be careful not to use them as a way to beat the word count by including large amounts of text in them
The best way of thinking about a table is that it is a representation of data/information in a way which makes it easier for the reader to understand.
It is not where analysis of that data happens, that should happen in the text of your essay.
Business management students need to be careful of the word 'analysis' as they may have done a SWOT 'analysis'. A SWOT analysis table is really just a list of factors that a business needs to consider and so can be considered as data/information and not counted in the word count. When doing a SWOT analysis there must be an accompanying text analysis where you look at how the information in your table helps to answer your research question