400 to 600 words. One page. That's the answer for roughly nine out of ten announcements, and unlike most writing advice, this one has a price tag attached, because every 100 words over the line costs real money on a legacy wire.
Here's where the number comes from, what to cut when you're over, and the narrow set of cases where going longer is the right call.
Where 400–600 comes from
Three separate forces converge on the same range.
Editors skim. A business editor works through a few hundred emails a day. The decision to keep reading happens in the headline and the first sentence, and the decision to use it happens somewhere in the first two paragraphs. Everything after that is reference material for a reporter who has already decided you're interesting. A 1,400-word release doesn't get read more thoroughly. It just has more places to hide the point.
Wires charge by the word. Legacy wires price with a base word count, typically 400 or 500 words, then charge per additional 100. On PR Newswire and Business Wire, those increments run roughly $100–$300 depending on geography, so a 900-word release can cost several hundred dollars more than a 550-word one saying the same thing. Modern distribution services usually include up to 800–1,000 words in a flat fee, which is one reason the per-word penalty surprises first-time wire buyers. The full breakdown is in our press release pricing guide.
Syndication truncates. Many aggregators and news sites that pick up wire content display a preview and cut the rest. Anything essential past word 400 may simply not appear on a good number of the placements you paid for.
What a 500-word release contains
At 500 words you have room for exactly this, and no filler:
- Headline: 10 to 12 words, the news stated plainly.
- Subhead (optional): one line adding the number or the consequence.
- Dateline and lede: 30 to 40 words. Who, what, when, where, why.
- Second paragraph: the context that makes the news matter. 50 to 70 words.
- Quote: 40 to 60 words from a named human, with an opinion or a specific in it.
- Detail paragraph: the how, availability, pricing, terms. 70 to 100 words.
- Second quote (optional): a customer or partner, if they add something the first quote doesn't.
- Boilerplate: 50 to 75 words about the company.
- Contact block: name, email, phone.
That's the whole document. If your draft has sections that don't map to one of those slots, they're probably the sections to cut. Our format guide walks through each one, with these proportions built in.
What to cut first, in order
When you're at 850 words and need to get to 550, cut in this sequence. It works almost every time.
- Company history. "Founded in 2019, the company has grown to serve customers across three continents." That's boilerplate material. It belongs at the bottom, in one sentence, or nowhere.
- Market-size paragraphs. "The global widget market is projected to reach $42 billion by 2030." Nobody is going to cover your news because the category is large. This paragraph exists in investor decks, not news.
- The second and third adjectives in every phrase. "A powerful, intuitive, enterprise-grade platform" becomes "a platform." You lose nothing.
- Mission and vision language. "Committed to empowering businesses to achieve their full potential." Zero information, roughly 40 words in most drafts.
- The weaker quote. Two quotes that say the same thing means one quote. Keep the more specific one.
- Feature lists longer than four items. Pick the three that matter and link to the page with the rest.
- Redundant restatement. Most drafts explain the news twice, once in the lede and once, at greater length, in paragraph five. Delete the second one.
A useful test: read the release to someone and ask what the news is. Then delete everything they didn't need to answer correctly.
Word count is a symptom, not the disease
Long releases are usually long for a reason, and it's rarely that there was too much news. It's that there wasn't enough. Padding (market stats, mission statements, history, adjective stacks) is what fills the space where a real fact should be.
So if you can't get under 600 words without losing something important, good, you have a dense announcement. If you can't get under 600 words because everything you cut leaves the release looking thin, that's a signal about the news itself, not the writing.
When longer is justified
Three legitimate cases, and they're narrower than people assume.
Regulated disclosure. Public company earnings, clinical trial results, M&A terms. The financial tables, safe-harbor statements, and legal language are required, and length is not a stylistic choice. These routinely run 1,200 to 2,500 words and that's correct.
Genuinely complex technical or scientific news. If the announcement is meaningless without a methodology paragraph, as with a study result, a security disclosure, or a standards change, include it. The test is whether a knowledgeable reader could evaluate the claim without it. If not, it stays.
Multi-part announcements with real substance in each part. A funding round that also includes two executive hires and an acquisition may need 700–800 words. But consider splitting: three separate releases over six weeks often generate more attention than one crowded one, and gives you a steadier drumbeat. Our product launch template is sized for a single-news announcement for exactly this reason.
Note what isn't on the list: product launches with lots of features, partnership announcements, award wins, new hires. Those all fit in 500 words. A new hire announcement should rarely exceed 350.
The practical rule
Write the draft at whatever length it comes out. Then cut it to 550 and see what you actually miss. Nine times out of ten, the answer is nothing, and you just saved yourself a couple hundred dollars in per-word charges and bought back the only thing that matters, which is an editor reading past your first sentence.
See exactly what word count is included in each tier: [our pricing is public](/pricing), no sales call required.