A salary negotiation email should be 150-250 words for an initial counter offer, long enough to make your case but concise enough to respect the reader’s time. Despite 73% of hiring managers expecting candidates to negotiate, 55% of job seekers never do—often because they don’t know what to say or how much to write. Getting your email length right matters: successful salary negotiations add an average of $5,000 to starting pay and can contribute over $500,000 to lifetime earnings.

The LinkedIn About section gives career changers 2,600 characters to reframe their professional story and connect past experience to future goals. For maximum impact, aim for approximately 300 words (1,500-1,800 characters) using a three-paragraph structure that opens with your career focus, highlights transferable skills, and closes with your goals and a clear call to action.

This guide covers character limits, the optimal structure for career transition summaries, writing techniques for each paragraph, headline optimization, industry-specific examples, and common mistakes to avoid.

Networking follow-up emails should be 75-150 words to maximize response rates. Event follow-ups perform best at 75-150 words, informational interview requests at 100-150 words, and reconnecting emails at 100-175 words. The critical factor beyond length is timing: follow up within 24-48 hours of meeting someone, as response rates drop dramatically after 48 hours. Career experts at Indeed and UCSF Career recommend keeping networking emails brief, specific, and action-oriented.

This guide covers optimal networking email length for every situation.

LinkedIn InMail messages have a 1,900-character limit for the message body and 200 characters for subject lines. However, shorter InMails perform significantly better, with messages under 400 characters receiving 22% higher response rates than longer messages. The average InMail gets an 18-25% response rate compared to just 3% for regular connection messages, making character optimization essential for maximizing your limited InMail credits.

This guide covers InMail character limits, optimal message lengths, and proven strategies to improve your response rates.

Cold emails for job opportunities should be 50-125 words for optimal response rates. This finding comes from HubSpot’s analysis of 40 million emails, which confirmed that shorter, focused messages significantly outperform longer ones. Whether you’re reaching out to a hiring manager, requesting an informational interview, or following up on an application, keeping your message concise dramatically increases your chances of getting a reply.

This guide covers ideal cold email length by purpose, proven templates you can customize, subject line strategies, and the follow-up approach that lands interviews.

The LinkedIn Featured section has no item limit, but 3-6 pieces of content perform best for visibility and engagement. Each featured item allows approximately 200 characters for the title. Here’s the key insight: 80% of LinkedIn users leave the Featured section completely blank, making this one of the easiest ways to differentiate your profile from competitors. By strategically curating your best work, you instantly join the top 20% of profiles in terms of visual appeal and professional presentation.

Portfolio project description length varies dramatically by creative field: UX designers need 800-1,500 word case studies to demonstrate process, while developers should aim for 200-500 words focused on technical implementation. Graphic designers often need just 100-300 words since their work is visual-first. The key insight from hiring managers is that recruiters spend only 2-3 minutes on a portfolio initially, with about 90 seconds of active scanning before deciding whether to dig deeper.

LinkedIn limits each skill entry to 80 characters, and you can add up to 100 skills to your profile. While this sounds like plenty of room, strategic optimization matters because profiles with skills are 27 times more likely to be discovered by recruiters. Understanding these limits helps you maximize visibility and present your professional capabilities effectively.

This guide covers LinkedIn skills character limits, how many skills to add, the importance of your top 3 skills, endorsement strategies, and industry-specific optimization tips.

A thank you email after an interview should be 150-300 words to make a positive impression without overwhelming the hiring manager. According to TopResume and SHRM research, 68% of hiring managers say thank-you notes influence their hiring decisions, and one in five interviewers have dismissed candidates specifically for not sending one.

This guide covers the ideal length for different interview scenarios, what to include in your message, timing best practices, and ready-to-use templates.

LinkedIn recommendations have a 3,000 character maximum, but the ideal length is 150-300 words for maximum impact. Shorter, specific recommendations consistently outperform longer, generic ones because hiring managers and recruiters scan profiles quickly and value concrete examples over lengthy praise.

This guide covers LinkedIn’s character limits, optimal lengths for different situations, how to write compelling recommendations, and strategies for requesting them effectively.

Quick Reference: LinkedIn Recommendation Length

Understanding LinkedIn’s Character Limit

LinkedIn allows up to 3,000 characters for recommendations, which translates to roughly 500-600 words depending on your word choices. However, using the full limit rarely benefits either party.

LinkedIn offers two content formats: posts with a 3,000-character limit and articles with up to 125,000 characters. Posts deliver higher engagement rates (3.85% average) and appear directly in feeds, while articles provide SEO benefits through Google indexing and establish thought leadership with long-form content. Choosing the right format depends on your goals, whether you need quick visibility or evergreen authority.

This guide covers character limits, engagement benchmarks, and strategic use cases to help you maximize your LinkedIn content impact.

Slack messages have a recommended limit of 4,000 characters, with a technical maximum of 40,000 characters. Block section text is limited to 3,000 characters, and DMs allow up to 8,000 characters. Optimal messages are 100-200 characters for quick communication or 300-500 characters for detailed updates. Longer messages should use threads, canvas, or move to documentation. Effective Slack communication balances brevity with clarity in an asynchronous environment.

This guide covers Slack message length and formatting best practices for professional teams.

Elevator pitches should optimally be 30-45 seconds, or roughly 75-100 words when spoken at a natural pace. The term comes from the time it takes to ride an elevator—a brief window to capture attention. Average speaking rate is 125-150 words per minute, with presentations typically delivered at 130-140 wpm. Effective pitches adapt to context: a 15-second quick intro needs 30-40 words, networking events need 30-second versions (75-100 words), interviews warrant 60-second versions (150-200 words), and investor pitches can extend to 90 seconds (200-250 words).

LinkedIn connection requests have different character limits depending on your account type: Premium and Sales Navigator users get 300 characters, while free account users are now limited to just 200 characters. LinkedIn reduced the free account limit from 300 to 200 characters, and monthly personalized connection request limits have also been reduced to approximately 10 for free users. With these tight limits, every word must demonstrate relevance and give a clear reason to connect.

Business emails perform best at 50-125 words for highest response rates. A Boomerang study analyzing 40 million emails found that emails between 75-100 words achieve a 51% response rate (the optimal range), while 50-word emails get 50%, 200-word emails drop to 48%, 500-word emails fall to 44%, and emails over 2,000 words see response rates below 35%. Additionally, writing at a 3rd grade reading level produces a 36% lift in responses over college-level writing.

Press releases should be 300-500 words (400 optimal) on a single page maximum. Research shows 68% of journalists prefer press releases under 400 words, and the average journalist takes only 5-10 seconds to decide whether to give a release their attention. The one-page rule has governed PR for decades because journalists scan releases quickly, looking for newsworthy angles. The inverted pyramid structure ensures the most important information appears first, so even readers who stop early get the essential news.

Executive summaries should be 5-10% of the total document length or 1-2 pages maximum, whichever is shorter. The typical word count is 200-500 words. For a 10-page document, aim for a 1-page summary; for a 20-page document, up to 2 pages maximum; and for documents over 50 pages, 2-3 pages. Decision-makers often read only the executive summary, so this condensed overview must stand alone as a complete argument for your recommendation or proposal.

LinkedIn headlines allow 220 characters on desktop and 240 characters on mobile, but only about 120 characters display in desktop search results and approximately 60 characters on mobile search. This makes front-loading critical—put your most important keywords and information in the first 60 characters. The headline is the second most visible element of your profile (after your name) and significantly impacts whether people click through to view your full profile.

LinkedIn’s About section (formerly Summary) allows 2,600 characters, but the platform only displays approximately 300 characters on desktop before the “see more” link (about 200 characters on mobile). This makes your opening lines critical for engagement. Optimal length is 1,800-2,200 characters—enough to tell your story without losing readers. Front-load keywords in the first 200 characters for mobile visibility and maximum searchability.

This guide covers how to maximize your LinkedIn summary within the character limit.

Cover letters should be 250-400 words, fitting on half to one page with 3-6 paragraphs (4 optimal). Research from ResumeGo analyzing over 1,200 applications found that 250-400 word cover letters received 53% more callbacks than shorter or longer versions. Additionally, 82% of HR professionals recommend keeping cover letters under one page. The goal is demonstrating fit, not recounting your entire career.

This guide covers optimal cover letter length for every situation in 2026.

Resume word count should match your experience level: entry-level candidates (0-5 years) need 300-400 words on one page, mid-career professionals (5-10 years) should aim for 400-600 words across 1-1.5 pages, and senior professionals (10+ years) can use 500-700 words on up to 2 pages. Research shows the average successful resume contains 474 words (Optim Careers), and 90% of recruiters prefer 2-page resumes (StandOut CV). With recruiters scanning resumes in just 15-30 seconds, every word must earn its place.