The goal behind "page count" as a metric is to give you an idea of how much depth you should be going into on whatever topic you're writing about. If you're su

The goal behind "page count" as a metric is to give you an idea of how much depth you should be going into on whatever topic you're writing about. If you're supposed to produce a twenty page paper and you've got 13 pages, you need more meat in the paper to fulfill expectations. Alternatively, if you're supposed to produce a three page summary and you've got seven pages, you're getting caught in the weeds somewhere and need to take a step back. It's a bit easier to, at the start of the paper, make a judgement about what's expected in terms of depth when you're given a page count instead of a word count, because you know roughly how much information can fit on a page but perhaps not how many words that takes up.