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Q&A Is page range inclusive or exclusive?

As already stated, page ranges would typically be inclusive. There's actually an even more illustrative example to show why this is what readers would probably expect. Suppose the text you're cit...

posted 4y ago by Canina‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Canina‭ · 2020-06-07T20:53:57Z (over 4 years ago)
As already stated, page ranges would typically be [inclusive](https://writing.codidact.com/a/38349/38350).

There's actually an even more illustrative example to show why this is what readers would probably expect.

Suppose the text you're citing starts at the bottom of page 1, takes up the entirety of page 2, and finishes with a single line at the top of page 3.

**If the page range was exclusive, you would probably need to cite that as "pages 0-4".** Giving that range as "pages 1-4" would be inconsistent, because the beginning of the range would be inclusive but the ending of the range would be exclusive. Since there most likely *is* no page 0, this would be highly confusing to the reader.

However, if the page range as given is inclusive, you would cite it as "pages 1-3", in order to specify "pages 1, 2 and 3".

If you want to be *extraoverespecially* specific, you can tack an "inclusive" at the end. For example, "pages 1-3 inclusive" avoids the ambiguity altogether by explicitly calling out the inclusivity of the specified range. This is probably appropriate mostly for technical works where extreme precision matters.