On the other hand, you can overdo this.

Try taping [ or otherwise recording, yeef, my age is showing - see, clue about character in casual dialogue right there in in a single word use ] casual conversation with real people, and then play it back and listen to it. It will be full of umms and ahs and pauses and repetitions and sentence fragments and the general cumulative effect, while perfectly comprehensible spoken, is unlikely to be something that, if it were transcribed accurately, any reader could bear with for any length of time.

You're right. Casual, unplanned conversation usually does have pauses and such. What we were suggesting is to read your own writing out loud. If you haven't put a lot of pauses and ums on the page, this shouldn't be an issue.

So far, I've been averaging about 12 pages (6000 words) per chapter.    It's all single spaced in MS Word.

Does this sound too long for chapter length?

As you said, there is no rule. There are a few guidelines, depending on what genre you're writing. For me, as a romance writer, I tend to stick to about 12-15 double spaced pages. That's close to "average".  If you're writing fantasy or sf or mystery or something, that number could change.

Also, I was wondering what the ratio of word processor page to published book page is.  Like, does one MS Word page equal one published book page?  I'm a little confused when agents or publishers ask for a 5 page minimum submission or something like that.  Does that mean five pages of Word, or five equivelant book pages?

SMF (Standard Manuscript Format) is generally considered to be Courier or Courier New 12pt font, double spaced, with 1" margins all around. If that's what you're using, you get approximately 250 words/page, which is book equivalent.  This would mean that, yes, they're asking for 5 pages in your submission.

The important thing, of course, is to check the publisher or agent's guidelines. They may want some other kind of format, or go by computer word count, etc, and that could change what you turn in.

Hope that helps.

I haven't been around a lot, because my life got crazy (in good ways!), but I'm still a big Jim fan, so I hope I'm welcome to come back and say hey, I'm published too!

Currently e-published, but always working toward the first big break into print. I write romance of various flavors (suspense, contemporary, paranormal) and fantasy/sf novels. 

So, hi!