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7,500 words in a rough ceiling for a short story.
7,500-17,500 for a novelette.
17,500-40,000 for a novella.
Technically anything above 40,000 is a novel, but most publishers won't consider a novel to be a novel unless it's at least 70,000 words (about a 250 page mass-market pocket paperback.)
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The 7,500 is flexible, though. There are a lot of mags accepting lengths up to 9,000 or 12,000 or other numbers, and still calling them short stories. Check the markets you want to submit to, and see what their guidelines have to say. A great place to get info on word lengths accepted is www.storypilot.com .
My advice is to make the story the right length for the story, then afterwards look to see what it should be called, whether that ends up being flash, short, novelette or whatever.
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