Too Long; Didn't Read
The shorter the word length the cheaper the hardware, generally speaking, but the less the accuracy in calculations unless multiple precision is used. For example, although the 12-bit words of the PDP-8 match the accuracy of data from most ADC's, they are too small not to match the output data from most counters; furthermore, indirect addressing is often required because a single word is too short to include both the operation code and the absolute address of a memory location.