With hand in dates approaching, one of several important factors in finessing your paper is making sure that you are within the word limit. Students writing very large pieces of work are often given a ballpark figure to aim for, but for smaller theses and papers, the word count is of crucial importance.
Exceeding it or finishing well below it is likely to result in a lower grade, as it demonstrates that either you aren’t capable of editing or that you haven’t put enough work in. In order to give yourself the best chance of doing well, you should put in the time and effort to finish your paper on, or as close as possible to, the word count. Some schools and universities allow students to exceed or write below the word limit by up to 10%, but it is important that you check this!
To reduce the possibility of having to hack and cut out words or even whole paragraphs later, be aware of the word count before you begin writing. Dividing the paper into sections is helpful in determining roughly how many words there should be in each. Once you have divided the number of total words by the number of sections (introduction, conclusion plus however many topics/lines of argument you plan to discuss) you will be able to ensure that you don’t go drastically overboard in any of them. Sometimes you will want to devote more words to a particular line of argument, but planning for this means you won’t be left without enough space to discuss everything that you want to.
If it’s too late and you simply need to cut down on words, there are some simple ways to be more concise. First, go through and cut any unnecessary articles like, ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘an’. If you have included any long quotations, think about whether or not you can omit irrelevant clauses. Although descriptive writing makes for an entertaining and pleasant reading experience, in the context of an academic paper one adjective instead of three will probably suffice.
Be sure to take a break from your work and come back to it with fresh eyes. Leaving it for twenty-four hours and then re-reading and editing means you will be more likely to notice irrelevant passages, and be more ruthless about cutting them out!
Exceeding it or finishing well below it is likely to result in a lower grade, as it demonstrates that either you aren’t capable of editing or that you haven’t put enough work in. In order to give yourself the best chance of doing well, you should put in the time and effort to finish your paper on, or as close as possible to, the word count. Some schools and universities allow students to exceed or write below the word limit by up to 10%, but it is important that you check this!
To reduce the possibility of having to hack and cut out words or even whole paragraphs later, be aware of the word count before you begin writing. Dividing the paper into sections is helpful in determining roughly how many words there should be in each. Once you have divided the number of total words by the number of sections (introduction, conclusion plus however many topics/lines of argument you plan to discuss) you will be able to ensure that you don’t go drastically overboard in any of them. Sometimes you will want to devote more words to a particular line of argument, but planning for this means you won’t be left without enough space to discuss everything that you want to.
If it’s too late and you simply need to cut down on words, there are some simple ways to be more concise. First, go through and cut any unnecessary articles like, ‘the’, ‘a’ and ‘an’. If you have included any long quotations, think about whether or not you can omit irrelevant clauses. Although descriptive writing makes for an entertaining and pleasant reading experience, in the context of an academic paper one adjective instead of three will probably suffice.
Be sure to take a break from your work and come back to it with fresh eyes. Leaving it for twenty-four hours and then re-reading and editing means you will be more likely to notice irrelevant passages, and be more ruthless about cutting them out!