Why Do Students Worry Over Essay Word Count?

Its quite ironic that students take great care in the greater aspects of their academic

career that they tend to overlook the minor issues that eventually lead to bigger problems in the future. Case in point: students will conduct brilliant amount of research for essay content, that they may overlook one of the most trivial of things such as the Essay Word Count. So todays topic of discussion happens to be just that.

Keeping track of an essays word count is essential in this day and age, considering that universities now employ advanced technology to review essays that they receive, which can easily check the word count of essays. Theres an urban legend that almost all universities consider the word count of an essay as sacred and will cut marks even if it falls short of a single word, or goes over the assigned limit.

So the question that arises in every students mind is how to manage the word count of an essay while actually getting down to writing the essay while avoiding the above situation?

One of the first things to consider regarding this question is to realize what actually amounts towards the word count of an essay by seeking assistance from the faculty or professor designated over the essay.

It is highly likely that the content in the main body of an essay will be more significant towards the overall word count as compared to the title (i.e. heading etc), footnotes, subtitles or subheadings bibliography etc. These will not count towards the word count of the essay because they are not a contextual part of the main body of the essay itself. They are merely support items that provide the essay more credibility and legitimacy by highlighting the sources used and if they are either agreed with or not.

Now sometimes students are told that the footnotes do count towards the word count of an essay, which results in slimming them (by shortening terms or abbreviations etc) wherever possible to save words for the main body of the essay itself as per standards of an academically acceptable system.

Some tips to help you get to an appropriate word count of an essay are:

1.Try to write less than seven lines and/or three sentences. Avoid more than 250 words per paragraph so that you keep your arguments and analysis clear and concise.

2.Point out what you consider to be important, and why so.

3.Provide supporting evidence from other sources and highlight just how exactly it supports your viewpoint.

by: Philip Green

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