St Philips College

St Philip's College In this article you’ll find some general guidelines for the length of different types of essay. But keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity â€" focus on making a strong argument or analysis, not on hitting a specific word count. In most cases, your assignment will include clear guidelines on the number of words or pages you are expected to write. Often this will be a range rather than an exact number (for example, 2500â€"3000 words, or 10â€"12 pages). If you’re not sure, always check with your instructor. For example, you might describe many natural flora, observe fauna, then list feelings you have about nature to lead up to writing that you want to study biology. What if you were to take the negative approach to answer the prompt? Maybe you can tell what your hopes are by writing what you do not hope for. If you look at things a little differently from others you stand out. In answering an essay prompt, you need not always do it the most normal way. If there are a lot of mistakes in your essay, it can not be pretty. You can make your essay beautiful by giving thought to a few things. These paragraphs are crucial to an effective essay â€"make sure you leave enough space to thoroughly introduce your topic and decisively wrap up your argument. In some cases, you are allowed to exceed the upper word limit by 10% â€" so for an assignment of 2500â€"3000 words, you could write an absolute maximum of 3300 words. However, the rules depend on your course and institution, so always check with your instructor if you’re unsure. Your marker probably won’t care about 50 or 100 words â€" it’s more important that your argument is convincing and adequately developed for an essay of the suggested length. The suggested word count doesn’t only tell you how long your essay should be â€" it also helps you work out how much information and complexity you can fit into the given space. This should guide the development of your thesis statement, which identifies the main topic of your essay and sets the boundaries of your overall argument. Compare your paper with over 60 billion web pages and 30 million publications. In an academic essay, the main body should always take up the most space. This is where you make your arguments, give your evidence, and develop your ideas. Brevity is not necessarily a bad thing in writing just so long as you are clear, cogent, and communicate what you want to. If you have to copy-paste it into a text box, your essay might get cut off and you'll have to trim down anyways. College essay prompts usually provide the word limit right in the prompt or in the instructions. Statement of purpose for graduate school To get into graduate school, you need a strong statement of purpose that builds a picture of your experience, achievements, and motivations. How to conclude an essay A strong conclusion ties together your main points, shows why your argument matters, and opens broader questions. Perhaps you can create a little mystery by not answering the prompt immediately. Maybe you could reveal that in the last sentence of your prompt after telling about all the little things that have some relevance to your area of study. You also want to have an opinion, not step back like an unthinking geek. Write your essay as though you would be a great second date. Tell the reader what you do NOT want to do in your writing. Consider whether or not bold type face could make your essay easier to read. Don’t crowd your essay near the top of the page, but balance it on the page and attend to soothing margins. Separate paragraphs in a consistent way, either by indenting each paragraph or by using block style, keeping all the words to the left margin but spacing extra between paragraphs. If you are on a date, you would naturally want to be smart, funny, nice, caring, unique, not boring. If there really is no word limit, you can call the school to try to get some guidance. If it's a writing sample of your graded academic work, the length either doesn't matter or there should be some loose page guidelines. If you can truly get your point across well beneath the word limit, it's probably fine. Adding unnecessary words or complicated sentences will make your essay weaker and your argument less clear. As you make an outline of your essay, make sure you have a clear idea of how much evidence, detail and argumentation will be needed to support your thesis. If you find that you don’t have enough ideas to fill out the word count, or that you need more space to make a convincing case, then consider revising your thesis to be more general or more specific. A short essay will need a focused, specific topic and a clear, straightforward line of argument. A longer essay should still be focused, but it might call for a broader approach to the topic or a more complex, ambitious argument.