• 3-minute read
• 17th July 2014

The Importance of the Word Limit

Academic writing typically requires you to stick to a word limit. It is important to do this for a number of reasons.

The most important factor is that you are likely to be penalised if you exceed the word limit on your essay. Equally, a finished piece of writing which comes in well under the word limit implies that you have not put enough work into the essay, or that you need to do further research.

Typically, you should aim for the finished essay to be within 10% of the word limit either way. However, some universities are very strict about staying within word limits, so you should check this with your school/department before submitting your work.

Another important consideration is not padding your work to meet a word limit. Markers can easily see when someone has used long or repetitive sentences to artificially inflate the word count of an essay, and you will often be penalised for this.

Planning for the Word Limit

Since word limits are important, whether you are working on a short report or an 80,000 word thesis, it is a good idea to work out how many sections you will need to cover the topic adequately. You will then be able to work out the rough length that each paragraph or section should be to meet the word limit.

Remember that the word limit sometimes only applies to the main body of your work. If this is the case, you won’t have to include things like appendices or the reference list in your total word count. This isn’t always the case though, so this is another thing you should check before submitting your work.

Keeping an eye on how much you have written, rather than continuing to write without regard to the word limit, also makes it less likely that you will have to go through your essay and cut words later!

Some Editing Tips to Help Reduce your Word Count

• Simplify your style. Look for long sentences and try to make them more succinct. This will make your work easier to read, as well as reducing your word count.
• Be ruthless! Cut any unnecessary adjectives or adverbs, as well as any repetition that isn’t essential to your argument.
• Replace phrases with words. For instance, there is no need to write ‘provides an opportunity to examine…’ when you could say ‘enables examination of…‘

Having worked hard to perfect your essay, it’s worth giving yourself the best chance of a good result by making sure you stick rigorously to the word limit.