When your professor gives you an academic assignment, it is easy to get stressed about it, especially if you do not have sufficient writing experience. In the academic environment, there are many different types of papers, from simple 5-paragraph essays to sophisticated dissertation projects. The way an academic paper should be written greatly depends on the requirements of the educational institution, the class you are attending, and the professor’s prompt. To get a good grade for your essay, you will need to find the answer to the question: how long is an essay? Also, you will need to pay attention to the most important aspects, including the content, length, structure, format, and many others.
Essay Writing: Essential Information
According to the common definition, an essay is a written piece that aims to present a specific idea, suggest an argument, initiate debate, or express emotions. In academic writing, these papers are assigned very often as they help students put their ideas on paper and demonstrate their thinking skills. This is one of the basic forms of academic writing.
An essay always makes a certain point, and it is one of the most challenging aspects of essay writing. Pay attention that it is not just a simple bunch of words or even a bunch of paragraphs. The whole paper should be dedicated to the single idea that will be discussed in an introduction, main body, and conclusion. An essay is different from other types of written assignments as it always leads to a conclusion. To write a clear and interesting paper, you will need to formulate a thesis that will state the central idea of your paper. This means that the essay should not simply provide the readers with a certain portion of information. You are to make a claim and support it with appropriate evidence. By studying some well-written examples, you will see that they are always engaging and thesis-driven. Such papers usually make their readers involved and demonstrate the authors’ writing and analytical skills.
Essay writing is a rather laborious process that requires much time and effort in the pre-writing, writing, and editing stages. In particular, to create a good-looking paper, you will need to do the following:
- Think about the research problem you want to investigate and pick a good topic.
- Collect interesting ideas and information that will help you develop your arguments.
- Organize your ideas in a logical order in an outline.
- Write the rough draft of your paper.
- Review the draft fixing all the stylistic flaws and logical inconsistencies.
- Proofread the final draft to make sure it is free from typos and other grammatical mistakes.
How Long Should an Essay Be?
As a rule, an academic essay contains three main parts. First, you will need to introduce the topic to your audience. Make sure to present the necessary background information to help them understand your arguments. Next, you will need to craft the main body in which you will provide more details on your topic. Finally, your paper should include a conclusion in which you will summarize everything that was told previously.
Below, you will find some tips that will help you understand this assignment better:
- Every academic text has three main sections: an introduction, the main part (body), and a conclusion.
- The most common essay structure includes five paragraphs (one paragraph of your intro, three paragraphs of the main body, and a conclusion).
- The length of an introduction and a conclusion is smaller than the average essay length of the main body.
- Each paragraph of the main body should be dedicated to a single idea. As a rule, it is presented in the very first sentence of the paragraph.
- One double-spaced page includes approximately 275-300 words.
- A single-spaced page usually includes 550-600 words.
How Many Pages Should an Essay Be?
You should understand that each essay type has its characteristic features. Thus, you need to treat each assignment differently. Besides, each study period requires writing academic essays of different volumes and structures. Let us consider the main ones:
Middle School
Essay writing usually starts at middle schools when students need to learn how to express their ideas in the paper. During this period, students are supposed to write papers having 300-1000 words. Such a paper will have a 5-paragraph model as it will include 5 parts. As you already know, these are an introduction, three paragraphs of the main body, and a conclusion. In the first paragraph, it is necessary to introduce your topic, justify its importance, and express the central idea by formulating a good thesis statement. In the main section, you will need to discuss the topic from three different perspectives. This should be done in separate paragraphs providing appropriate supporting evidence in each of them. Finally, in your conclusion, it is necessary to summarize the discussion.
College
Once you become a college student, you will be asked to write more sophisticated essays demonstrating your analytical proficiency and critical thinking skills. The essay lengths will vary significantly depending on the disciplines and courses. Also, you will see that the essays with different lengths will have a different impact on your overall grade. As such, longer and more complicated papers will have a greater impact on your overall grade than shorter ones. When it comes to writing lengthy college papers, you may be asked to submit them in parts so that the professors could check on your progress.
University
The graduate level is very similar to the undergraduate. In such essays, students will need to demonstrate the skills and competencies they have gained during their studies. Consequently, such papers are usually very long and complicated. The papers assigned in university may range within 1000-6000 words depending on the course taken, as well as the requirements of the professor.
Can I Exceed the Word Limit?
In general, it is allowed to add up to 10% of the overall word count to your text. This means that if your professor has asked you for a 3.000-word paper, you are allowed to write 3300 words. However, this rule is not applied in all educational institutions. Thus you will need to discuss this point with your professor before turning your paper in. Please, note that you should have compelling reasons to go over the word limit. However, if your paper includes repetitive information, you will need to delete it. By doing extra work that is not needed, you will also compromise the outcome of your work. If you have written your paper but it turned out to be longer than it was required, we suggest you do the following:
- Check if every paragraph of your paper is relevant to the central idea. The irrelevant or repetitive ideas should be deleted.
- Check if all paragraphs are closely related to each other.
- Check if one paragraph focuses on a single point.
- Do not cut any meaningful paragraphs. In case you have decided to cut one, make sure to include proper transitions between the ones that were left.
- Do not cut a conclusion and an introduction. These are the shortest parts of your paper. Thus you should not delete them when reviewing your work.
How Long Is an Essay? Can I Submit a Paper That Is Slightly Smaller Than It Is Instructed?
If you manage to investigate the research question under the word limit, it is fine. Brevity is not always a bad thing if you are capable of writing high-quality papers. However, in most cases, you are supposed to follow the word limit as it is one of the main requirements. If your professor has asked you to write a 500-word paper while you have provided only 300 words, this work will not bring you a good grade. Your professor will think that you treated the task carelessly. Thus, if your essay should include 500 words, you will need to stick to this word count.
Always Keep in Mind the Length of the Paragraphs
If you want to succeed in writing an essay, you should know how long is an essay paragraph. Each paragraph has a different purpose; thus they are different in length. To make your essay organized proportionally, you will need to plan the writing process carefully.
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