how to shorten the word article

Free Text Shortener Tool

Summarize any | in a click.

TLDR This helps you summarize any piece of text into concise, easy to digest content so you can free yourself from information overload.

Enter an Article URL or paste your Text

Browser extensions.

Use TLDR This browser extensions to summarize any webpage in a click.

Single platform, endless summaries

Transforming information overload into manageable insights — consistently striving for clarity.

100% Automatic Article Summarization with just a click

In the sheer amount of information that bombards Internet users from all sides, hardly anyone wants to devote their valuable time to reading long texts. TLDR This's clever AI analyzes any piece of text and summarizes it automatically, in a way that makes it easy for you to read, understand and act on.

Article Metadata Extraction

TLDR This, the online article summarizer tool, not only condenses lengthy articles into shorter, digestible content, but it also automatically extracts essential metadata such as author and date information, related images, and the title. Additionally, it estimates the reading time for news articles and blog posts, ensuring you have all the necessary information consolidated in one place for efficient reading.

• Automated author-date extraction
• Related images consolidation
• Instant reading time estimation

Distraction and ad-free reading

As an efficient article summarizer tool, TLDR This meticulously eliminates ads, popups, graphics, and other online distractions, providing you with a clean, uncluttered reading experience. Moreover, it enhances your focus and comprehension by presenting the essential content in a concise and straightforward manner, thus transforming the way you consume information online.

Avoid the Clickbait Trap

TLDR This smartly selects the most relevant points from a text, filtering out weak arguments and baseless speculation. It allows for quick comprehension of the essence, without needing to sift through all paragraphs. By focusing on core substance and disregarding fluff, it enhances efficiency in consuming information, freeing more time for valuable content.

• Filters weak arguments and speculation
• Highlights most relevant points
• Saves time by eliminating fluff

Who is TLDR This for?

TLDR This is a summarizing tool designed for students, writers, teachers, institutions, journalists, and any internet user who needs to quickly understand the essence of lengthy content.

Anyone with access to the Internet

TLDR This is for anyone who just needs to get the gist of a long article. You can read this summary, then go read the original article if you want to.

TLDR This is for students studying for exams, who are overwhelmed by information overload. This tool will help them summarize information into a concise, easy to digest piece of text.

TLDR This is for anyone who writes frequently, and wants to quickly summarize their articles for easier writing and easier reading.

TLDR This is for teachers who want to summarize a long document or chapter for their students.

Institutions

TLDR This is for corporations and institutions who want to condense a piece of content into a summary that is easy to digest for their employees/students.

Journalists

TLDR This is for journalists who need to summarize a long article for their newspaper or magazine.

Featured by the world's best websites

Our platform has been recognized and utilized by top-tier websites across the globe, solidifying our reputation for excellence and reliability in the digital world.

Focus on the Value, Not the Noise.

Sign up for our daily newsletter

• Privacy Policy
• Advertise with Us

9 of the Best Online Summarizer Tools to Shorten Text

We’re all busy people with many things to do and web pages to read. Quite often, you’re reading to gather information rather than for the joy of reading (though don’t forget to do that, too) and want all the details summarized in several sentences. That’s why online summarizer tools exist.

Using these nifty online tools, you can copy-paste text or URLs into a box, set your parameters for just how heavily summarized you want it to be, then click a button to get your summary. This list include our favorite tools for this purpose.

Tip : seeing pixelated fonts on your Windows PC ? Learn how to fix it.

1. Resoomer

2. intellippt, 4. tools4noobs, 5. textsummarization, 6. scholarcy, 7. quillbot, 8. text compactor, 9. tldr this, frequently asked questions.

Price : Free

Resoomer is an online tool that lets you upload or paste text into a text box. Once you press the red button, the program will automatically summarize your text. It’s not your only option, though. You can opt for “Manual” mode, where you can select how large you want your abstract to be. There’s no character limit, so your text can be as large as it needs to be. Just keep in mind that in such cases, the summary may suffer from a loss of details, some of which could be essential to understanding the paper or plot. Once a summary has been generated, you can easily save it as a PDF or document on your device.

• Offers text optimization for summaries through the use of keywords
• Can highlight relevant sentences
• Shows the percentage of text that was reduced in the summary
• Also available as a Chrome/Firefox extension, so you can easily summarize online articles
• Can’t opt to have a set number of phrases in your summary

Price : Free / $5

One of the more recent summarizer tools out there, IntelliPPT lets you upload PDFs and Word documents as well as copy and paste text into a box, then summarizes it for you in seconds. While the tool works quickly, the resulting text doesn’t always flow in a rational sequence. This is probably due to some key details being left out in the brief overview. IntelliPPT performs better if you’re trying to summarize a scientific paper rather than a fiction book extract. You may be able to fix this by setting a larger percentage for the summary size.

• Harnesses the power of AI to simplify our text
• Organizes text in short paragraphs that are easier to read
• Free version only allows copy-paste up to 3000 characters or uploading files up to 1MB

Price: Free

With its darker fuchsia tones, Smmry has the branding style of a naughty site from the late 90s, but don’t be fooled, as it’s a great text summarization tool. Smmry lets you paste URLs or enter text directly. You can also upload files from your hard drive if that’s easier. In our experience, Smmry did a better job retaining the text’s logical flow for both our fiction and non-fiction samples. It doesn’t appear that Smmry has a set character limit, so you can summarize larger pieces of text using this tool.

• Includes a “Heat Map” that color-codes sentences by their importance as well as options to skip over questions, exclamations, and quotations.
• Shows the percentage of text that has been reduced in the summary
• Can set the number of sentences for your summary
• Sometimes headers are retained in the summary and incorrectly merged with sentences

Tip : it’s easy to insert a PDF into a Word document . We show you how.

If you want something a little more hands-on for your article summaries, then you can give Tools4noobs a try. You can input text directly or by pasting a URL, but it also has quite a few more intricate options that let you specify the kind of summary you’re after. With this tool, we got mixed results using a fiction sample. The summary seems to feature sentences from the text in no particular order. (For example, the introductory sentence was listed at number 8 in the overview.) Results for the slightly shorter non-fiction sample were much better. The text featured an orderly progression of ideas.

• Displays summary in a numbered list
• Can trim summaries based on “relevant” words
• Highlights sentences based on relevance and keywords
• Can enlarge common words in the article
• Doesn’t limit word count
• Outdated interface

TextSummarization keeps things simple for anyone to use. It lets you copy-paste the URL of an online article into it and will scan the page and convert the article into as many sentences as you choose. You can also copy and paste your text into its large text box. While TextSummarization doesn’t have a character limit, it’s its summary-creating capabilities are pretty basic. It will convert large text sample into just a few short sentences, so the essence of the content could get lost. You can try and increase the number of sentences in your overview if you need to summarize a larger text, but overall, TextSummarization works best for shorter-form text.

• Extremely simple tool
• Creates super-easy-to-read-and-understand summaries
• Quite basic, with no extra features

Price : Free / $9.55

Scholarcy is a unique text summarizing tool best used to create article summaries. You can either use a link to a particular piece, copy/paste your text or upload it from your device. Uniquely, it creates content overviews using a flashcard-like format. Information is neatly organized under various sections, which can be accessed with a click.

• Modern interface
• Information is summarized in a concise and easy-to-access fashion
• Requires signing up with an account to get three free summaries
• Exporting function only available with a subscription

Good to Know : do you sometimes need to add text in a box in Google Docs ? Learn how.

Price : Free / $19.95 per month

QuillBot is a service that offers several services, including summarizing. You can either upload a document from your device, paste into your text to start the process. Opt to display your summary using key sentences or as a giant paragraph. Unfortunately, the character limit in the free version of QuillBot is only 600, so you won’t be able to create summaries for larger articles or book extracts. Even so, this tool works great if you want a quick summary of shorter text. It even has a “Paraphrase summary” option.

• AI-imbued tool
• Lets you adjust the summary length in real time
• Exports to .DOCX
• Doesn’t support article links
• Is limited in scope due to its character limit

Text Compactor is one of the most basic options on our list. Nevertheless, it’s worth mentioning due to its simplicity. Fancy features aside, it does what it’s supposed to do. Your only option here is to copy-paste the text, then set your desired summary length using the slider. The text will immediately appear underneath. Surprisingly, this simple little tool created quite an accurate summary for our larger fiction sample. The logic of the original text wasn’t lost in the abstract.

• No character limit
• Super simple to use
• No extra features, such as exporting or uploading files

Tip : want to gather all your news sources, blogs, and websites in one place? Check out the best RSS readers for Windows .

Price : Free / $4 per month

TLDR This is an easy-to-use summarizer tool that lets you add links or paste in text. It can create summaries using short or detailed summaries – both options are free. You can opt to have your abstract created using short sentences or a single paragraph summarizing the most important aspects of your text. The results proved to be quite satisfactory, with the summaries retaining most of the key ideas.

• Aesthetic interface
• Can display keywords
• Has an AI-powered option called “AI (human-like) summary”
• Requires signing up with an account to unlock certain features
• History option is only available in premium version

Good to Know : reading on your PC or mobile can be a great experience with one of these awesome eBook readers .

What's the difference between summarizing and paraphrasing?

A summary is a synthesis of the key ideas of a piece of writing. The tools covered in this article create summaries based on the original text without modifying it. They identify and cherry-pick the key sentences, then work to create a logical narrative solely based on them. The end result is a short overview of the original text. When it comes to paraphrasing, it’s a restatement of another piece of writing with new words or phrases while keeping the same meaning. If you’re looking for a good online paraphrasing tool , check out our dedicated article which details the best of them.

Do summaries count as plagiarism?

If you’ve created a summary using one of the tools described in this article and are planning on posting it somewhere, then the answer might be “Yes.” To prevent an unpleasant situation, make sure you credit the book or the article the summary is derived from. On the other hand, it’s possible to create a summary of text using your own words – and this does not count as plagiarism. Note that the sites we talked about in this article are only meant to quickly help you understand what a text is about and not to paraphrase the text.

Are all online summrizer tools AI-powered?

Some of them are – but not all of them. These AI tools use machine learning to extract keywords, phrases, sentences, or paragraphs according to different criteria.

Image credit: Unsplash . All screenshots by Alexandra Arici .

Our latest tutorials delivered straight to your inbox

Alexandra is passionate about mobile tech and can be often found fiddling with a smartphone from some obscure company. She kick-started her career in tech journalism in 2013, after working a few years as a middle-school teacher. Constantly driven by curiosity, Alexandra likes to know how things work and to share that knowledge with everyone.

Text Compactor

Free online automatic text summarization tool.

Follow these simple steps to create a summary of your text.

Click the Summarize! button.

Read your summarized text. If you would like a different summary, repeat Step 2. When you are happy with the summary, copy and paste the text into a word processor, or text to speech program , or language translation tool

© 2010-2016 Knowledge by Design, Inc.

• Sign In Sign Up
• / Text Summarizer

Shorten Articles, Papers, or Documents in a Click

Get quick summaries and key insights from any piece of text with our AI-powered text summarizer.

Save Valuable Time on Consuming Lengthy Content

Reading through full articles when you're short on time is daunting, but with Text Summarizer, you can easily skim through articles and get the most important information in a fraction of the time. Simply enter the article's URL or paste the text into the Text Summarizer, and you'll get a concise summary you can read in minutes.

Text Summarizer Key Features:

Condense articles, papers, or documents, instantly.

Maintain context while highlighting relevant points.

Extract valuable insights without the fluff.

AI-powered summaries for reliable results.

Get Accurate and Efficient Summaries

With Simplified Text Summarizer, you can rest assured that only the most vital information will be extracted, so you don't have to worry about fluff and unnecessary content. AI-powered technology helps ensure you get an accurate summary of a long article or research paper without spending lengthy amounts of time reading the entire thing.

Master Content Creation with Text Summarizer

With Text Summarizer, you can easily condense articles or long blog posts into shorter, more concise summaries that are perfect for sharing on social media and email newsletters. This is a great way to provide consistent high-value content to your audience in a fraction it would take to write from scratch.

Do More, Learn More With Simplified

Simplified blog is a great place to learn from the best in Instagram marketing. Whether you want to bulk up on social media knowledge or get your first followers.

How To expand a Sentence Effortlessly [+Examples, Tips & Free tool]

Free AI Copywriting Tool for All Your Content

How To Write a Blog Post Using the AI Writer

Simplified's AI Sentence Rewriter: How To to Reword and Paraphrase Effortlessly

Frequently Asked Questions

Can text summarizer handle different document formats, is there a word limit for documents i can summarize, can i trust the accuracy of the summarized information, how long does it take to generate a summary, can i customize the level of summarization, what is your refund policy, the best way to summarize long text quickly and accurately.

Simplified's Text Summarizer is fast, reliable, and easy to use.

What our 10 million+ users are saying about Simplified

Aggregate review rating.

4.9/5 Stars

Date - Aug 12, 2023

Work buddy, life savior

All writing tools -- article, blogs, summarizer, rewriter

4.5/5  Stars

Date - Jul 20, 2023

Amazing generator

I struggle with summarizing the stories I write, and this really helps me put in the basic information, and make the summary interesting enough for someone to want to read.

Date - May 17, 2023

Fantastic resource and easy to use

Simplified allowed me to quickly produce a draft based on key points and saved me so much time writing and researching. I was able to use the ai to draft a summary of a topic I was interested in.

Date - Mar 13, 2022

A good writer, however it still needs imrovements

The summary and title generator are really good. The quote designer is also helpful however lacks variety.

Date - Oct 21, 2023

Amazing! I use it for everything and it has been a lifesaver

It has helped me find summary notes on topics instead of looking everwhere for it

Date - Mar 15, 2024

Simplified has been a lifesaver for me. It has helped me to create ideas and brainstorm new Concepts when I'm having a major writer's block. Very very grateful for it! And highly recommend

• Features for Creative Writers
• Features for Work
• Features for Higher Education
• Features for Teachers
• Features for Non-Native Speakers
• Learn Blog Grammar Guide Community Events FAQ
• Grammar Guide

Free Sentence Shortener

Trim excess words, and sharpen your message. Try our sentence shortener tool, Rephrase, to create concise and impactful writing in seconds.

Start typing or use

Keep Rephrasing

Get unlimited rephrases on a paid plan or 10 a day for free.

or select a sentence to rephrase

Share every sentence with confidence

Join over 3 million people improving their writing

I’ve tried every free and paid writing/editing/grammar extension out there, and this by far is the best one my team and I have found. It’s fast, accurate, and really helps improve your writing beyond simple grammar suggestions.

Joel Widmer

ProWritingAid has a Rephrase feature now—I just tried it today, and it helps so much! Like a magic✨ editor!

Julianne Munich

I just used rephrasing! It’s awesome! Especially the sensory suggestions. It helps with writer’s block for me. I can’t believe how PWA keeps getting better and better!

Alexandria Yandt

Shorten sentences in just a few clicks

Make your writing concise.

Condense your message and improve clarity using our sentence shortener tool. Choose from multiple options to rephrase any sentence.

Discover different rephrasing options

Decide whether to make your text shorter or longer, more formal or informal, or even add sensory details. Customize your message to suit your readers.

Works wherever you do

Rewrite and shorten sentences across all the apps you use, whether they’re on desktop or online.

Sentence Shortener FAQs

What is prowritingaid.

ProWritingAid is an AI-powered tool that enhances your writing abilities. The tool improves your writing for clarity, style, and impact by correcting grammatical errors and suggesting alternative ways to write sentences.

Find out more about all our features here .

Can ProWritingAid write content for me?

ProWritingAid doesn't write content for you. Instead, the tool helps you express your ideas better by offering alternative ways to write your sentences.

Is ProWritingAid free?

With a free account, you can use Rephrase to shorten sentences up to ten times a day. ProWritingAid will also fix grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors on up to 500 words. To remove these limits, you can upgrade to a paid plan .

Does ProWritingAid work everywhere online?

ProWritingAid can be used on almost all websites and online apps by installing our browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge).

Try our sentence shortener today

Drop us a line or let's stay in touch via :

• Paragraph Shortener

Can exceeding the required word count be dangerous? Unfortunately, yes. Your academic paper can get rejected from a conference, and your essay's grade may suffer if the text's length goes beyond the limit. Even a blog post can be ineffective when your idea gets lost among thousands of words. But how can you shorten your text without losing its coherence and integrity? How do you dissect each piece of your work without spending the whole evening on this task? That's where our paragraph shortener comes to the rescue!

The size of your summary is: % ( words, characters)

To remove the excess text and hit the word limit can be pretty challenging, especially when you have already shortened the paragraphs as much as possible. Besides, as an author, you may consider every written phase as incredibly important. That's why our shorten paragraph tool will be helpful for you! It will provide you with an outside perspective and cut the text quickly and efficiently. Read the article below to learn more about the information that shouldn't be changed or removed from the paragraph neither by you or our tool.

⭐️ Paragraph & Essay Shortener: the Benefits

✂️ how to shorten a paragraph, 📑 how to shorten my essay.

• 🔍 References

In actuality, you can shorten any paragraph manually without using an online tool. This process can be longer and more complicated if you have too much to say. Yet, it is achievable.

With our tips in this section, you will learn how to shorten a paragraph while writing it.

Numerous students are scared of dividing their text into smaller parts while writing. They are afraid that paragraphs of 3-4 sentences will be considered unprofessional by the instructors. However, to make your text more readable, you have to hit “Enter” regularly. Aim to express one single idea in one paragraph with one valid piece of evidence to support it.

Break down several points in a bulleted list if your paper format allows it. This method helps you shorten the paragraph by removing all the transition phrases. Besides, it makes you formulate your arguments and ideas as clearly and concisely as you can.

Cutting sentences and phrases is a great way to improve your text’s clarity and flow. To reduce the “wordiness,” eliminate the filler words and vague statements. These might sound good, but they do not bring anything to the content.

Implementing abbreviations is another excellent way to save space and avoid distracting the reader. Remember that you can use one when the corresponding term is stated more than once in a paragraph. The first mention should be written entirely and indicate an acronym in parenthesis.

A dangling modifier can be challenging to identify at times. For that, read each sentence carefully and locate introductory phrases that come before the main clause. If you found one, consider what noun it must be modifying. If there is none, fix this mistake by inserting a new subject of the sentence.

Passive voice can be too vague and unnecessary. Besides, in many cases, it also sounds wordy and indirect. Therefore, you try to avoid it, using active voice whenever you can.

You probably know the five-paragraph structure if you are writing an essay. According to this standard organization, an academic paper should contain several sections, each serving its own function. Every part should have sentences that shouldn’t be removed or even shortened. Below, we have explored them in detail.

Introduction Paragraph

You cannot shorten most of this paragraph because it briefly introduces the topic you’re examining. It also explains what question you will answer further in the essay. This paragraph is the first one that the reader sees, so it makes sense to focus some effort on writing it well.

• A hook is the first statement of the paragraph that should grab the reader’s attention. In an essay, it can be a fact, quote, declaration, an interesting question, or a short story. Upon seeing it, people become curious to read more; thus, you can’t avoid it when writing a paper.
• Essential context also should be included in the introduction. It informs the audience about the historical background, the topic scope, and essay definitions. Mention things that will help your audience to understand the problems you are trying to discuss in the paper.
• A thesis statement contains its key point of the paper and is located at the end of the paragraph. It states your position and the core message of the essay. Besides, it explains what the reader will encounter in the body below. So, this sentence can be shortened but never cut entirely. Our thesis generator will help you formulate one.

Body Paragraph

A body paragraph is any section in the middle of the paper. Generally, there are three of them in an academic essay. Each of these paragraphs should explore one respective argument and logically relate to one another.

• A topic sentence tells the idea that the writer will discuss in the paragraph. You can shorten it a bit. Yet, make sure that it sounds clear and conveys the intended message.
• Supporting evidence is the next step in writing your essay. It can be the facts, the data, and quotations from trustworthy nonfiction sources. List one piece of proof to support one argument you’re discussing, shortening it to your liking.
• A concluding sentence serves as a wrap-up of the paragraph. The main goal is to reinstate the main idea of the section. Your goal here is to make it concise yet detailed enough to leave an impression of completeness.

It is more than simply a long sentence at the end of the five-paragraph essay. A reasonable conclusion has to have several things:

• A developed thesis statement should come first in a concluding paragraph. Circle back to the beginning of your paper. See if you have resolved any contradictions and restate the thesis from the introduction accordingly. This sentence, evidently, can’t be cut from an essay but can be shortened to just a few words.
• A summary of your research should be presented next. Here you provide all the essential points from the body paragraphs in a single sentence. Make sure it lacks filler information like examples or your speculations.
• A concluding sentence is the last sentence in an essay. It ties together all the things mentioned in your paper. Your aim here is to leave a lasting impression on your reader, so paraphrase it until it sounds just right.

Thank you for reading the article! We hope you found it useful for your studies. If so, consider sharing it and our paragraph shortener with others.

• Essay Summarizing Tool
• Conclusion Generator
• Article Summarizer
• Story Summarizer
• Passage Summarizer
• Research Paper Summarizer
• Document Summarization Tool
• Case Study Summary Tool
• Poem Summary Generator
• Note Summarizer
• Page Summarizer
• Journal Summary Generator
• Information Summarizer

🔗 References

• Cut It Down: Readers Skip Long Paragraphs – Ann Wylie, Public Relations Society of America
• Essay Structure – Elizabeth Abrams, Writing Center at Harvard University
• 10 Tips for Cutting Your Word Count – The University of Adelaide
• Organization of a Traditional Academic Paper – Writing Services, University of North Carolina Wilmington

Free Essay Shortener for Students

Looking for a tool to shorten an essay or research paper without throwing the arguments out? Try our essay shortener!

This free online instrument will reduce word count in seconds.

Have you written an essay that is way past the number of words recommended by the professor? Need help summarizing it without losing the context of your content? Try our free essay shortener tool!

• 🛠️ How Does This Tool Work?

🤔 Do I Need to Shorten My Essay?

• ✂️ 7 Ways to Shorten an Essay

🔗 References

🛠️ how does this essay shortener work.

Summarize your research paper or article using these easy steps:

• Open the document or website you would like to summarize.
• Highlight and copy the entire text you would like to process (it shouldn't exceed 15,000 characters).
• Paste the copied text into the blank field of our essay shortener.
• Specify the desired number of sentences in your final text.
• Click the "Shorten" button and enjoy the results.

Typically, an essay is shorter than a research paper , or thesis and may vary in length depending on several parameters, such as the level and subject of study, course requirements, and departmental guidelines.

Usually, your assigned essay will have clear guidelines on the required number of words or pages. The most common range is 10 to 12 pages or 2,500 to 3,000 words .

If you have exceeded your assignment's requirements, our free essay shortener is here to rescue you.

Essay Word Count Guidelines

✂️ 7 ways how to shorten an essay effectively.

You have worked hard on your assignment and spent countless hours researching, formatting the paper properly, and building your argument . Now that you are ready to submit your essay, you realize that you have exceeded your word count by a huge margin and are struggling to shorten it without losing your essay's credibility or key debating points.

Otherwise, the article may be too short, and you're running out of time to bring it to the expected word count. Our "shorten essay" tool is here to sort that headache out for you. If you want to perform the task by yourself, we’ve prepared a guideline for you.

Check for Redundancies in Your Essay

Scan your essay for any repeated points or phrases and delete them. For example, if your essay focuses on the ways to solve the issue of global warming and mentions planting trees for oxygen purification twice, you should remove one point. If you emphasize the same point in several different phrases, choose the one expressed more clearly and delete the other.

Delete Unnecessary Information

Check for any details that do not support the argument and eliminate them. For example, if you are writing about the achievements of Martin Luther King , then you don't need to write his childhood history in detail. Redundant and irrelevant details can load your essay with too many extra words.

Eliminate Unnecessary Articles

There are some elements of spoken grammar that translate poorly into written language. They make your article appear wordy and cumbersome. Using articles of speech such as "the" or "that" multiple times in a sentence becomes unnecessarily lengthy and makes your work hard to comprehend.

For instance:

"It is recorded in history books that Dr. King was active in the 1950s and the 1960s."

can be shortened to:

"Dr. King was active in the 1950s and 1960s."

Get to the Point

Be as precise as possible as you are building your argument. Getting to the point brings clarity to your argument by avoiding unnecessary deviations and reducing the wordiness of your essay.

Use an Active Voice in Your Essay

Articles that use an active voice tend to use fewer words than those with a passive voice approach. Writing your essay in an active voice also communicates your argument more effectively.

Look at the difference:

Active voice : John Snow conquered the Empire in 1510 AD. Passive voice : The Empire was brought down by John Snow in the year 1510 AD.

Remove Unnecessary Prepositions

Prepositional phrases make your essay wordier and may even reduce the quality of your argument.

Look at the difference between these two phrases:

"For most people, the reality of moving into a new city is a cause for a host of anxieties." "Moving to a new city makes most people anxious."

Avoid Redundant Adjectives and Adverbs

Adjectives and adverbs sound convincing in spoken debates but may water down your arguments in written format.

Let's look at the difference between a sentence with adverbs and adjectives and one without.

"Bill Clinton's entire presidency was absolutely scandalous and majorly controversial." "Bill Clinton's presidency was controversial."

Undoubtedly, the second sentence makes a stronger argument since it goes directly to the point. Our online generator tool can help you create such statements.

Thank you for reading this article!

Now you have learned the standard word count for various assignments and understand how to reduce word count on your paper. Still, you probably need more time to edit your paper down to the required word count. Use our online essay shortener tool to polish your paper in a few minutes.

Check the other writing tools we’ve prepared: paragraph changer and heading generator .

❓ Essay Shortener FAQ

❓ what is the minimum word count for a college essay.

College essays vary in length and topics depending on the study area and the professor's requirements for the assignment. However, the word count is often specified in the assignment description.

❓ How to Shorten an Essay?

There are several ways to shorten an essay, but the most effective way is using our online summarizer, which condenses the word count in minutes.

❓ Is There an App to Decrease Word Count?

You can use our free online essay shortener tool to reduce the word count on your essay. The tool can also be used as a rewriter to assist with phrases you are unsure of.

❓ How Long Is a Short Essay?

Essay length is determined by the nature and purpose of the essay, as well as the word count requested by your professor.

• Word Count | IOE Writing Centre - University College London
• How to reduce word count without reducing content
• Summarizing - Academic Integrity at MIT
• Guidelines for Writing a Summary - Hunter College - CUNY
• How to Shorten Your College Essay Without Ruining It! - Patch

Frequently asked questions

How can i shorten my college essay.

If your college essay goes over the word count limit , cut any sentences with tangents or irrelevant details. Delete unnecessary words that clutter your essay.

You can speed up this process by shortening and smoothing your writing with a paraphrasing tool . After that, you can use the summarizer to shorten it even more.

Frequently asked questions: College admissions essays

When writing your Common App essay , choose a prompt that sparks your interest and that you can connect to a unique personal story.

No matter which prompt you choose, admissions officers are more interested in your ability to demonstrate personal development , insight, or motivation for a certain area of study.

The Common App essay is your primary writing sample within the Common Application, a college application portal accepted by more than 900 schools. All your prospective schools that accept the Common App will read this essay to understand your character, background, and value as a potential student.

Since this essay is read by many colleges, avoid mentioning any college names or programs; instead, save tailored answers for the supplementary school-specific essays within the Common App.

Most importantly, your essay should be about you , not another person or thing. An insightful college admissions essay requires deep self-reflection, authenticity, and a balance between confidence and vulnerability.

Your essay shouldn’t be a résumé of your experiences but instead should tell a story that demonstrates your most important values and qualities.

When revising your college essay , first check for big-picture issues regarding your message and content. Then, check for flow, tone, style , and clarity. Finally, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors .

If you’re struggling to reach the word count for your college essay, add vivid personal stories or share your feelings and insight to give your essay more depth and authenticity.

If you’ve got to write your college essay fast , don’t panic. First, set yourself deadlines: you should spend about 10% of your remaining time on brainstorming, 10% on outlining, 40% writing, 30% revising, and 10% taking breaks in between stages.

Second, brainstorm stories and values based on your essay prompt.

Third, outline your essay based on the montage or narrative essay structure .

Fourth, write specific, personal, and unique stories that would be hard for other students to replicate.

Fifth, revise your essay and make sure it’s clearly written.

Last, if possible, get feedback from an essay coach . Scribbr essay editors can help you revise your essay in 12 hours or less.

Avoid swearing in a college essay , since admissions officers’ opinions of profanity will vary. In some cases, it might be okay to use a vulgar word, such as in dialogue or quotes that make an important point in your essay. However, it’s safest to try to make the same point without swearing.

If you have bad grades on your transcript, you may want to use your college admissions essay to explain the challenging circumstances that led to them. Make sure to avoid dwelling on the negative aspects and highlight how you overcame the situation or learned an important lesson.

However, some college applications offer an additional information section where you can explain your bad grades, allowing you to choose another meaningful topic for your college essay.

Here’s a brief list of college essay topics that may be considered cliché:

• Extracurriculars, especially sports
• Role models
• Dealing with a personal tragedy or death in the family
• Struggling with new life situations (immigrant stories, moving homes, parents’ divorce)
• Becoming a better person after community service, traveling, or summer camp
• Overcoming a difficult class
• Using a common object as an extended metaphor

It’s easier to write a standout essay with a unique topic. However, it’s possible to make a common topic compelling with interesting story arcs, uncommon connections, and an advanced writing style.

Yes. The college application essay is less formal than other academic writing —though of course it’s not mandatory to use contractions in your essay.

In a college essay , you can be creative with your language . When writing about the past, you can use the present tense to make the reader feel as if they were there in the moment with you. But make sure to maintain consistency and when in doubt, default to the correct verb tense according to the time you’re writing about.

The college admissions essay gives admissions officers a different perspective on you beyond your academic achievements, test scores, and extracurriculars. It’s your chance to stand out from other applicants with similar academic profiles by telling a unique, personal, and specific story.

Use a standard font such as Times New Roman or Arial to avoid distracting the reader from your college essay’s content.

A college application essay is less formal than most academic writing . Instead of citing sources formally with in-text citations and a reference list, you can cite them informally in your text.

For example, “In her research paper on genetics, Quinn Roberts explores …”

There is no set number of paragraphs in a college admissions essay . College admissions essays can diverge from the traditional five-paragraph essay structure that you learned in English class. Just make sure to stay under the specified word count .

Most topics are acceptable for college essays if you can use them to demonstrate personal growth or a lesson learned. However, there are a few difficult topics for college essays that should be avoided. Avoid topics that are:

• Overly personal (e.g. graphic details of illness or injury, romantic or sexual relationships)
• Not personal enough (e.g. broad solutions to world problems, inspiring people or things)
• Too negative (e.g. an in-depth look at your flaws, put-downs of others, criticizing the need for a college essay)
• Too boring (e.g. a resume of your academic achievements and extracurriculars)
• Inappropriate for a college essay (e.g. illegal activities, offensive humor, false accounts of yourself, bragging about privilege)

To write an effective diversity essay , include vulnerable, authentic stories about your unique identity, background, or perspective. Provide insight into how your lived experience has influenced your outlook, activities, and goals. If relevant, you should also mention how your background has led you to apply for this university and why you’re a good fit.

Many universities believe a student body composed of different perspectives, beliefs, identities, and backgrounds will enhance the campus learning and community experience.

Admissions officers are interested in hearing about how your unique background, identity, beliefs, culture, or characteristics will enrich the campus community, which is why they assign a diversity essay .

In addition to your main college essay , some schools and scholarships may ask for a supplementary essay focused on an aspect of your identity or background. This is sometimes called a diversity essay .

You can use humor in a college essay , but carefully consider its purpose and use it wisely. An effective use of humor involves unexpected, keen observations of the everyday, or speaks to a deeper theme. Humor shouldn’t be the main focus of the essay, but rather a tool to improve your storytelling.

Get a second opinion from a teacher, counselor, or essay coach on whether your essay’s humor is appropriate.

Though admissions officers are interested in hearing your story, they’re also interested in how you tell it. An exceptionally written essay will differentiate you from other applicants, meaning that admissions officers will spend more time reading it.

You can use literary devices to catch your reader’s attention and enrich your storytelling; however, focus on using just a few devices well, rather than trying to use as many as possible.

To decide on a good college essay topic , spend time thoughtfully answering brainstorming questions. If you still have trouble identifying topics, try the following two strategies:

• Identify your qualities → Brainstorm stories that demonstrate these qualities
• Identify memorable stories → Connect your qualities to these stories

You can also ask family, friends, or mentors to help you brainstorm topics, give feedback on your potential essay topics, or recall key stories that showcase your qualities.

Yes—admissions officers don’t expect everyone to have a totally unique college essay topic . But you must differentiate your essay from others by having a surprising story arc, an interesting insight, and/or an advanced writing style .

There are no foolproof college essay topics —whatever your topic, the key is to write about it effectively. However, a good topic

• Is meaningful, specific, and personal to you
• Focuses on you and your experiences
• Reveals something beyond your test scores, grades, and extracurriculars
• Is creative and original

Unlike a five-paragraph essay, your admissions essay should not end by summarizing the points you’ve already made. It’s better to be creative and aim for a strong final impression.

You should also avoid stating the obvious (for example, saying that you hope to be accepted).

There are a few strategies you can use for a memorable ending to your college essay :

• Return to the beginning with a “full circle” structure
• Reveal the main point or insight in your story
• Look to the future
• End on an action

The best technique will depend on your topic choice, essay outline, and writing style. You can write several endings using different techniques to see which works best.

College deadlines vary depending on the schools you’re applying to and your application plan:

• For early action applications and the first round of early decision applications, the deadline is on November 1 or 15. Decisions are released by mid-December.
• For the second round of early decision applications, the deadline is January 1 or 15. Decisions are released in January or February.
• Regular decision deadlines usually fall between late November and mid-March, and decisions are released in March or April.
• Rolling admission deadlines run from July to April, and decisions are released around four to eight weeks after submission.

Depending on your prospective schools’ requirements, you may need to submit scores for the SAT or ACT as part of your college application .

Some schools now no longer require students to submit test scores; however, you should still take the SAT or ACT and aim to get a high score to strengthen your application package.

Aim to take the SAT or ACT in the spring of your junior year to give yourself enough time to retake it in the fall of your senior year if necessary.

Apply early for federal student aid and application fee waivers. You can also look for scholarships from schools, corporations, and charitable foundations.

To maximize your options, you should aim to apply to about eight schools:

• Two reach schools that might be difficult to get into
• Four match schools that you have a good chance of getting into
• Two safety schools that you feel confident you’ll get into

The college admissions essay accounts for roughly 25% of the weight of your application .

At highly selective schools, there are four qualified candidates for every spot. While your academic achievements are important, your college admissions essay can help you stand out from other applicants with similar profiles.

In general, for your college application you will need to submit all of the following:

• Your personal information
• List of extracurriculars and awards
• College application essays
• Transcripts
• Standardized test scores
• Recommendation letters.

Different colleges may have specific requirements, so make sure you check exactly what’s expected in the application guidance.

You should start thinking about your college applications the summer before your junior year to give you sufficient time for college visits, taking standardized tests, applying for financial aid , writing essays, and collecting application material.

Yes, but make sure your essay directly addresses the prompt, respects the word count , and demonstrates the organization’s values.

If you plan ahead, you can save time by writing one scholarship essay for multiple prompts with similar questions. In a scholarship tracker spreadsheet, you can group or color-code overlapping essay prompts; then, write a single essay for multiple scholarships. Sometimes, you can even reuse or adapt your main college essay .

You can start applying for scholarships as early as your junior year. Continue applying throughout your senior year.

Invest time in applying for various scholarships , especially local ones with small dollar amounts, which are likely easier to win and more reflective of your background and interests. It will be easier for you to write an authentic and compelling essay if the scholarship topic is meaningful to you.

You can find scholarships through your school counselor, community network, or an internet search.

A scholarship essay requires you to demonstrate your values and qualities while answering the prompt’s specific question.

After researching the scholarship organization, identify a personal experience that embodies its values and exemplifies how you will be a successful student.

A standout college essay has several key ingredients:

• A unique, personally meaningful topic
• A memorable introduction with vivid imagery or an intriguing hook
• Specific stories and language that show instead of telling
• Vulnerability that’s authentic but not aimed at soliciting sympathy
• Clear writing in an appropriate style and tone
• A conclusion that offers deep insight or a creative ending

While timelines will differ depending on the student, plan on spending at least 1–3 weeks brainstorming and writing the first draft of your college admissions essay , and at least 2–4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Don’t forget to save enough time for breaks between each writing and editing stage.

You should already begin thinking about your essay the summer before your senior year so that you have plenty of time to try out different topics and get feedback on what works.

Your college essay accounts for about 25% of your application’s weight. It may be the deciding factor in whether you’re accepted, especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurricular track records.

In most cases, quoting other people isn’t a good way to start your college essay . Admissions officers want to hear your thoughts about yourself, and quotes often don’t achieve that. Unless a quote truly adds something important to your essay that it otherwise wouldn’t have, you probably shouldn’t include it.

Cliché openers in a college essay introduction are usually general and applicable to many students and situations. Most successful introductions are specific: they only work for the unique essay that follows.

The key to a strong college essay introduction is not to give too much away. Try to start with a surprising statement or image that raises questions and compels the reader to find out more.

The introduction of your college essay is the first thing admissions officers will read and therefore your most important opportunity to stand out. An excellent introduction will keep admissions officers reading, allowing you to tell them what you want them to know.

If you’re struggling to reach the word count for your college essay, add vivid personal stories or share your feelings and insight to give your essay more depth and authenticity.

Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit to write a developed and thoughtful essay.

You should aim to stay under the specified word count limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely. However, don’t write too little, as it may seem like you are unwilling or unable to write a detailed and insightful narrative about yourself.

If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words.

In your application essay , admissions officers are looking for particular features : they want to see context on your background, positive traits that you could bring to campus, and examples of you demonstrating those qualities.

Colleges want to be able to differentiate students who seem similar on paper. In the college application essay , they’re looking for a way to understand each applicant’s unique personality and experiences.

You don’t need a title for your college admissions essay , but you can include one if you think it adds something important.

Your college essay’s format should be as simple as possible:

• Use a standard, readable font
• Use 1.5 or double spacing
• If attaching a file, save it as a PDF
• Stick to the word count
• Avoid unusual formatting and unnecessary decorative touches

There are no set rules for how to structure a college application essay , but these are two common structures that work:

• A montage structure, a series of vignettes with a common theme.
• A narrative structure, a single story that shows your personal growth or how you overcame a challenge.

Avoid the five-paragraph essay structure that you learned in high school.

Campus visits are always helpful, but if you can’t make it in person, the college website will have plenty of information for you to explore. You should look through the course catalog and even reach out to current faculty with any questions about the school.

Colleges set a “Why this college?” essay because they want to see that you’ve done your research. You must prove that you know what makes the school unique and can connect that to your own personal goals and academic interests.

Depending on your writing, you may go through several rounds of revision . Make sure to put aside your essay for a little while after each editing stage to return with a fresh perspective.

Teachers and guidance counselors can help you check your language, tone, and content . Ask for their help at least one to two months before the submission deadline, as many other students will also want their help.

Friends and family are a good resource to check for authenticity. It’s best to seek help from family members with a strong writing or English educational background, or from older siblings and cousins who have been through the college admissions process.

If possible, get help from an essay coach or editor ; they’ll have specialized knowledge of college admissions essays and be able to give objective expert feedback.

When revising your college essay , first check for big-picture issues regarding message, flow, tone, style , and clarity. Then, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors.

Include specific, personal details and use your authentic voice to shed a new perspective on a common human experience.

Through specific stories, you can weave your achievements and qualities into your essay so that it doesn’t seem like you’re bragging from a resume.

When writing about yourself , including difficult experiences or failures can be a great way to show vulnerability and authenticity, but be careful not to overshare, and focus on showing how you matured from the experience.

First, spend time reflecting on your core values and character . You can start with these questions:

• What are three words your friends or family would use to describe you, and why would they choose them?
• Whom do you admire most and why?
• What are you most proud of? Ashamed of?

However, you should do a comprehensive brainstorming session to fully understand your values. Also consider how your values and goals match your prospective university’s program and culture. Then, brainstorm stories that illustrate the fit between the two.

In a college application essay , you can occasionally bend grammatical rules if doing so adds value to the storytelling process and the essay maintains clarity.

However, use standard language rules if your stylistic choices would otherwise distract the reader from your overall narrative or could be easily interpreted as unintentional errors.

Write concisely and use the active voice to maintain a quick pace throughout your essay and make sure it’s the right length . Avoid adding definitions unless they provide necessary explanation.

Use first-person “I” statements to speak from your perspective . Use appropriate word choices that show off your vocabulary but don’t sound like you used a thesaurus. Avoid using idioms or cliché expressions by rewriting them in a creative, original way.

If you’re an international student applying to a US college and you’re comfortable using American idioms or cultural references , you can. But instead of potentially using them incorrectly, don’t be afraid to write in detail about yourself within your own culture.

Provide context for any words, customs, or places that an American admissions officer might be unfamiliar with.

College application essays are less formal than other kinds of academic writing . Use a conversational yet respectful tone , as if speaking with a teacher or mentor. Be vulnerable about your feelings, thoughts, and experiences to connect with the reader.

Aim to write in your authentic voice , with a style that sounds natural and genuine. You can be creative with your word choice, but don’t use elaborate vocabulary to impress admissions officers.

Admissions officers use college admissions essays to evaluate your character, writing skills , and ability to self-reflect . The essay is your chance to show what you will add to the academic community.

The college essay may be the deciding factor in your application , especially for competitive schools where most applicants have exceptional grades, test scores, and extracurriculars.

Some colleges also require supplemental essays about specific topics, such as why you chose that specific college . Scholarship essays are often required to obtain financial aid .

Ask our team

Want to contact us directly? No problem.  We  are always here for you.

• Email [email protected]
• Start live chat
• Call +1 (510) 822-8066
• WhatsApp +31 20 261 6040

Our team helps students graduate by offering:

• A world-class citation generator
• Plagiarism Checker software powered by Turnitin
• Innovative Citation Checker software
• Professional proofreading services
• Over 300 helpful articles about academic writing, citing sources, plagiarism, and more

Scribbr specializes in editing study-related documents . We proofread:

• PhD dissertations
• Research proposals
• Personal statements
• Admission essays
• Motivation letters
• Reflection papers
• Journal articles
• Capstone projects

Scribbr’s Plagiarism Checker is powered by elements of Turnitin’s Similarity Checker , namely the plagiarism detection software and the Internet Archive and Premium Scholarly Publications content databases .

The add-on AI detector is powered by Scribbr’s proprietary software.

The Scribbr Citation Generator is developed using the open-source Citation Style Language (CSL) project and Frank Bennett’s citeproc-js . It’s the same technology used by dozens of other popular citation tools, including Mendeley and Zotero.

You can find all the citation styles and locales used in the Scribbr Citation Generator in our publicly accessible repository on Github .

• AI Content Shield
• AI KW Research
• AI Assistant
• SEO Optimizer
• AI KW Clustering
• Customer reviews
• The NLO Revolution
• Press Center
• Help Center
• Content Resources
• Facebook Group

How to shorten an essay (2022 Top Expert Guide)

Table of Contents

 What comes to a naive mind when dwelling on “ how to shorten an essay ” is that, it is a tedious and meticulous task. 

How to shorten an essay

Shortening an essay is not difficult when you grab the right tips and tricks. These are the best common ways to make your assigned essay shorter in terms of pages. Some of these methods may reduce the essay by three or four pages. Some may cause more pages, and some may create a more elusive outcome. 

Experiment with your submission and find the ideal combination. Do not worry about the assignment due date; focus on the cat.

The five best ways to make an essay shorter include: 

1. Start with a thesis statement. A good thesis statement is the foundation of a well-rounded paper. When you begin your essay, make a clear statement. Be able to back that statement up if necessary, but be prepared to argue for it in a strong sense. Avoid the sentence “I believe that X.” Instead, state a thesis to help the reader understand exactly how you feel and why. 

2. Read your essay out loud. This will help you find areas that need improvement, and it will keep you aware of the pace of this activity. 

3. Take notes. It is easy to get caught up in this activity and lose sight of what else needs to be done. Make a note of the best ideas that come to you while doing this research activity. 

4. When writing the thesis, write down how you will prove or support it. Read your essay aloud again, and look for areas where you need more information. 

5. If your project is expository, the most commonly misunderstood aspect is the conclusion. You need to write the conclusion at the end of your project. Make sure it is clear, concise, and to the point. 

Paraphrasing

Can we shorten our essays through paraphrasing? Yes, we can. However, many students mistake rewording what they learn in the book. To create a properly-written paraphrase, you need to understand the original text and also be careful to maintain its organization. 

Paraphrasing language that is poor, vague, or missing essential details can have a significant impact on the audience. To write a good paraphrase, you need to practice and review it before publishing.

 The best way to write a good paraphrase is that the writer expresses his ideas in his own words. While paraphrasing, ensure your reader understands what you mean by your sentences and writing.

Write More Concisely – Tips to Shorten Your Essay

Need help on how to shorten an essay ? Shortening your essay is not a difficult thing to do, but it might require some effort. You will have a concise and engaging essay if you follow these steps!

Here are eight proven tips to shorten your essay:

1. Use simple, everyday words. Don’t try to conceal yourself behind big words. They will only exacerbate your flaws. 

2. Remove any unnecessary words.

Examine your adverbs (strongly, gratuitously), adjectives (large, great), and qualifiers (very, somewhat). The majority of the words you don’t need can be found here. Consider whether they are necessary. If not, get rid of them.

3. Avoid using nominalization.

How many times have you suffocated a verb by making it a noun? 

(delude – delusion, exclude – exclusion, contract – contraction) Stop it!

4. Avoid using these five words too close to a verb.

Desist from using the words’ take,’ ‘give, “make,’ ‘conduct,’ and ‘come’ too close to a verb or a nominalized verb phrase. They detract from the clarity of your sentences. 

Example: ‘The organization needs to take the defects into consideration.’  should be  ‘The organization needs to consider the defects.’ 

Other tips to shorten your essay include:

5. Make use of strong, specific verbs and nouns. This allows you to avoid using the passive voice, cut down on wordiness, and eliminate modifiers and qualifiers.

6. Make use of the active voice.

You must use the active voice if you follow plain language rules. It assists you in simplifying your message and saying precisely what you want to say. The active voice eliminates uncertainty. We are always aware of who is doing what. The Hemingway App assists you in identifying passive voice.

7. Avoid using jargon.

Overused phrases in a company or industry lose all meaning. Please refrain from using the terms’ like, ‘think outside the box,’ ‘win-win situation,’ ‘low-hanging fruit,’ and ‘pushing the envelope.’ Your readers will ignore you if you don’t say what you mean.

8. Avoid using verbs that require you to ‘tell.’

When used to describe something, these ten verbs will unnecessarily increase your word count. 

These ten verbs are appeared, mused, seemed, thought, wondered, seemed, felt, decided, heard, and realized. Stay away from them.

Shortening an essay requires a lot of focus, but the payoff is well worth the effort. Try out these tips, and soon you’ll be able to significantly shorten your essay without removing any significant content from the piece.

Think about your essay like a puzzle. You can add and subtract individual pieces to make the picture stronger. 

Pam is an expert grammarian with years of experience teaching English, writing and ESL Grammar courses at the university level. She is enamored with all things language and fascinated with how we use words to shape our world.

Explore All Summarize Articles

Why use short sentences – 5 benefits of simple writing.

We’ve all heard the advice: “write short sentences”. But why are short sentences used in the first place? If you…

What is Summarize (Unbelievable Key Features)

What is summarize? Summarize isn’t equivalent to rewriting. A summary provides a shortened and accurate description of a text’s key…

What You Need to Know About Text Summarization NLP

The primary purpose of summarizing a text is to create information that is easy to understand and conveys the main…

Effective Steps for Writing a Summary Sentence

A summary sentence is a shorter version of the original sentence. A good summary should be concise, accurate, and objective.…

How to Summarize a Newspaper Article in Seconds

Can you summarize newspaper article? Many students shoulder the responsibility of summarizing newspaper articles as part of their schoolwork. Newspaper…

Shortening Words: Tips for Effective & Improved Writing.

Shortening words is the process of cutting the beginning or end of a word from a longer word. It involves…

8 Proven Methods to Reduce Essay Word Count, AI Included

Table of contents

Yona Schnitzer

We all know how hard it is to write long essays with a minimum word count.

But sometimes, we're faced with the opposite challenge - keeping our essays under a maximum count.

How to Reduce Essay Word Count

1. Use an active voice instead of passive 2. Spot the fluff 3. Eliminate redundant words 4. Shorten wordy phrases 5. Stop using "What" and "There" as subjects 6. Drop the conjunctions 7. Forget the running starts 8. Use shorter words

Anyone who has ever tried covering complex topics with a maximum word ceiling can tell you that it can be challenging to reduce the word count without sacrificing the meaning or flow of your piece. 

In this article, I’ll give you 8 easy tips to help you reduce the word count in your essays without compromising the quality of your writing.

Instantly reduce your word count with this FREE AI tool > Instantly reduce your word count with this FREE AI tool >

So, without further ado, here are 8 proven methods to reduce essay word count:

1. use an active voice instead of passive.

Using an active voice makes your writing more direct and concise. Passive voice often adds unnecessary words and can make your writing sound less engaging. For instance:

By switching to the passive voice, we’ve reduced our overall word count, while also making the sentence more engaging. 

Be sure to check out our full guide on how to nail the active voice .

2. Spot the fluff

One of the easiest ways to reduce word count is to identify any unnecessary or redundant information in your piece. Whether it’s drawn out introductions, or repetitive information, there’s always something that you can do without. Some tools, like Wordtune can actually help you identify areas where you can afford to shorten your writing, or even entire paragraphs that you can cut out.

3. Eliminate redundant words

Many sentences contain words that don't add any value to their meaning and can be easily removed. Very, for example, is a very common offender (see what I did there?). Instead of writing It was very cold outside, just write It was cold outside.

Here are some more examples of redundant words to help you get the idea:

4. Shorten wordy phrases

Another way to reduce word count is to identify and shorten wordy phrases. 

For example, instead of writing "due to the fact that, " you can write "because."  

Once you get in the habit of shortening your phrases, it will be like second nature. There are also some tools that can help you with that, like Wordtune's "shorten" feature, which can suggest shorter ways to write a sentence without sacrificing clarity.

5. Stop using "What" and "There" as subjects

Using "What" or "There" as the subject of a sentence will add unnecessary words to your writing. Instead, you can rephrase the sentence to make the subject more specific. 

For example: 

6. Drop the conjunctions

Conjunctions such as "and," "but," and "however" can be used to connect two independent statements, but they also add unnecessary words to your sentence. Instead of creating one, long sentence that is put together by conjunctions, try writing two separate sentences instead. Usually you’ll find that these end up using less words overall. 

For example:

This may seem like a small difference, but over the course of an entire paper, these small changes will really add up.

7. Forget the running starts

In writing, a "running start" refers to a sentence that begins with a word or phrase that does not provide any useful information and can be easily removed without affecting the meaning of the sentence. Common examples of running starts include words like "it," "there," "here," "this," and "that." These words often add unnecessary words to a sentence and can make the writing sound less direct and less engaging. Removing them can help to make your writing more concise and to the point.

Pro Tip: Wordtune's "Shorten" feature is great at eliminating running starts.

8. Use shorter words

Sometimes, an assignment has a page limit rather than a word count, in this instance, it can be worth it to identify words that can be replaced with shorter words of the same meaning. For example, instead of writing " utilize ," you can write " use ." 

Here are some other common words that can afford to lose a few letters:

Less is more

‍ If you’re looking for tips on how to INCREASE word count, check out this article . 

There are plenty of ways to reduce your word count without sacrificing the quality of your writing. Use these tips and tricks the next time you find yourself desperately trying to squeeze too many sentences onto one page. Keep in mind that whenever you shorten a text, you’re usually improving it by making it more readable and accessible to a larger audience. 

Remember, when it comes to writing - less, is usually more. 

Share This Article:

How to Properly Conduct Research with AI: Tools, Process, and Approach

What’s a Double Negative? + How To Fix It

The Official Wordtune Guide

Looking for fresh content, thank you your submission has been received.

Perspectives on all eras of videogames, computers, technology, and pop culture since 2003

Remember me?

How to Shorten an Essay: Expert Recommended Approaches

How to Shorten an Essay: Effective Tips to Trim Your Article

At times, essay writing might be challenging, especially when there’s a strict word count that you can’t exceed. Sometimes, you may write too much and exceed the specified word limits. So, how do you shorten that essay without losing any important points or compromising its quality? We’ve compiled practical tips and techniques on how to shorten an essay effectively. 

Reassess the Rubric

A marking criterion is a standard of judgment used when grading assignments. Also known as a rubric, it states everything the instructors will pay attention to when grading your composition, including the word count.

However, there are instances where you won’t have a rubric to refer to and will have to rely on your understanding of the assignment question not to exceed the word limit. So, how do you use your rubric or essay question to shorten an essay to the stipulated word count?

Review every paragraph and ask yourself, “Is this paragraph answering my essay question? Or is it within the grading criteria?” If it doesn’t help answer your question, remove it to get closer to the required word count.

Eliminate Two to Three of Your Weak Paragraphs

When your paper exceeds the instructed word count, one of the safest ways to shorten it involves identifying any weak paragraphs. You’ll likely find one or two poor paragraphs that don’t add any importance to your essay; take them out to shorten the article. You’ll be doing yourself a favor, especially if you’re writing a college application essay.

This approach works best when you have exceeded the word limit by a few hundred words. Eliminating all your poor paragraphs makes the essay shorter and ensures it has no purposeless sections. It will only leave you with the best paragraphs to submit, keeping the reader engaged and interested.

How do you identify the poorly-written paragraphs in a college essay without relying on EssayWriter for help? First, look for paragraphs that contain the worst references. Teachers sometimes just scan essay paragraphs to determine the quality of references within them. Poorly referenced paragraphs tend to have the following:

• Few references
• Excess references from one source
• References from non-reputable sources

The lecturer will mark down any of the above paragraphs. So you are better off removing them to shorten the article, fulfill the essay’s word count, and protect your grade.

Next, find unconvincing paragraphs. Review each paragraph and ask yourself, “How strong is my assertion here?” The paragraphs with the weakest arguments don’t benefit your essay. So take them out and make your essay shorter.

If you’re finding it difficult to pinpoint poorly done paragraphs, try rating all paragraphs. Because of the writer’s bias, sometimes identifying your weakest or worst paragraphs might be difficult. That’s when you have to rate each one. Rate all your paragraphs on a scale of one to ten; you’ll find the ones to get rid of to shorten the composition and meet the stipulated word count.

Understand that you don’t always need to delete entire paragraphs to shorten your article. For example, sometimes you might realize that the information in three different paragraphs could fit into one. So trim and combine them to shorten what you discussed in them. Using this method ensures you don’t risk losing any important information, and you still get to reduce your word count considerably.

Use Text to Speech to Listen to Your Essay

Listening to the narration of your essay is also a great way to identify areas you can comfortably trim to shorten the piece. There are two ways to do it. The first technique is to copy your entire essay, open Microsoft excel, and paste it into one cell. Then activate the read-out-loud option.

The second approach applies to Google users. Copy the text, open your browser, and query “google translate.” Then, paste the contents into the text box and click listen.

Listen and pay attention to the following to get clues on how you’ll shorten the piece:

• Sentences that feel long and exhausting – rephrase them and write short sentences.
• Awkward phrases – erase phrases that don’t sound right.
• Unnecessary words – eliminate needless words such as “the” and “that” where they don’t add value.

While listening, also ensure your essay retains its main focus. Writers tend to stray when composing college essays, especially if they don’t use an outline. So, if you realize your work has strayed from the main focus, eliminate the section that deviates from your topic to shorten the article and make it strong.

Lastly, pause and eliminate unwanted or repetitive phrases to shorten your sentences. Your essay should be short and clear, so find ways to explain the concepts in the least words.

More Tips to Shorten Your Composition

Cutting down your draft is not as easy as it may seem, and you might need to apply different tools to achieve the desired length. For example, never exceed the word limit in a college application essay because admissions officers might use it to disqualify you even before reading it.

That’s why we give you a wide selection of tools you can use to shorten essays and achieve the desired word limits. These techniques should work across different forms of writing. So a book report writer should experience the same success as a student crafting essays in college. Other methods of making an essay shorter include the following.

Eliminate Adverbs and Adjectives

Adverbs and adjectives are rarely needed in good writing. Adjectives modify nouns, but you’ll realize you don’t need them if you choose the right nouns. The same applies to adverbs modifying verbs. An essay filled with either becomes weaker, and removing them will make your writing concise and more likely to stay within any word limits. Furthermore, teaching yourself to choose the right nouns should improve your essay-writing skills in the long run.

Shorten Wordy Phrases

Another way to shorten an essay is to identify and trim long phrases. For example, “in order to” or “so as to” can become “to,” and “on a regular basis” can be “regularly.” You can do it manually or use grammar tools to suggest shorter ways to phrase your sentences without affecting the clarity.

Switch to Active Voice

Like most writers, you’ve probably habitually used passive voice in essays. However, if you’re in college or heading to college, start adopting the active voice in academic writing, as it’ll give your papers a more scholarly tone. Here’re some sentences to show the difference between the two.

 “The task was assigned by the professor.”

 “The professor assigned the task.”

In the first sentence, the object (the task) foregrounds the subject (the professor), making it a passive voice. In the second sentence, the subject is performing an action making it active. As you can see, it is shorter and more direct, and that’s what you should aim for when you want to shorten essays. So, go through your composition, identify sentences similar to the former, and rephrase them in active voice.

Fix Any Running Starts

A running start is any sentence starting with a phrase that doesn’t add useful information. Running starts are easy to remove without affecting the general meaning of the sentence in a college essay. Compare the following sentences:

“It is no secret that the world is currently going through tough times.”

“The world is currently going through tough times.”

Both sentences have the same meaning, but we eliminated the needless words in the second one. Running starts make an essay less direct and, thus, less engaging. So shorten your essay by eliminating them.

Join Sentences That Convey Similar Meanings

As you go through your college essay, you’ll likely find sentences that share the same meaning. Merge such sentences into one to shorten the message. Check out this example:

“Some students were caught playing cards in class. Peter was playing cards with them.”

“Peter was caught playing cards with other children in the class.”

These two sentences are a simple example of merging two sentences and still conveying the full message. The second sentence uses a lesser word count to deliver the message the first two sentences provide. Switch to active voice, and you’ll have an even shorter sentence.

Listen to Your Essay to Identify and Eliminate Repetition

We mentioned using google translate or excel sheets to listen to your essay. You can also read it aloud and try to identify redundancy in work. Any college essay that exceeds the word limit is prone to having a few instances of redundancy.

Sometimes we over-explain our points and use extra sentences without realizing the initial sentence was enough. These instances are easy to identify in an essay. But if you struggle, remember that essaywriter.org is always available to assist.

Closing Remarks

Reducing a paper’s word count can be disheartening when writing essays, but adding words to meet the minimum volume is much easier than the reverse. So, consider yourself lucky and use the above tricks to shorten an essay while boosting its quality.

About Jane Smith

Correspondent for Armchair Arcade.

You also might be interested in

Creative Ways to Improve Writing Skills with Video Gaming

Here are some of the creative ways to improve writing skills with video gaming.

Last few days to back Traveler: The Ultimate Distraction-free Writing Tool!

COUPON: Get 5% off an Astrohaus Freewrite or Traveler by[...]

Unboxing of the Astrohaus Freewrite Traveler

I received my Astrohaus Freewrite Traveler today and did an[...]

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Recent Posts

• Tips for Winning Big at Online Casinos
• Exploring the Digital Frontier: The Impact of Cryptocurrency on the Gaming Industry
• All aboard this PC Steam Train Sim World 4 bundle, packed with DLC, plus Spring Screams!
• New Fallout Vault 33 computer and gaming glasses from Gunnar Optiks available now
• Exploring the World of Online Jackpot Slots
• The Evolution of Casino Games
• Capcom’s Retro Games – Free NES, Famicom, SNES, and Super Famicom playable in your browser!
• The best slots at Wazamba
• Sports Betting in the US – MLB is in full swing!
• The Impact of Bitcoin and Other Altcoins on Online Gambling in Modern Times

Recent Comments

• Shaun on Mobile Game Review – Plague of Z
• Bill Loguidice on Official Game List for My Arcade Atari Gamestation Pro
• Robert on Official Game List for My Arcade Atari Gamestation Pro
• Heather Allen on Full Game List for the AtGames Legends Flashback (2019)
• Randy on Official Game List for My Arcade Atari Gamestation Pro

The everything store

Game deals, including name your price bundles

Import games and collectibles

Amazing drones and related technology

Amazing PC gamer products!

Use Coupon Code ACA at checkout to Save 10% on EwinRacing Gaming Chairs

Human Advancement Never Stops.

Key Site Statistics

Posts published : 2,237 Latest publish date : April 5, 2024 @ 10:47 am Registered user count : 117,567

All editorial content © 2003 - 2024 Armchair Arcade, Inc., an Armchair Creative Services, LLC , property. All rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. All trademarks and copyrights are retained by their respective owners. No content is to be removed or reused from the Armchair Arcade Website for commercial purposes without explicit permission from the principal Armchair Arcade staff, or the original trademark or copyright holders. Armchair Arcade, Inc., is not responsible for the content of any external sources or links. Further, endorsement of any external sources or links is neither implied nor suggested.

We thank you for your support and encourage you to contact us for any reason, including, but not limited to, questions, concerns, business endeavors, or praise. Especially praise.

Armchair Creative Services, LLC, may earn compensation for sales from links on posts through affiliate and other programs. Editorial rigor and objectivity standards are strictly adhered to and any compensation has no effect on coverage or opinions.

• PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
• EDIT Edit this Article
• EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
• Browse Articles
• Learn Something New
• Quizzes Hot
• This Or That Game New
• Train Your Brain
• Explore More
• Support wikiHow
• About wikiHow
• Log in / Sign up
• Education and Communications
• Communication Skills
• Phone Skills

How to Shorten Words in Text Messages

Last Updated: July 11, 2022 References

This article was co-authored by John Keegan . John Keegan is a Dating Coach and motivational speaker based in New York City. With over 10 years of professional experience, he runs The Awakened Lifestyle, where he uses his expertise in dating, attraction, and social dynamics to help people find love. He teaches and holds dating workshops internationally, from Los Angeles to London and from Rio de Janeiro to Prague. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Humans of New York, and Men's Health. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 13,121 times.

Since the dawn of texting, there has been "text speak." These shortened phrases and abbreviations can help you get your message across more efficiently without having to type out full words (and they're just fun to use sometimes!). If you're not sure what all of the different abbreviations mean or how to use them, don't worry. We've put together a list of the most common texting abbreviations plus some tips on how to use them.

Why do people shorten words in text messages?

• In the early days of texting, people were also texting without keypads. Having to double-click each button to get the right letter took a lot of time and effort, so users would abbreviate words so that they didn't have to do that. [2] X Research source

Popular Text Abbreviations

• ”I’m going to the store BRB!”
• "You did a great job on the new website BTW!"
• "I still haven't responded to Rob's DM..."
• "I'm free tonight HMU if you want to hang out."
• "I'm trying to find the answer online, but IDK."
• "That band gave a pretty mediocre performance IMO."
• "I'm very outgoing on social media, but I'm pretty shy IRL."
• "I just spilled my coffee on the bus and now I can never go out in public again. JK 🤣"
• "Does anyone have any restaurant recommendations in the area? LMK!"
• “LOL you are so funny.”
• "This is a clip from that new movie I was talking about. Heads up, it's NSFW."
• "I figured it out NVM."
• “OMG you’ll never guess what Stacey just told me!”
• "I'm running 5 minutes late but I'm OMW."
• "I'm feeling pretty good RN, but I was super tired this morning."
• "I wasn't a fan of that movie TBH."
• "I'm getting a tattoo tomorrow. YOLO!"

Common Business Text Abbreviations

• "I'm writing a piece on Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman."
• "I can get back to you on that ASAP!"
• "Things at the office are going pretty well ATM."
• "We've got to include a CTA in our campaign message. That way, people will be motivated to sign up."
• "I wrote and released my own DIY cookbook because no one was interested in publishing it."
• "I'll need that outline by the EOD."
• "Can I get an ETA for when you can get this project back to me?"
• "Check out the FAQ page for more information."
• "FYI, we stopped using that strategy last week."
• "We should opt for an MMS marketing campaign so we can share photos, too."
• "If nothing works for that category, just write N/A."
• "NP happy to help."
• "Our company takes our SEO strategy very seriously."
• "I think we should start an SMS marketing campaign to appeal to our younger customers."
• "I'm so ready for the weekend. TGIF!"
• "Would you mind proofreading the caption before we post this on Instagram? TIA!"
• "You're the best for doing this. TY!"

Popular Romantic Text Abbreviations

• "I can't wait for you to finally meet my BF. I think you'll like him!"
• "I really like him, but we're not officially dating. We haven't had the DTR talk yet..."
• "Yeah, that's my GF. She's awesome."
• "You're seriously the best ILY 🥰"
• "I'm so lucky to have you in my life ILSM. ❤️"
• "It's tough being in an LDR, but my girlfriend makes it worth it."
• "My boyfriend is a total hunk. My MCM till the end!"
• "My #WCW is my beautiful girlfriend. So happy to have her in my life! 💗"
• "I'm surprising my SO with a beach getaway for his birthday."
• "My partner has been pretty bummed lately, but I think she just needs some TLC."

Text Abbreviation Etiquitte

• Even if you're texting with your friends or potential love interests, it might be best to use abbreviations in moderation (1-2 per text). Otherwise, it might make the person feel like you're not putting in much effort to talk to them.

• For example, if your client did something that made you laugh, "LOL" is probably a better choice than "LMAO."

How to Keep Your Texts Brief

• Change "Me and Sarah are going to this beautiful park tomorrow evening to watch the sunset. It's going to be an awesome day and you should come!" to "Me and Sarah are going to the park tomorrow evening. You should come! 😊"
• If your text doesn't sound quite as friendly after the edits you made, add an emoji. Emojis can give your texts a more playful, upbeat vibe. [7] X Research source

• If you're talking about a recent news story, link to an article that explains what happened instead of giving a full summary over text. Add a brief caption like, "Did you hear about this? I really want to know your thoughts!"

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• ↑ https://www.dictionary.com/e/shortening-english/
• ↑ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/dec/02/text-messaging-turns-20
• ↑ https://www.inc.com/john-boitnott/15-tactics-that-will-ignite-your-sms-marketing-success.html
• ↑ https://psychcentral.com/pro/exhausted-woman/2017/11/the-art-of-good-communication-texting-etiquette
• ↑ https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/277610
• ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/magazine/how-to-use-emojis.html
• ↑ https://www.wired.com/story/4-tips-to-send-and-receive-better-texts/

About This Article

• Send fan mail to authors

Is this article up to date?

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Do Not Sell or Share My Info
• Not Selling Info

wikiHow Tech Help Pro:

Level up your tech skills and stay ahead of the curve

How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I.

OpenAI, Google and Meta ignored corporate policies, altered their own rules and discussed skirting copyright law as they sought online information to train their newest artificial intelligence systems.

Researchers at OpenAI’s office in San Francisco developed a tool to transcribe YouTube videos to amass conversational text for A.I. development. Credit... Jason Henry for The New York Times

Supported by

• Share full article

By Cade Metz ,  Cecilia Kang ,  Sheera Frenkel ,  Stuart A. Thompson and Nico Grant

Reporting from San Francisco, Washington and New York

• April 6, 2024

In late 2021, OpenAI faced a supply problem.

The artificial intelligence lab had exhausted every reservoir of reputable English-language text on the internet as it developed its latest A.I. system. It needed more data to train the next version of its technology — lots more.

So OpenAI researchers created a speech recognition tool called Whisper. It could transcribe the audio from YouTube videos, yielding new conversational text that would make an A.I. system smarter.

Some OpenAI employees discussed how such a move might go against YouTube’s rules, three people with knowledge of the conversations said. YouTube, which is owned by Google, prohibits use of its videos for applications that are “independent” of the video platform.

Ultimately, an OpenAI team transcribed more than one million hours of YouTube videos, the people said. The team included Greg Brockman, OpenAI’s president, who personally helped collect the videos, two of the people said. The texts were then fed into a system called GPT-4 , which was widely considered one of the world’s most powerful A.I. models and was the basis of the latest version of the ChatGPT chatbot.

The race to lead A.I. has become a desperate hunt for the digital data needed to advance the technology. To obtain that data, tech companies including OpenAI, Google and Meta have cut corners, ignored corporate policies and debated bending the law, according to an examination by The New York Times.

At Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, managers, lawyers and engineers last year discussed buying the publishing house Simon & Schuster to procure long works, according to recordings of internal meetings obtained by The Times. They also conferred on gathering copyrighted data from across the internet, even if that meant facing lawsuits. Negotiating licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry would take too long, they said.

Like OpenAI, Google transcribed YouTube videos to harvest text for its A.I. models, five people with knowledge of the company’s practices said. That potentially violated the copyrights to the videos, which belong to their creators.

Last year, Google also broadened its terms of service. One motivation for the change, according to members of the company’s privacy team and an internal message viewed by The Times, was to allow Google to be able to tap publicly available Google Docs, restaurant reviews on Google Maps and other online material for more of its A.I. products.

The companies’ actions illustrate how online information — news stories, fictional works, message board posts, Wikipedia articles, computer programs, photos, podcasts and movie clips — has increasingly become the lifeblood of the booming A.I. industry. Creating innovative systems depends on having enough data to teach the technologies to instantly produce text, images, sounds and videos that resemble what a human creates.

The volume of data is crucial. Leading chatbot systems have learned from pools of digital text spanning as many as three trillion words, or roughly twice the number of words stored in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, which has collected manuscripts since 1602. The most prized data, A.I. researchers said, is high-quality information, such as published books and articles, which have been carefully written and edited by professionals.

For years, the internet — with sites like Wikipedia and Reddit — was a seemingly endless source of data. But as A.I. advanced, tech companies sought more repositories. Google and Meta, which have billions of users who produce search queries and social media posts every day, were largely limited by privacy laws and their own policies from drawing on much of that content for A.I.

Their situation is urgent. Tech companies could run through the high-quality data on the internet as soon as 2026, according to Epoch, a research institute. The companies are using the data faster than it is being produced.

“The only practical way for these tools to exist is if they can be trained on massive amounts of data without having to license that data,” Sy Damle, a lawyer who represents Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, said of A.I. models last year in a public discussion about copyright law. “The data needed is so massive that even collective licensing really can’t work.”

Tech companies are so hungry for new data that some are developing “synthetic” information. This is not organic data created by humans, but text, images and code that A.I. models produce — in other words, the systems learn from what they themselves generate.

OpenAI said each of its A.I. models “has a unique data set that we curate to help their understanding of the world and remain globally competitive in research.” Google said that its A.I. models “are trained on some YouTube content,” which was allowed under agreements with YouTube creators, and that the company did not use data from office apps outside of an experimental program. Meta said it had “made aggressive investments” to integrate A.I. into its services and had billions of publicly shared images and videos from Instagram and Facebook for training its models.

For creators, the growing use of their works by A.I. companies has prompted lawsuits over copyright and licensing. The Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft last year for using copyrighted news articles without permission to train A.I. chatbots. OpenAI and Microsoft have said using the articles was “fair use,” or allowed under copyright law, because they transformed the works for a different purpose.

More than 10,000 trade groups, authors, companies and others submitted comments last year about the use of creative works by A.I. models to the Copyright Office , a federal agency that is preparing guidance on how copyright law applies in the A.I. era.

Justine Bateman, a filmmaker, former actress and author of two books, told the Copyright Office that A.I. models were taking content — including her writing and films — without permission or payment.

“This is the largest theft in the United States, period,” she said in an interview.

‘Scale Is All You Need’

In January 2020, Jared Kaplan, a theoretical physicist at Johns Hopkins University, published a groundbreaking paper on A.I. that stoked the appetite for online data.

His conclusion was unequivocal: The more data there was to train a large language model — the technology that drives online chatbots — the better it would perform. Just as a student learns more by reading more books, large language models can better pinpoint patterns in text and be more accurate with more information.

“Everyone was very surprised that these trends — these scaling laws as we call them — were basically as precise as what you see in astronomy or physics,” said Dr. Kaplan, who published the paper with nine OpenAI researchers. (He now works at the A.I. start-up Anthropic.)

“Scale is all you need” soon became a rallying cry for A.I.

Researchers have long used large public databases of digital information to develop A.I., including Wikipedia and Common Crawl, a database of more than 250 billion web pages collected since 2007. Researchers often “cleaned” the data by removing hate speech and other unwanted text before using it to train A.I. models.

In 2020, data sets were tiny by today’s standards. One database containing 30,000 photographs from the photo website Flickr was considered a vital resource at the time.

After Dr. Kaplan’s paper, that amount of data was no longer enough. It became all about “just making things really big,” said Brandon Duderstadt, the chief executive of Nomic, an A.I. company in New York.

Before 2020, most A.I. models used relatively little training data.

Mr. Kaplan’s paper, released in 2020, led to a new era defined by GPT-3, a large language model, where researchers began including more data in their models …

… much, much more data.

When OpenAI unveiled GPT-3 in November 2020, it was trained on the largest amount of data to date — about 300 billion “tokens,” which are essentially words or pieces of words. After learning from that data, the system generated text with astounding accuracy, writing blog posts, poetry and its own computer programs.

In 2022, DeepMind, an A.I. lab owned by Google, went further. It tested 400 A.I. models and varied the amount of training data and other factors. The top-performing models used even more data than Dr. Kaplan had predicted in his paper. One model, Chinchilla, was trained on 1.4 trillion tokens.

It was soon overtaken. Last year, researchers from China released an A.I. model, Skywork , which was trained on 3.2 trillion tokens from English and Chinese texts. Google also unveiled an A.I. system, PaLM 2 , which topped 3.6 trillion tokens .

Transcribing YouTube

In May, Sam Altman , the chief executive of OpenAI, acknowledged that A.I. companies would use up all viable data on the internet.

“That will run out,” he said in a speech at a tech conference.

Mr. Altman had seen the phenomenon up close. At OpenAI, researchers had gathered data for years, cleaned it and fed it into a vast pool of text to train the company’s language models. They had mined the computer code repository GitHub, vacuumed up databases of chess moves and drawn on data describing high school tests and homework assignments from the website Quizlet.

By late 2021, those supplies were depleted, said eight people with knowledge of the company, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

OpenAI was desperate for more data to develop its next-generation A.I. model, GPT-4. So employees discussed transcribing podcasts, audiobooks and YouTube videos, the people said. They talked about creating data from scratch with A.I. systems. They also considered buying start-ups that had collected large amounts of digital data.

OpenAI eventually made Whisper, the speech recognition tool, to transcribe YouTube videos and podcasts, six people said. But YouTube prohibits people from not only using its videos for “independent” applications, but also accessing its videos by “any automated means (such as robots, botnets or scrapers).”

OpenAI employees knew they were wading into a legal gray area, the people said, but believed that training A.I. with the videos was fair use. Mr. Brockman, OpenAI’s president, was listed in a research paper as a creator of Whisper. He personally helped gather YouTube videos and fed them into the technology, two people said.

Mr. Brockman referred requests for comment to OpenAI, which said it uses “numerous sources” of data.

Last year, OpenAI released GPT-4, which drew on the more than one million hours of YouTube videos that Whisper had transcribed. Mr. Brockman led the team that developed GPT-4.

Some Google employees were aware that OpenAI had harvested YouTube videos for data, two people with knowledge of the companies said. But they didn’t stop OpenAI because Google had also used transcripts of YouTube videos to train its A.I. models, the people said. That practice may have violated the copyrights of YouTube creators. So if Google made a fuss about OpenAI, there might be a public outcry against its own methods, the people said.

Matt Bryant, a Google spokesman, said the company had no knowledge of OpenAI’s practices and prohibited “unauthorized scraping or downloading of YouTube content.” Google takes action when it has a clear legal or technical basis to do so, he said.

Google’s rules allowed it to tap YouTube user data to develop new features for the video platform. But it was unclear whether Google could use YouTube data to build a commercial service beyond the video platform, such as a chatbot.

Geoffrey Lottenberg, an intellectual property lawyer with the law firm Berger Singerman, said Google’s language about what it could and could not do with YouTube video transcripts was vague.

“Whether the data could be used for a new commercial service is open to interpretation and could be litigated,” he said.

In late 2022, after OpenAI released ChatGPT and set off an industrywide race to catch up , Google researchers and engineers discussed tapping other user data. Billions of words sat in people’s Google Docs and other free Google apps. But the company’s privacy restrictions limited how they could use the data, three people with knowledge of Google’s practices said.

In June, Google’s legal department asked the privacy team to draft language to broaden what the company could use consumer data for, according to two members of the privacy team and an internal message viewed by The Times.

The employees were told Google wanted to use people’s publicly available content in Google Docs, Google Sheets and related apps for an array of A.I. products. The employees said they didn’t know if the company had previously trained A.I. on such data.

At the time, Google’s privacy policy said the company could use publicly available information only to “help train Google’s language models and build features like Google Translate.”

The privacy team wrote new terms so Google could tap the data for its “A.I. models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard and Cloud AI capabilities,” which was a wider collection of A.I. technologies.

“What is the end goal here?” one member of the privacy team asked in an internal message. “How broad are we going?”

The team was told specifically to release the new terms on the Fourth of July weekend, when people were typically focused on the holiday, the employees said. The revised policy debuted on July 1, at the start of the long weekend.

How Google Can Use Your Data

Here are the changes Google made to its privacy policy last year for its free consumer apps.

Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public. For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google’s language AI models and build products and features like Google Translate , Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities .

In August, two privacy team members said, they pressed managers on whether Google could start using data from free consumer versions of Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides. They were not given clear answers, they said.

Mr. Bryant said that the privacy policy changes had been made for clarity and that Google did not use information from Google Docs or related apps to train language models “without explicit permission” from users, referring to a voluntary program that allows users to test experimental features.

“We did not start training on additional types of data based on this language change,” he said.

The Debate at Meta

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, had invested in A.I. for years — but suddenly found himself behind when OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022. He immediately pushed to match and exceed ChatGPT , calling executives and engineers at all hours of the night to push them to develop a rival chatbot, said three current and former employees, who were not authorized to discuss confidential conversations.

But by early last year, Meta had hit the same hurdle as its rivals: not enough data.

Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of generative A.I., told executives that his team had used almost every available English-language book, essay, poem and news article on the internet to develop a model, according to recordings of internal meetings, which were shared by an employee.

Meta could not match ChatGPT unless it got more data, Mr. Al-Dahle told colleagues. In March and April 2023, some of the company’s business development leaders, engineers and lawyers met nearly daily to tackle the problem.

Some debated paying $10 a book for the full licensing rights to new titles. They discussed buying Simon & Schuster, which publishes authors like Stephen King, according to the recordings.

They also talked about how they had summarized books, essays and other works from the internet without permission and discussed sucking up more, even if that meant facing lawsuits. One lawyer warned of “ethical” concerns around taking intellectual property from artists but was met with silence, according to the recordings.

Mr. Zuckerberg demanded a solution, employees said.

“The capability that Mark is looking for in the product is just something that we currently aren’t able to deliver,” one engineer said.

While Meta operates giant social networks, it didn’t have troves of user posts at its disposal, two employees said. Many Facebook users had deleted their earlier posts, and the platform wasn’t where people wrote essay-type content, they said.

Meta was also limited by privacy changes it introduced after a 2018 scandal over sharing its users’ data with Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling company.

Mr. Zuckerberg said in a recent investor call that the billions of publicly shared videos and photos on Facebook and Instagram are “greater than the Common Crawl data set.”

During their recorded discussions, Meta executives talked about how they had hired contractors in Africa to aggregate summaries of fiction and nonfiction. The summaries included copyrighted content “because we have no way of not collecting that,” a manager said in one meeting.

Meta’s executives said OpenAI seemed to have used copyrighted material without permission. It would take Meta too long to negotiate licenses with publishers, artists, musicians and the news industry, they said, according to the recordings.

“The only thing that’s holding us back from being as good as ChatGPT is literally just data volume,” Nick Grudin, a vice president of global partnership and content, said in one meeting.

OpenAI appeared to be taking copyrighted material and Meta could follow this “market precedent,” he added.

Meta’s executives agreed to lean on a 2015 court decision involving the Authors Guild versus Google , according to the recordings. In that case, Google was permitted to scan, digitize and catalog books in an online database after arguing that it had reproduced only snippets of the works online and had transformed the originals, which made it fair use.

Using data to train A.I. systems, Meta’s lawyers said in their meetings, should similarly be fair use.

At least two employees raised concerns about using intellectual property and not paying authors and other artists fairly or at all, according to the recordings. One employee recounted a separate discussion about copyrighted data with senior executives including Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, and said no one in that meeting considered the ethics of using people’s creative works.

‘Synthetic’ Data

OpenAI’s Mr. Altman had a plan to deal with the looming data shortage.

Companies like his, he said at the May conference, would eventually train their A.I. on text generated by A.I. — otherwise known as synthetic data.

Since an A.I. model can produce humanlike text, Mr. Altman and others have argued, the systems can create additional data to develop better versions of themselves. This would help developers build increasingly powerful technology and reduce their dependence on copyrighted data.

“As long as you can get over the synthetic data event horizon, where the model is smart enough to make good synthetic data, everything will be fine,” Mr. Altman said.

A.I. researchers have explored synthetic data for years. But building an A.I system that can train itself is easier said than done. A.I. models that learn from their own outputs can get caught in a loop where they reinforce their own quirks, mistakes and limitations.

“The data these systems need is like a path through the jungle,” said Jeff Clune, a former OpenAI researcher who now teaches computer science at the University of British Columbia. “If they only train on synthetic data, they can get lost in the jungle.”

To combat this, OpenAI and others are investigating how two different A.I. models might work together to generate synthetic data that is more useful and reliable. One system produces the data, while a second judges the information to separate the good from the bad. Researchers are divided on whether this method will work.

A.I. executives are barreling ahead nonetheless.

“It should be all right,” Mr. Altman said at the conference.

An earlier version of this article misstated the publisher of J.K. Rowling’s books. Her works have been published by Scholastic, Little, Brown and others. They were not published by Simon & Schuster.

How we handle corrections

Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy and is based in Washington D.C. She has written about technology for over two decades. More about Cecilia Kang

Sheera Frenkel is a reporter based in the San Francisco Bay Area, covering the ways technology impacts everyday lives with a focus on social media companies, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, Telegram and WhatsApp. More about Sheera Frenkel

Stuart A. Thompson writes about how false and misleading information spreads online and how it affects people around the world. He focuses on misinformation, disinformation and other misleading content. More about Stuart A. Thompson

Nico Grant is a technology reporter covering Google from San Francisco. Previously, he spent five years at Bloomberg News, where he focused on Google and cloud computing. More about Nico Grant

Explore Our Coverage of Artificial Intelligence

News  and Analysis

Artificial intelligence is peering into restaurant garbage pails  and crunching grocery-store data to try to figure out how to send less uneaten food into dumpsters.

David Autor, an M.I.T. economist and tech skeptic, argues that A.I. is fundamentally different  from past waves of computerization.

Economists doubt that artificial intelligence is already visible in productivity data . Big companies, however, talk often about adopting it to improve efficiency.

OpenAI unveiled Voice Engine , an A.I. technology that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording.

Amazon said it had added $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic , an A.I. start-up that competes with companies like OpenAI and Google.

Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee signed a bill  to prevent the use of A.I. to copy a performer’s voice. It is the first such measure in the United States.

Advertisement

Dear Pastor . . . Don’t Settle for the Status Quo in Your Preaching

This article is part of the Dear Pastor series.

Aspire to See Transformation

“Just lower your expectations,” said the pastor, half smiling and gesturing as though signaling a vehicle to slow down. He made this recommendation to a small group of believers who were lamenting the lack of signs of biblical health in their ministry. From this pastor’s experienced perspective, these naïve believers were expecting God to do too much through their ministry and should recalibrate to be more content with the status quo in their struggling church.

Tragically, the realities of ministry lead many preachers to adopt a similar disposition to their preaching. Another pastor, after receiving a mother’s earnest appeal to make his preaching more comprehensible to the less studied in his congregation, rather than putting forth the extra effort to help, simply concluded that his group of Christians must be unserious about their faith and carried on letting “little ones” endure the impenetrable thirty minutes of his studied discourse each Sunday morning. While not every case of preacher apathy might present itself as starkly as these, preachers can give up on aspiring to see much transformation from their preaching and settle for mere transfer of information. A sound theological conviction of the already-not-yet nature of Christ’s kingdom can be distorted into an already-not-much expectation in the pulpit.

The Pastor as Leader

John currie.

With biblical advice on how to integrate preaching and leading, John Currie equips pastors to effectively carry out the church’s mission.

Most preachers don’t start out this way. We take up our call to the ministry believing the gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16), so preaching the gospel will be a powerful means to effect God’s gracious purposes in people’s lives. The difficulties of seeking to extend Christ’s mission in a yet fallen world with yet corruptible churches bludgeon us into deciding it's safer to settle for the status quo. Fatigue, fear, and even temptations to doubt the message we are preaching can cut the nerve on the zeal we used to have for preaching as we surrender our vision of God effecting his gracious purposes in people’s lives through our stewardship of his word.

Perhaps you can recall the time when your heart was enflamed by God’s revelation of what his word could do and what he can accomplish through his word, and these promises animated your attitude as you stewarded your God-given gift and task (Jer. 23:29; Heb. 4:12–13; Isa. 55:11; Rom. 10:17; I Pet. 4:10–11; Rom. 12:6–8). Do you remember when you approached preaching as an earnest struggle and with a sincere desire for the glory of God in the hearts and lives of people because you believed that you were working with God as he effected his will in people through his word preached (Col. 1:28–29; I Cor. 3:9; 2 Cor. 5:20)? These were the kinds of convictions held by preachers God used to lead his church in the past. For example, John Calvin believed that the nature of the Scriptures demanded an earnest, expectant posture from him as he preached them. He said,

When I expound Holy Scripture, I must always make this my rule: That those who hear me may receive profit from the teaching I put forward and be edified unto salvation. If I have not that affection, if I do not procure the edification of those who hear me, I am a sacrilege, profaning God’s Word. 1

So, if you are a preacher who has allowed your vision for preaching to be dimmed or deadened, what can you do to remedy your heart and habits?

Love God and Your Listener

Love is the animating affection for the exercise of our God-given gifts and stewardship (1 Cor. 13:1–8; I Tim. 1:5). Without love we are achieving nothing! Sincere cultivation of love for God’s glory (Matt. 22:37) and our hearers’ eternal good (Matt. 22:39) has, historically, been held to be essential to the preacher’s task (E.g. WLC 159). Genuine gospel preaching must be infused with the sense that the preacher actually cares that God is glorified by people responding to him through the gospel he is preaching and that those who hear him understand and benefit from how he is communicating the word (1 Cor. 14:7–12). Love will not allow us to settle for status quo in the honor God is already receiving (Rom.1:13, Rom. 15:16) or the gospel blessing people are already receiving through our ministry (1 Cor. 9:19–23; Rom. 1:11; Eph. 4:16).

Ask God to Put His Word in Your Mouth

It is possible to use God’s good gifts to insulate us from thinking we have to depend upon him (Duet. 8:11–14). God’s good gift of training for a studied approach to biblical interpretation can be co-opted by a pastor’s yet corrupted heart to turn accurate exposition into a mere academic exercise. Preaching that accomplishes the purposes of God for the people of God flows from a preacher who, through the study of Scripture (2 Tim. 2:15), has had God put his word in his mouth (Jer. 1:9). We never get beyond the need to ask God’s direct help in developing and delivering the message he would have us preach to a particular people, in a particular place, in a particular period (Eph. 6:19; Luke 11:13). We can recover God-glorifying, gospel-driven aspiration in our preaching by an intentional return to conscious dependence on God to form his message from his Scripture, for his purposes, for his people, and in us as his preachers.

Love is the animating affection for the exercise of our God-given gifts and stewardship.

Remember the Holy Spirit

“The lack of distinctly recognizing the power of the Holy Ghost lies at the root of many useless ministries.” 2 It is possible that our correct conviction that the Scriptures are always the word of the Spirit who inspired them and that it is through the Scriptures that he now always speaks can morph into complacency about consciously depending upon the Spirit. We can content ourselves with being merely technical in our handling of the data in a text without remembering that without the direct work of the Spirit on the soul of the listener (1 Cor. 2:4), nothing of eternal value will take place in the lives of people or the church. As you prepare and deliver sermons, gospel preachers must consciously desire and be dependent upon the Holy Spirit to effect his illuminating and transforming work in listeners—and the preacher!

Expect Christ to Lead Your Church through Your Preaching

Preaching is leadership in Christ’s cause. Both Christ and his apostles preached with the conscious expectation that, through their preaching, they were inaugurating and extending God’s promised kingdom (E.g. Luke 4:43, Luke 8:1; Acts 20:25, Acts 28:31). Preachers can reinvigorate their desire for God to effect his will through their preaching by embracing the conviction that Christ leads his people into his purposes through his word preached. Every aspect of Christ’s mission and ministry through his church requires wise pastoral leadership, and that leadership is always downstream from the word preached. So preachers who are unashamedly committed to the primacy of preaching must develop a vision to actually take people into the green pastures prescribed in God’s word and discipline themselves in the principles and practices of wise leadership that can equip them to integrate preaching and leadership to get them there. If preachers lack this vision and are unequipped or unwilling to lead where the word points, something other than the preached word will lead the church. And a congregation will either be led off its God prescribed path through worldly wise leadership models or stagnate on its God-appointed mission as it contents itself with the accumulation of mere knowledge.

If you are a preacher, you are a leader in Christ's cause and you can and must desire to lead God’s people into God’s purpose through God’s word preached, and you must practice the habits of a preacher-leader.

• John Calvin, quoted in T. H. L. Parker, Calvin’s Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox , 1992), 25.
• Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students , 195.

John Currie is the author of The Pastor as Leader: Principles and Practices for Connecting Preaching and Leadership .

John Currie (DMin, Westminster Theological Seminary) is professor of pastoral theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, where he teaches preaching and leadership. As a pastor, he has led churches in Canada and the United States with a commitment to the priority of expository preaching. John lives near Philadelphia with his wife, Rhonda. They have two grown sons and eight grandchildren.

Popular Articles in This Series

Dear Pastor . . . Your Shepherd Doesn’t Care How Big Your Church Is

Jared C. Wilson

What the Lord requires of us is faithfulness. And while it’s perfectly normal for every pastor to want his church to grow, it’s also idolatrous to marry our validation and our justification to our attendance.

Dear Pastor . . . You’re a Shepherd, Not an Entrepreneur

Nathan Knight

If we plant churches as pastors, not entrepreneurs, whose aim is to love Christ and feed and tend the sheep of Christ’s reward, then we can sleep well knowing our work will endure.

Dear Pastor . . . You Need to Recognize Your Limits

Paul David Tripp

Our limits and weaknesses are not in the way of what God can do through us, but our denial of limits and our delusions of independent strength are.

Dear Pastor . . . Let Christ Preach

Sam Allberry

If preaching isn’t simply transferring data or trying to make people feel something through our charisma, what is it?

Related Resources

Connect with Us!

• Retail Partners
• International Distributors
• About the ESV
• Read Online
• Mobile Apps
• Crossway Review Program
• Exam Copies
• History of Crossway
• Statement of Faith
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service
• Submissions
• Permissions

© 2001 – 2024 Crossway, USA

• Newsletters
• Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

That Viral Essay Wasn’t About Age Gaps. It Was About Marrying Rich.

But both tactics are flawed if you want to have any hope of becoming yourself..

Women are wisest, a viral essay in New York magazine’s the Cut argues , to maximize their most valuable cultural assets— youth and beauty—and marry older men when they’re still very young. Doing so, 27-year-old writer Grazie Sophia Christie writes, opens up a life of ease, and gets women off of a male-defined timeline that has our professional and reproductive lives crashing irreconcilably into each other. Sure, she says, there are concessions, like one’s freedom and entire independent identity. But those are small gives in comparison to a life in which a person has no adult responsibilities, including the responsibility to become oneself.

This is all framed as rational, perhaps even feminist advice, a way for women to quit playing by men’s rules and to reject exploitative capitalist demands—a choice the writer argues is the most obviously intelligent one. That other Harvard undergraduates did not busy themselves trying to attract wealthy or soon-to-be-wealthy men seems to flummox her (taking her “high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out” to the Harvard Business School library, “I could not understand why my female classmates did not join me, given their intelligence”). But it’s nothing more than a recycling of some of the oldest advice around: For women to mold themselves around more-powerful men, to never grow into independent adults, and to find happiness in a state of perpetual pre-adolescence, submission, and dependence. These are odd choices for an aspiring writer (one wonders what, exactly, a girl who never wants to grow up and has no idea who she is beyond what a man has made her into could possibly have to write about). And it’s bad advice for most human beings, at least if what most human beings seek are meaningful and happy lives.

But this is not an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying older men. It is an essay about the benefits of younger women marrying rich men. Most of the purported upsides—a paid-for apartment, paid-for vacations, lives split between Miami and London—are less about her husband’s age than his wealth. Every 20-year-old in the country could decide to marry a thirtysomething and she wouldn’t suddenly be gifted an eternal vacation.

Which is part of what makes the framing of this as an age-gap essay both strange and revealing. The benefits the writer derives from her relationship come from her partner’s money. But the things she gives up are the result of both their profound financial inequality and her relative youth. Compared to her and her peers, she writes, her husband “struck me instead as so finished, formed.” By contrast, “At 20, I had felt daunted by the project of becoming my ideal self.” The idea of having to take responsibility for her own life was profoundly unappealing, as “adulthood seemed a series of exhausting obligations.” Tying herself to an older man gave her an out, a way to skip the work of becoming an adult by allowing a father-husband to mold her to his desires. “My husband isn’t my partner,” she writes. “He’s my mentor, my lover, and, only in certain contexts, my friend. I’ll never forget it, how he showed me around our first place like he was introducing me to myself: This is the wine you’ll drink, where you’ll keep your clothes, we vacation here, this is the other language we’ll speak, you’ll learn it, and I did.”

These, by the way, are the things she says are benefits of marrying older.

The downsides are many, including a basic inability to express a full range of human emotion (“I live in an apartment whose rent he pays and that constrains the freedom with which I can ever be angry with him”) and an understanding that she owes back, in some other form, what he materially provides (the most revealing line in the essay may be when she claims that “when someone says they feel unappreciated, what they really mean is you’re in debt to them”). It is clear that part of what she has paid in exchange for a paid-for life is a total lack of any sense of self, and a tacit agreement not to pursue one. “If he ever betrayed me and I had to move on, I would survive,” she writes, “but would find in my humor, preferences, the way I make coffee or the bed nothing that he did not teach, change, mold, recompose, stamp with his initials.”

Reading Christie’s essay, I thought of another one: Joan Didion’s on self-respect , in which Didion argues that “character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.” If we lack self-respect, “we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us.” Self-respect may not make life effortless and easy. But it means that whenever “we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously un- comfortable bed, the one we make ourselves,” at least we can fall asleep.

It can feel catty to publicly criticize another woman’s romantic choices, and doing so inevitably opens one up to accusations of jealousy or pettiness. But the stories we tell about marriage, love, partnership, and gender matter, especially when they’re told in major culture-shaping magazines. And it’s equally as condescending to say that women’s choices are off-limits for critique, especially when those choices are shared as universal advice, and especially when they neatly dovetail with resurgent conservative efforts to make women’s lives smaller and less independent. “Marry rich” is, as labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards put it in Bloomberg, essentially the Republican plan for mothers. The model of marriage as a hierarchy with a breadwinning man on top and a younger, dependent, submissive woman meeting his needs and those of their children is not exactly a fresh or groundbreaking ideal. It’s a model that kept women trapped and miserable for centuries.

It’s also one that profoundly stunted women’s intellectual and personal growth. In her essay for the Cut, Christie seems to believe that a life of ease will abet a life freed up for creative endeavors, and happiness. But there’s little evidence that having material abundance and little adversity actually makes people happy, let alone more creatively generativ e . Having one’s basic material needs met does seem to be a prerequisite for happiness. But a meaningful life requires some sense of self, an ability to look outward rather than inward, and the intellectual and experiential layers that come with facing hardship and surmounting it.

A good and happy life is not a life in which all is easy. A good and happy life (and here I am borrowing from centuries of philosophers and scholars) is one characterized by the pursuit of meaning and knowledge, by deep connections with and service to other people (and not just to your husband and children), and by the kind of rich self-knowledge and satisfaction that comes from owning one’s choices, taking responsibility for one’s life, and doing the difficult and endless work of growing into a fully-formed person—and then evolving again. Handing everything about one’s life over to an authority figure, from the big decisions to the minute details, may seem like a path to ease for those who cannot stomach the obligations and opportunities of their own freedom. It’s really an intellectual and emotional dead end.

And what kind of man seeks out a marriage like this, in which his only job is to provide, but very much is owed? What kind of man desires, as the writer cast herself, a raw lump of clay to be molded to simply fill in whatever cracks in his life needed filling? And if the transaction is money and guidance in exchange for youth, beauty, and pliability, what happens when the young, beautiful, and pliable party inevitably ages and perhaps feels her backbone begin to harden? What happens if she has children?

The thing about using youth and beauty as a currency is that those assets depreciate pretty rapidly. There is a nearly endless supply of young and beautiful women, with more added each year. There are smaller numbers of wealthy older men, and the pool winnows down even further if one presumes, as Christie does, that many of these men want to date and marry compliant twentysomethings. If youth and beauty are what you’re exchanging for a man’s resources, you’d better make sure there’s something else there—like the basic ability to provide for yourself, or at the very least a sense of self—to back that exchange up.

It is hard to be an adult woman; it’s hard to be an adult, period. And many women in our era of unfinished feminism no doubt find plenty to envy about a life in which they don’t have to work tirelessly to barely make ends meet, don’t have to manage the needs of both children and man-children, could simply be taken care of for once. This may also explain some of the social media fascination with Trad Wives and stay-at-home girlfriends (some of that fascination is also, I suspect, simply a sexual submission fetish , but that’s another column). Fantasies of leisure reflect a real need for it, and American women would be far better off—happier, freer—if time and resources were not so often so constrained, and doled out so inequitably.

But the way out is not actually found in submission, and certainly not in electing to be carried by a man who could choose to drop you at any time. That’s not a life of ease. It’s a life of perpetual insecurity, knowing your spouse believes your value is decreasing by the day while his—an actual dollar figure—rises. A life in which one simply allows another adult to do all the deciding for them is a stunted life, one of profound smallness—even if the vacations are nice.

• Atlanta Hawks
• Boston Celtics
• Brooklyn Nets
• Charlotte Hornets
• Chicago Bulls
• Cleveland Cavaliers
• Detroit Pistons
• Indiana Pacers
• Milwaukee Bucks
• New York Knicks
• Orlando Magic
• Philadelphia 76ers
• Toronto Raptors
• Washington Wizards
• Dallas Mavericks
• Denver Nuggets
• Golden State Warriors
• Houston Rockets
• Los Angeles Clippers
• Los Angeles Lakers
• Memphis Grizzlies
• Minnesota Timberwolves
• New Orleans Pelicans
• Oklahoma City Thunder
• Phoenix Suns
• Portland Trail Blazers
• Sacramento Kings
• San Antonio Spurs
• International
• Basketball Betting
• HardwoodHeroics.com

Sports. Honestly. Since 2011

How will the celtics rotation change in the playoffs.

• April 6, 2024
• Eamon Cassels

With the NBA playoffs on the horizon, it’s time to start thinking about teams in a playoff setting. In the playoffs, every team shortens their rotation and plays their stars more. How this impacts bench rotation players is interesting. For the Celtics last year Grant Williams had a significant minutes reduction in the playoffs. Of course, matchups and performance in the series play a big role in these rotation changes. However, given what we know about these players and past trends we still have a good idea of how the Celtics rotation will change in the playoffs. Let’s dive into how the Celtics rotation will change during this year’s upcoming playoffs.

The Starters

Tracking the starters’ minutes in the playoffs is less interesting. Because all five starters will likely get slight minute increases. Jayson Tatum is a candidate to see one of the larger minute increases. He’s currently averaging 35.8 minutes per game but played 40 minutes per game in last year’s playoffs . Kristaps Porzingis will also get one of the more significant increases. He’s currently at 29.8 minutes per game which is largely a precaution to prevent injury. Look for Porzingis’ minutes to move closer to 35 minutes per game, especially in series where the Celtics are playing against teams with a lot of size.

Jaylen Brown could also see a bump up in minutes. He’s currently averaging 33.6 minutes per game if Brown’s brilliant play continues this could move up to 37 plus per game. Brown averaged 37.6 minutes last playoffs. Jrue Holiday and Derrick White are receiving 33.1 and 32.7 minutes per game respectively. While both players could see slight increases expect this number to stay within the same range.

This year Al Horford perfectly adapted to his new role and became a super sixth man. Currently, Horford is averaging 27 minutes per game last playoffs he averaged 30.8 minutes per game. Even with his advanced age and the presence of Porzingis, Horford may play within this same range. Given the Celtics star power and Horford’s age, it’s unlikely he will play 30-plus minutes a game but somewhere within the range of 25 and 28 feels realistic. Mazzulla will likely always want one of Porzingis or Horford on the court in the playoffs. He also likes to use supersized lineups with Porzingis and Horford together. Horford’s defensive and three-point skill set combined with his incredible experience will allow him to get big minutes in the playoffs. Ultimately, Horford is one of the most trusted Celtics and his playoff experience will be very valuable.

Payton Pritchard

Payton Pritchard is having a career year both in terms of production and minutes. Averaging 8.8 points and 21.8 minutes. This includes a stretch in the last 10 games where Pritchard is averaging 13.7 points and 5.1 assists per game. Pritchard is a spark plug off the bench he has real value as a shooter and playmaker. The trouble for Pritchard in the playoffs is his six-foot-one frame. In the playoffs, matchup hunting becomes more commonplace making it difficult to have even one bad defender on the court. Pritchard has never averaged more than 13 minutes per game in the playoffs; he averaged 5.5 minutes per game last playoffs. However, Pritchard has improved a lot and deserves solid minutes, especially in the early rounds. Look for Pritchard to receive around 14-17 minutes per game come playoff time.

Sam Hauser is another Celtic having a career year. Averaging 21.6 minutes per game, Hauser has established himself as one of the league’s best spot-up shooters netting 42% of his three-point attempts. This skill set will keep Hauser on the floor during the playoffs. Furthermore, Hauser is an underrated defender despite being constantly attacked Hauser has great positioning and IQ defensively. This allows Hauser to hold up defensively which will be crucial in the playoffs. The only question around Hauser in the playoffs is his lack of experience. He only received 6.9 minutes last playoffs. However, with his skill set and improvements, Hauser’s play should translate to the playoffs. While his minutes could slightly dip to around 17-19 per game look for Hauser to be an important part of the Celtics playoff success.

Luke Kornet

Luke Kornet has become a more important part of the Celtics rotation this year. Averaging 15.3 minutes per game it will be interesting to see what Kornet’s role is come playoff time. Last year he only averaged four minutes in the playoffs compared to 11.7 minutes in the regular season. Kornet has solid value, as a lob threat, and shot blocker. But his mobility and playoff experience could make him tough to trust in a playoff setting. The Celtics will also lean on Porzingis and Horford more in the playoffs.

Kornet has had more opportunities with Porzingis and Horford consistently taking games off. As a result, I see Kornet’s minutes getting a similar reduction to last year seven or eight minutes feels like a solid amount for Kornet. Teams typically cut their playoff rotation to eight players as the ninth guy off the bench Kornet could completely fall out of the rotation. However, Boston may turn to him more in an early series where they need size.

Xavier Tillman

The Xavier Tillman -Kornet rotation battle will be something to watch in the playoffs. Tillman averages 14.3 minutes per game just behind Kornet’s 15.3 average. However, Tillman offers a different skill set. Tillman is a high-IQ player on both ends of the floor. He has solid mobility and passing with a knack for rebounding. This skill set makes Tillman a player you can trust in the playoffs. Furthermore in last year’s playoffs with the Grizzlies Tillman averaged 30.5 minutes, eight points, and eight rebounds per game. Although Mazzulla appears to trust Kornet more right now with Tillman’s skill set and playoff experience the Celtics could turn to him more. It’s very unlikely Tillman sees a minute increase considering how playoff rotations always get smaller. However, it’s possible Tillman gets slightly more minutes than Kornet or takes all his minutes entirely.

Prized Pickpocket Returns to Knicks Starting Lineup

The New York Knicks need all the good vibes they can get after Julius Randle was ruled out for the remainder of the 2023-24 season.

Nets Looking for Rival’s Help Amid Head Coach Search?

Since going 21-33 under former head coach Jacque Vaughn, the Brooklyn Nets have gone 9-14 under Kevin Ollie. The latter has provided structure and decreased

Cleveland Cavaliers Likely To Shop Star Guard This Summer After Recent News

Donovan Mitchell reportedly wants out of Cleveland. Will the Cavaliers accommodate his desires? According to Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report, Mitchell will likely decline his

NBA Legend And Analyst Joins NBL Next Stars Program

Kenny ‘The Jet’ Smith has had a successful career as a former NBA player and current TV personality. Smith played college basketball at North Carolina

Send Us A Message

Stocks retreat, bonds rally after Fed officials cool rate-cut outlook

Get a look at the day ahead in U.S. and global markets with the Morning Bid U.S. newsletter. Sign up here.

Reporting by Herbert Lash; additional reporting by Wayne Cole in Sydney; Editing by David Evans and Leslie Adler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab

Toronto market posts longest weekly winning streak in 5 years

Canada's resource-linked main stock index rose on Friday to a new record high as higher commodity prices boosted the outlook for corporate earnings and investors grew more confident the Bank of Canada would cut interest rates in the coming months.