How to Shorten an Essay: 4 Techniques to Reduce Word Count
If you need to shorten your essay by 100-500 words, or even more, you can use one or more of four techniques. You can clean up your sentences, remove repetition, summarize your examples, and/or cut out an entire section.
One of my subscribers recently asked me, “ How do I compress an essay of 700-1000 words, or even more, to just 300 words? ”
In this tutorial I will show you four easy ways to shorten your essay by as much or as little as you wish. I am giving them to you in the order you should try them out.
Here are four techniques to shorten your essay:
Technique #1: Sentence Cleanup
When I taught essay writing in college, I noticed that students wrote sentences that were just too wordy.
They used 20 words where 10 would have probably done the trick. If you examine your sentences, you’ll often find that you can say the same thing in much fewer words.
“In my opinion, there are many people who want to lose weight.”
This sentence contains 12 words.
Here’s how we can shorten it by performing a Sentence Cleanup.
First, you never have to say, “ In my opinion, ” because if it were not your opinion, you wouldn’t be stating it. Okay? So, let’s cross out “ in my opinion. ”
“ In my opinion, there are many people who want to lose weight.”
We just cut out three words.
Next, the phrase “ there are ” is usually unnecessary, and if you take it out, your sentence will become more elegant. So, let’s do it. Let’s just cross it out.
“ There are many people who want to lose weight.”
We also have to cross out the extra word “ who ” because it is only needed if you use “ there are. ”
We just got rid of three more words.
And so our sentence becomes:
“Many people want to lose weight.”
How many words is that? That is now a six word sentence. Guess what – we just cut this sentence in half.
Do this enough times in your essay, and it will get a lot shorter.
“How do I cut out 200 words from my essay to make it shorter?”
This sentence contains 14 words. Let’s perform a Sentence Cleanup.
Notice that it is pretty obvious that to cut out 200 words from an essay will make it shorter. Therefore, stating that you want to do it “ to make it shorter ” is unnecessary.
If we get rid of that phrase, we’ll cut out 4 words from this sentence and make it a lot more elegant.
“How do I cut out 200 words from my essay to make it shorter ?”
Technique #2: Removing Repetition
Repetition can be found on all levels – in a sentence, in a paragraph, or a section. When you reduce or eliminate repetition in your essay, you are making it less redundant. “Redundant” just means repetitive and therefore useless.
In the last example we just did, we eliminated a redundancy from a sentence. And that’s part of a Sentence Cleanup. But you can also find and eliminate entire redundant sentences.
Look for repetitive phrases, sentences, and even passages in your content and remove them.
Students often repeat things over and over, using different words, thinking that they’re writing great content. Those are your opportunities to significantly shorten your essay while improving it at the same time.
Here’s an example from a fictitious student essay. Let’s say the student writes about his trip to Paris and states:
“ I found that Parisians are very nice if you talk to them in French. ”
And then, in the same or even a different paragraph or section, the following sentence would appear:
“Parisians can be very nice people, but they really prefer that you speak French with them.”
Well, the two sentences say the same thing, just using different words.
So, what do you do?
Pick the longer sentence and just delete it.
Sometimes you will find a whole paragraph in your essay that is repetitive and can be removed without the essay losing any meaning. If you find such a paragraph, just delete it.
Technique #3: Zooming Out
Make sure that you go through your essay using the first two techniques before you employ this and the next one.
The only case where you would do Zooming Out first would be if you had to shorten your essay drastically – by 30% or more.
If you’ve cleaned up all your sentences and removed all repetitive content, and you still need to lose hundreds of words, the Zooming Out technique will really help.
Here’s how it works.
You may have heard that in essay writing, you are supposed to proceed from general to specific. Whether you stick to this rule really well in your essay or not, I want you to notice something.
In your essay, you make statements that are:
- very general
- less general
- somewhat specific
- very specific
The most general statement in your essay is the thesis because it summarizes the entire essay. And the most specific parts of your essay are examples .
So, in order to shorten your essay, you can summarize your examples. I call this Zooming Out because you are taking something that was very specific (zoomed in) and making it more general (zoomed out).
Let’s say you’re writing about the harms of second-hand smoking. And in one of the sections you provide an example of your friend or someone in the news who became seriously ill because she lived with a smoker for a long time:
“My friend Isabelle was married to a chain smoker. Her husband refused not only to give up his habit but even to reduce it. As years went by, Isabelle began to notice some respiratory symptoms. At first, she developed a light but persistent cough. Then, she started to feel out of breath more and more often. When she finally went to a pulmonologist, a test revealed that she had COPD, a serious lung disease.”
This example is 74 words long. And this is your opportunity to shorten your essay dramatically.
You can simply contract this example into one short sentence and write something like this:
“A friend of mine developed lung disease after having lived with a chain smoker for twelve years.”
Now, this sentence contains only 17 words. We just cut out 57 words just by Zooming Out on one example.
We are Zooming Out because we are no longer exploring this example in detail. We simply provide a fact without giving a lot of specific information.
So, look for these detailed examples in your essay and just summarize each of them into one short sentence.
Technique #4: Cutting out a Section
This technique works very well to cut out a big chunk of your essay in one fell swoop.
Let’s say that you wrote an essay in which you have four supporting points to prove your main point, your thesis.
If this is a 2,000-word essay, then each section is approximately 500 words long. But do you really need four reasons/sections to support your point?
Is it possible that if you provide only three supporting points, your essay will still work very well?
For example, if you argue that apples are a great food, you could have four supporting points, claiming that apples are:
But what if you simply took out one of these points? Let’s say that you eliminate the section about the portability of apples.
Will your essay still work? Sure it will. It will work just fine with the three remaining supporting points. And you just cut out 500 words (in a 2,000-word essay).
After you have cut out a section, make sure to go back to your thesis statement and edit it to reflect the change.
I’ll leave you with one final tip. When trying to choose which sentence, paragraph, or section to cut out from your essay, go for the content that you know is not the best.
For example, you may have a section in your essay where you quote too much. Or, perhaps you were not very careful in paraphrasing, and your passage sounds too much like the original source. These would be great bits of content to get rid of.
I hope this was helpful. Now go ahead and shorten your essay to your heart’s desire!
How to Write a 300 Word Essay – Simple Tutorial
How to expand an essay – 4 tips to increase the word count, 10 solid essay writing tips to help you improve quickly, essay writing for beginners: 6-step guide with examples, 6 simple ways to improve sentence structure in your essays.
Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.
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5 Best ways to Make an Essay Shorter
If you are like me, you will find that you often struggle to stay within the word count in your essays.
In this article, I will show you exactly how to reduce your word count in your essay.
If you go over the word count in an essay, there are some strategies to make your essay shorter that make sure you keep your marks high and, sometimes, make them even higher.
The trick to going over the word count is seeing this as a positive: you now have the chance to only present your absolute best arguments.
This is a luxury other students in your class just don’t have. Reducing your word count is actually your chance to get even further ahead!
The best essays have no dull, irrelevant or sub-par content. Every paragraph is on-point and designed to win you more and more marks. When editing your work, keep this in mind.
Below, I introduce five important strategies that will help you to reduce your word count in a way that will actually increase your mark!
- Delete your three Worst Paragraphs. …
- Listen for Weaknesses using Google Translate or Microsoft Excel Read-out-Loud.
- Re-Read the Marking Criteria.
- Shorten Paragraphs over 7 Sentences Long.
- Delete Irrelevant Words.
1. Delete your three Worst Paragraphs
I usually aim to go over my word count intentionally so I can creatively make the essay shorter in a way that increases my marks.
If I go over the word count, I can look back over my piece and find my worst performing paragraphs and remove them.
This not only helps me to ensure I present my best work to the teacher, it also forces me to admit that some of my writing is better than others. It keeps me critical of myself and always aiming for improvement.
Removing the worst paragraphs of an essay also ensures there are less boring, pointless or unanalytical sections of an essay. It means that the paragraphs I submit are the best sections – and that the teacher will be impressed throughout the piece.
To assess which paragraphs are best and worst, I do the following things:
- Find the paragraphs with the least or worst references in them. Teachers will scan over a paragraph to assess the quality of the references in them. Paragraphs with minimal referencing, too much referencing of just one source, or only references to non-academic sources, instantly get marked down by the teacher before they’re even read. These are also often the paragraphs that provide the least depth of information. That is because finding sources to reference in a paragraph often leads to adding detail that the source has provided.
- Find the paragraphs that are least convincing. When I re-read my paragraphs, sometimes I just think ‘the argument here is my weakest’. These are the ones I want to cut: they’re ones that won’t get me top marks. Teachers will lower your marks for any paragraph that doesn’t shine – so you’re best removing it.
- Rate your paragraphs out of 10. I often tell my students to delete their three worst paragraphs and they say ‘I like all of them!’ In this case, you will have to get brutal with yourself: rate every paragraph out of 10. This will help you make the hard decisions about which to lose.
- Combine two paragraphs into one. Sometimes I really like one sentence from a paragraph but don’t like the rest. If this is the case for you, have a go at extracting those good sentences from one paragraph and placing them in another one. Then, you can delete the not-so-good sentences from the original paragraph. If you do this, make sure all paragraphs still cohere around one key point.
2. Listen for Weaknesses using Google Translate or Microsoft Excel Read-out-Loud
Google Translate and Microsoft Excel both have read-out-loud options. Google Translate’s option is the easiest.
For Google Translate, simply search for ‘Google Translate’ on your internet search engine (or just click here ) to access it. Then, copy and paste the text into the translate box and press the ‘listen’ button:
For Microsoft Excel, you will need paste the whole essay into any cell and then activate the read out loud option.
This procedure is somewhat more complicated than Google Translate, but if you want to give it a go, you can get instructions from the Microsoft help website and go from there
Hearing your paper read out loud back to you can help you to identify which paragraphs or sentences are worth removing.
Here are some things to keep in mind while listening to the computer read your paper out loud to you:
- If a sentence feels like it’s too long and exhausting to listen to, you can bet your teacher will be exhausted, too;
- If a phrase seems awkward to hear, it will be awkward to read;
- If the paper seems to have lost its focus on the topic area, you’ll need to remove that section or edit it to ensure it links to the essay question.
Pause the read-out-loud each time you find a sentence long or awkward and work on shortening it.
Too often, students think long, complicated sentences with fancy-sounding words will get them marks. In reality, it’s the opposite.
Being able to describe complex concepts in a very easy, understandable way is a skill all top students learn to master.
The read-out-loud option can help you to see your paper from your marker’s perspective. Use it to your advantage and listen out for anything that sounds complicated, confusing, awkward or exhausting. Delete it or shorten it immediately.
Remember, the goal is to have your paper sounding short and clear.
3. Re-Read the Marking Criteria
When editing your work, it is best to have the marking criteria by your side at all times.
The marking criteria is the list of things the teacher is looking for when marking your essay. Sometimes it’s also called:
- Marking Criteria;
- Indicative Content;
- Marking Rubric;
- Learning Outcomes
These should be easy to find. Go to your course webpage (usually on Blackboard, Canvas, or Moodle depending on your university) and find where your teacher has provided details about your assessment. If there are marking criteria, this is where it would be.
Sometimes, teachers don’t provide marking criteria.
If the teacher has simply provided an essay topic or question, that means the chances are they don’t have a list of outcomes they are marking your piece against. In these instances, you will have to simply rely on the essay question.
When you have your marking criteria or essay question by your side, read each paragraph then look back to your marking criteria.
You need to ask yourself:
- Does this paragraph directly answer the essay question or marking criteria?
- Does this paragraph add new information that helps me answer the essay question?
If your paragraph is not linked directly to the essay question or marking criteria, you’ve just identified the paragraph you need to remove to reduce your word count.
4. Shorten Paragraphs over 7 Sentences Long
Teachers hate long paragraphs. Teachers are just like you and me. They get bored very fast.
Chances are, any paragraph over 7 sentences isn’t being fully read. The teacher might have only read the first three sentences and made their judgement about your work based on those three sentences!
That’s why the ideal paragraph should be between 4 and 7 sentences long. This length helps to ensure:
- You haven’t gone off on a tangent;
- You have provided some explanatory or example sentences, but not too many;
- You have focused only on one key idea in the paragraph.
Your paragraphs that are more than 7 sentences long will be your low-hanging fruit for reducing your word count. Read through each of these paragraphs and try to find a way to reduce it to only 6 sentences. Find those sentences that seem to drag on or add nothing useful to your discussion and delete them.
By reducing all paragraphs over 7 sentences long, you won’t only bring your word count down. You will also make your essay much clearer and easy to read.
In this way, you’re both reducing your word count and increasing your mark.
5. Delete Irrelevant Words
Going through your paper and deleting irrelevant words can often save you several hundred words and could shorten your essay enough to get you back within the required word count.
Irrelevant words are words that are overly descriptive, redundant, too emotive, or in first-person. These words tend to get the same point across in far more words than necessary.
Furthermore, you will find that in removing overly descriptive, redundant, emotive and first-person words, your work will be much improved.
This is because academic writing is supposed to be formal and direct. Writing too many words can make your marker think you have poor communication skills and do not understand academic writing requirements.
Check below for examples of how to reduce your word count by removing overly descriptive, redundant, overly emotive and first-person language.
- Overly Descriptive: The amazing thing about the industrial revolution was that it brought about enormous changes to the ways people transported themselves and communicated across the globe in such a short amount of time.
- Alternative: The industrial revolution brought about rapid changes in transportation and communication globally.
- Redundant: The sum of five hundred dollars.
- Alternative: $500
- Redundant: It was quite unique.
- Alternative: It was unique.
- Redundant: It was triangular in shape.
- Alternative: It was triangular.
- Too Emotive: The disgusting thing about communism is that it refuses to allow poor everyday people to improve their lives by creating their own businesses that might flourish and really help our their communities, too!
- Alternative: Communism prevents citizens from starting businesses that can help bring people and their communities out of poverty.
- In first Person: In summary, I believe that the Industrial Revolution was good for the whole world.
- Alternative: In summary, the Industrial Revolution was good for the world.
- In first Person: This author argues that Thomas Edison was the greatest mind of his time.
- Alternative: Thomas Edison was the greatest mind of his time.
Making your essay shorter can sometimes be an absolute nightmare.
By following the above five steps, you can find easy ways to reduce your word count while also improving your work.
If you are an advanced or ambitious student, you might find that you always go over the word count. This isn’t necessarily a problem.
Try to look at going over the word count as a positive thing. Going over the word count means you have the freedom to only present your best work. You have the chance to delete anything that isn’t absolutely focused on gaining you marks.
In the end, your final submission will be cleaner, easier to read and easier to mark. Hopefully, this will see your marks growing even more!
Let’s review one more time the five top ways the best students reduce their word count in an essay:
Five Top Ways to Make an Essay Shorter
- Delete your three Worst Paragraphs
- Use Google Translate or Microsoft Excel to Read your Paper out Loud
- Re-Read the Marking Criteria
- Shorten Paragraphs over 6 Sentences Long
- Delete Irrelevant Words
Chris Drew (PhD)
Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]
- Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
- Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
- Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons
- Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 17 Adversity Examples (And How to Overcome Them)
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How to Shorten a College Essay to Meet the Word Limit
The college application essay is one of the most important components of applying to college. Application essays require a lot of time and effort, so you want to make sure you don’t make easy-to-overlook mistakes such as going over your college application word count.
Unfortunately, many students leave their admissions essay as the last step of their application process after studying for the SAT and learning how to request letters of recommendation. High school students don’t have the time, energy, experience, or organizational skills to prioritize their essay word count and word limits when writing their draft and receiving personal statement editing , recommendation letter editing , or cover letter editing , depending on your admissions documents.
The good news is that being over the word limit in your admissions essay is not the end of the world. You’ve managed to output a lot of writing for your college essay. That’s a good starting point for revisions. All quality and successful admissions essays go through the revision process, and a big part of the revision process includes reducing word count.
This article will explore the following topics:
How flexible is the college essay word limit?
- Can you go over/under the college essay word count?
- Why staying under application essay word limits is so hard
- How to shorten the length of your admissions essay
- Get help to cut down your college essay word count
- FAQ about how to shorten your essay length: Advice from editing experts
Your essay must stay within the required word limit whether you’re applying directly to your university or through the Common Application, which has become synonymous with the college application process.
The Common App specifies the word limit required for each essay. Even though this has changed over the years– from 650 to 500 words in the past –the current Common App essay word count is somewhere between 250 to 650 words.
Can you go over the essay word limit?
You must be careful about staying within the word limit for each application. Look at the essay prompts closely. Unless specified, never go over the word limit for a college application essay .
It might be impossible to go over the essay word limit
Some universities may allow you to mail in a copy of your admissions essay, but most will use online applications with text fields that may cut off your essay if it goes over the maximum word count.
Admissions officers may just stop reading or toss out your essay
Admissions officers are busier than Santa’s elves during the winter holiday season. They read dozens if not hundreds of essays per day, and most of those will be rejected. If you fail your application, make sure it’s due to the content or something else; failing due to a simple word limit mistake would be a waste!
Following directions is a key component of being a student
If you told someone to do something and you were in the position to enforce it, would you accept the wrong result if 100 other people were waiting and did it right? Of course not. Therefore, the least you can do is to follow any instructions regarding college essay word limits to show admissions officers you will be a competent student at their school.
Can you go under the essay word limit?
While going over the word limit is a clear and decisive issue, it’s a bit trickier to determine how short your college application essay should be.
Pay attention to minimum word limits and word ranges
Some essay prompts will have a suggested minimum– for example, 500 to 650 words. As mentioned above, online text input fields may cut you off at the maximum word count. Some may even have some red text reminding you to input at least 500 words. But you should always double-check these word count guidelines.
The essay is your opportunity to shine
Why would you be so lazy as to only write the minimum amount for your personal statement? This is a great opportunity for you to stand above and apart from other applicants, and choosing your words wisely while presenting your story fully is important.
Add some concrete examples
Examples of events and actions can help you meet the correct word count range. This also reduces redundancy in your writing while reinforcing and supporting your main points. College admissions officers love to hear about your unique experiences.
Why do students find essay word limits difficult?
Why staying under essay word limits is so hard
We now know several reasons why keeping your college essay length in the correct word range so you don’t violate any word limit is important. But why is staying under essay word limits so hard?
The essay has no structure or organization
The most effective things are stated simply. And the most effective college admissions essays organize, structure, and communicate efficiently. That doesn’t mean your personal statement will be short; it means that each point should be concise.
For example, split your writing into clear paragraphs. Organize your essay into separate sections for your academic, leadership, volunteer, and personal experiences. Be sure to add a section on extracurricular activities. Make your structure clear to the reader so that word count will only be a minor consideration.
The essay does not focus on the essay prompt
If you are having difficulty cutting your word count, look for sentences or even entire paragraphs that are not relevant to the essay prompt. Adding unnecessary information is an easy trap to fall into. Your anecdotes or stories might be interesting and funny, but do they help illustrate why you want to attend UC or Stanford?
The essay lacks proper vocabulary and verb usage
This tip is more subtle but can really help you reduce essay length and word count. When writing, always use the most appropriate verb, preferably one verb only. It will drastically reduce your word count overall. This is because when you choose the wrong verb, you often must add more words to clarify.
Average/Wordy: “I hit the ball so hard it went over the fence.”
Exceptional/Concise: “I smashed the ball over the fence.”
The verb “hit” is a solely descriptive action verb. It provides no context about the degree to which you hit the ball, which is why “so hard” or other adverbs are naturally added to regular verbs to provide extra information. Changing the verb completely to something more engaging like “smashed” provides all the context you need. And you just saved 4 out of 11 words!
The essay uses a traditional introduction/conclusion structure
Many students applying to college fall into the trap of trying to fit their essay into a traditional structure consisting of an introduction, body, and conclusion.
With only 650 words, you can recover your word count by skipping the formal rigid essay structure. Instead, dive right into your essay. Your content and experiences are the most important components of your application essay, and you need every word.
Tips to reduce the length of your application essay
Here are some simple tips to cut down the length of your essay. Start with some broad admissions essay tips first and move on to the easier grammar and proofreading-related steps below.
Remove adverbs
Here’s how to find if your admissions essay has a lot of adverbs: Look for “ly” words around your verbs. Often, these types of adverbs are just filler words and a reflection of spoken conversational English rather than accomplishing anything meaningful. Go through your essay and decide if each adverb is truly necessary.
Unnecessary adverbs: “ate quickly”, “ran quickly”
Stronger verbs: “devoured”, “rushed”
Here is a list of common adverbs you can remove to reduce your essay’s word count:
Remove filler words
Filler words are another crutch or may just be used out of habit. Go through your essay right now with “ctrl + f” or “cmd + f” for Mac users and delete every instance of actually and very. We promise they add nothing important to your writing.
Example
Filler words: “I found myself actually surprised about how much I learned”
No filler words: “I was surprised at how much I learned”
The word “actually” is pretty much useless. You must clearly state that you were surprised. Further, “finding yourself” is a conversational filler that comes off as unprofessional.
Avoid using too many prepositional phrases
Prepositions are common linking words such as of , to , for , by , from , in , and on . These are highly dependent on the context of your personal statement, especially when you reference narrative elements in your past. Go through your essay carefully and make changes to reword your sentences and cut down your essay word count.
Too many prepositional phrases: “I struggled to work in a team in order to get a good grade in the group project”
Fewer prepositional phrases: “I struggled with the team aspect of the group project”
There’s no need to verbalize that you worked in a team or to mention the grad aspect. Furthermore, these prepositional phrases add extra length to your sentences, which will not help you meet the essay word count.
Be clear and concise. Cut down your word count.
Be direct and decisive in your writing
Students are often told to avoid overgeneralizing groups of people or ideas but that they should also be precise in their English writing. This can lead to the author failing to commit to a concept and coming off as unsure or weak.
An overreliance on modifier words such as adjectives and adverbs is often the culprit.
Too many modifiers: “Although my high school grades were sometimes slightly less than average, I was able to outperform many of my classmates, who often struggled to improve.”
Stronger verbs and adjectives: “Although my high school grades were inconsistent, I later outperformed my classmates, who struggled to improve.”
You can see how the improved version appears more matter-of-fact, consistent, and even confident despite the admission of lower grades.
Don’t be a narrator
Do not waste time restating the common app essay prompt or telling the reader what you will discuss next. This would be fine for an informative article (like the one you’re reading now), but not for an application essay. Eliminating these structural road markers will greatly cut down your word count.
Too much narration: “I will start by discussing my leadership experiences…” or “The next important part of my academic background was my….”
Less narration: “I gained leadership experience when…” or “One of my academic achievements was…”
Consider college essay editors for extra help
Get help from a professional college essay editor
The college admissions and application essay landscape is very competitive, and this has led students to seek an edge. One reason why application essay editing services are so popular is due to their speed and quality. They free up students to prepare more college applications and focus on the content of their personal statements instead of drilling down things like grammar and essay word limits.
One of the best things applicants can do is write as many college admissions essays as possible without worrying at all about grammar or word count. Organize your essays by the essay prompt category (e.g. “Why X university?” or “Tell us about an obstacle you overcame”).
Then, send ONE type of each essay to a reputable proofreading company that offers college essay editing services . When you get your changes back, apply them to all essays of that category. This minimizes the cost but gets you the most benefits.
FAQ: How to shorten your admissions essay
Advice from our editing experts , can a college essay be longer than 650 words.
- The standard word count for the Common app essay is 650 words. Rule 1) Follow any explicit word limit guidelines. Rule 2) Always go under the limit as opposed to over the word limit.
Can you use contractions and abbreviations in college essays?
- Yes. For college application essays, use contractions and abbreviations.
Do citations count towards the college essay word limit?
- Every word in the text field or on your page counts towards the essay word limit. Avoid using citations in a college essay as it is not an academic paper.
Does the title count towards the college essay word limit?
- Do not restate the essay prompt or add a title to your essay. If you are submitting a separate MS Word document, add the title or essay prompt (along with your name) as the .doc name.
How many pages is 650 words?
- A 650-word college application essay will be under 1 page.
How do you shorten long sentences?
- Start by 1) eliminating helper verbs and adverbs, 2) removing redundancy, 3) remove filler words such as “very” and “actually,” and 4) make sure every sentence supports the overall point of the paragraph.
How many paragraphs is a 650-word essay?
- A 500-word essay is 3 to 4 paragraphs. A 650-word essay is 4-5 paragraphs. Your essay should be less than 1 page single or double-spaced.
- Our Process
How to Shorten an Essay – Steps with Examples
Published by Ellie Cross at November 10th, 2021 , Revised On January 31, 2024
Do you need to shorten an essay because you stuffed it with too many unnecessary arguments and information? Did you use too many unwanted phrases to increase the wordiness? Worry not! This article provides the steps you need to shorten an essay and keep it focused.
With enhancing levels of education, the level of scrutiny also went up substantially. Teachers and graders do not appreciate wordy and lengthy essays that astray from topics or arguments. Deviation from the central argument can result in the deduction of marks and pose a neglectful impression of the author.
Essays make up a considerable part of academic curricula. The importance of essays keeps increasing with the increasing level of education. We now see students writing essays from kindergarten until graduation on several topics to showcase their knowledge on the subject.
By making logical and focused arguments in the essay, students can gain recognition by trying to persuade the audience with their writing skills.
To avoid losing marks, make sure to keep your essay captivating. Boring narratives can cause the readers to lose interest in your essay. So, it’s better to avoid using unrelated arguments to increase wordiness. Ideas that are not composed well will not get you the grades you desire.
The following recommendations will surely be helpful for you to shorten your essay and avoid the repercussions of a bland essay.
1. Your Essay Outline is the Key.
Before starting an essay, authors usually ponder about the essay and create a rough essay sketch in their minds. Creating a good outline is of fundamental importance. One must scribble down all the ideas and narratives that come to mind. The following steps involve research; the researched material must be penned alongside the initial outline.
Once you are done with the groundwork, the next step involves removing, rejecting, and crossing anything and everything that does not support the thesis statement . Almost every college, school, or application essay has a word limit. A good outline with to-the-point material can help you stick to the topic and create a concise, well-written essay.
2. Reduce Redundancy
Essays above the allowed word count limit are prone to mismanagement while writing. One such case is using redundant vocabulary while writing.
We are prone to overexplain a stance and forget that the sentence or word used previously offers enough explanation to the readers. There is no need to write an extra sentence. Reduce redundancy to make your writing appealing and concise. Let us consider the following example.
“Children were playing football in the park with the ball.”
The highlighted portion of the above sentence is unnecessary as football is played with the ball and, even if avoided, can provide enough knowledge about children’s activity. Scrapping the redundant phrase will remove four words from the sentence. This technique can be instrumental when shortening an essay before submission.
Also read: How to write an argumentative essay
3. Combine Sentences with Similar Meanings
Combining sentences that convey similar meanings can shorten the essay. This can be done by compressing similar sentences to eliminate undesirable words from the sentences. A little conscious effort can help you identify parts that can be merged, significantly reducing the word count. Consider the following example,
“Children were playing football in the park. My son was also playing football with them.”
“My son was playing football with the children in the park.”
The above two sentences reflect how you can compress different sentences together, and the new sentence delivers the same meaning but with a lesser word count. As in the example, the first sentence is composed of 15 words, whereas the combined sentence’s word count is 10. So, we can eliminate five words.
Extending this approach to seven to ten sentences can help us cut at least 50 words.
Also read: How to write a narrative essay
4. Avoid Overusing Prepositional Phrases.
Writing is an arduous task. A writer is prone to overuse wordy sentences repeatedly using prepositions. You will unconsciously increase the length of the sentence if you overuse prepositions. The example below will give you an idea of why you need to be vigilant about prepositions’ use.
“Here is the schedule of the work for today. (9 words)”
“Here is today’s work schedule. (5 Words)”
The first sentence uses several prepositions hence adding to the length, whereas the second sentence is concise and delivers the same message with increased efficiency. Review your essay for such errors before submission. You can quickly identify many instances where you can use relatively efficient sentences and avoid using excessive prepositions.
Reviewing requires a good focus. If you feel like you have done all you can, then you can seek help for your essay from your friend or tutor.
Also read: How to write a descriptive essay
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5. Using Concise Words
The English language is famous for its vast vocabulary. There are always words that you can use in place of wordy phrases. This practice will reduce the length and magnify the appeal of the essay. There are several dynamic words that you can use in place of wordy sentences.
The examples you are going to counter below can be used as a vanguard in your writing.
“It is raining very heavily (5 words)”
“It is pouring (3 words)”
Here, three words were alternated by a single word. The new sentence is concise, delivers the meaning with intensity, and supplements more appeal to the phrase. Similarly,
“He was very afraid. (4 words)”
This approach will not only make help you shorten your essay but also reduce verbosity.
Also read: How to write an SAT essay
6. Get Rid of Anything That Doesn’t Add Value.
Review your essay by keeping the central argument or topic in focus. If you find any points that do not add value to your main argument or are irrelevant to the main idea, it is advisable to omit those sentences from the essay to shorten the essay’s length.
Most students are used to over-expanding ideas by adding details. However, it would be best to abide by the word limit set by your college or school. If you are struggling to improve your essay, you can get professional help from our essay experts .
Here is a quick guide on how to buy an essay from EssaysUK.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to shorten an essay.
To shorten an essay, start by removing unnecessary words, phrases, or sentences that do not contribute to the main message. Ensure each paragraph serves a clear purpose and eliminate repetitive information. Use concise language, combine or rephrase sentences, and focus on the most relevant points while maintaining coherence and clarity.
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A descriptive essay is a type of essay that describes a particular topic or event creatively. It generally describes an object or a place and some abstract things like emotions.
The Sat essay is almost like a formal essay assigned in college for which you might have to examine some content. The SAT essay might be optional, but we suggest taking it and showing the universities that you are ready to be on board.
A summative assessment synthesizes students’ learning and understanding of a particular academic source and almost always takes place at the end of term or a complete academic year. Such assessments determine the overall understanding or proficiency of the assessed topic.
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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.
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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.
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How to Shorten an Essay: Reduce Word Count but keep Points
How to make an essay Short
When writing an essay, you may need to shorten it by reducing its word count to the number required by your instructor. In this case, you might have some words you need to eliminate in the essay. Also, you may have to shorten the paragraphs.
Read on for a comprehensive guide on 7 ways how you can shorten your essay but still make the points you intended to keep in the paper. If you need help to shorten your essay, just get in touch with our online essay writers, and the team will help you score an A
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How Do I Make My Essay Shorter
It is possible to shorten your essay or reduce the word count to meet the requirements during the editing process. The editing process should be the last step in writing your essay. The following are some of the most effective techniques to shorten your essay.
When it comes to writing essays, there are two types of students; those who write beyond the word count and those who write below the word count.
For those who write beyond the word count, you can use simple techniques to shorten an essay.
1. Rank your Arguments’ strengths and weakness
The first technique for making your essay shorter is by ranking your arguments. If your essay is longer than the requirement, rank the points used to support your arguments.
A good essay should contain only the most vital and valid points.
If you find some of your weak supporting points, eliminate them while removing the unnecessary wording.
Students will often be tempted to present a multifaceted point of view to support a single point.
While this may demonstrate your knowledge of the subject, it will add unnecessary content to your essay.
To avoid this and reduce the essay’s length, carefully select the most relevant and vital points.
However, if you still want to include all the points, you can minimize the details, especially within weaker points. This will make your essay shorter.
2. Focus on the Main Point of your Essay
This is a very practical technique for making your essay shorter. When given an essay to complete, the instructor expects you to come up with a topic and support it throughout your essay.
Valid arguments within each paragraph of your essay should support the topic and the thesis statement.
Therefore, if your essay is longer than recommended, look for sentences or entire paragraphs that do not address or support your essay’s main point or topic.
Students may find themselves accidentally going off-topic and including other unnecessary wordings and arguments to make their essays appear “smarter” or well-written.
This can result in unnecessary words and sentences beyond the required word count.
If you identify such unnecessary arguments within your essay while editing, eliminate them to focus more on your main point and achieve the target word count.
3. Eliminate the use of Verbiage
You should eliminate the verbiage if you want to make your essay shorter. This is especially relevant when writing academic essays where you are required to present your arguments professionally and straightforwardly.
Eliminate any extra information or words that do not add value to your point or overall argument. Such verbiage is some of the weak words to avoid in writing essays and research papers.
You can eliminate unnecessary adjectives, adverbs, generalizations, clichés, and lengthy verb phrases here. You can do this while performing the first and second techniques mentioned above.
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4. Write Short Sentences using the Active Voice
As we have noted, academic essays will require you to present your arguments straightforwardly. Using the active voice while constructing your sentences will help you achieve this while keeping them brief.
While this may not apply to all sentences within your essay, try to begin most of your sentences using the subject.
In this case, the subject is the thing or person performing an action. This should be followed by the action the subject performs.
If you use the passive voice, where you describe how the object is acted upon, then your sentences will be longer and contribute to the unwanted length of the essay.
For example, take a simple sentence like, “John plays basketball regularly.”
This sentence is in the active voice because John (subject) performs the action of playing basketball (object).
Now take a sentence like, “basketball is regularly played by John.” The second sentence is in passive voice because it describes how the object (basketball) is acted upon.
The first sentence in the active voice comprises 4 words, while the second sentence in the passive voice comprises 6 words. Therefore, you can see that writing in an active voice shortens your essay.
5. Utilize the most Applicable Strong Verbs
This may seem obvious, but many students cannot find the most applicable verbs. They find those that are close instead of using the perfect verb.
If you want to shorten your essay, find the best verb that conveys a precise meaning.
This is because when you use an imperfect verb, you will end up using more words to clarify the meaning.
Here is an example to clarify what is meant by using the most applicable verb:
“John’s team defeated the opposing team by several points.”
Using “defeated” in the above sentence is not grammatically wrong. However, it is not the best verb to use because John’s team not only defeated the opposing team, they all defeated them by several points.
If you wish to reduce the word count while maintaining the same meaning, you can use the verb “trounce” in place of “defeat.” The new sentence will be:
“John’s team trounced the opposing team.”
6. Quote from the most Relevant Sources
In academic essays, you may be required to provide quotes from secondary sources to support your essay. The number of sources needed depends on the length of the paper. For instance, a 4-page paper may require more secondary sources than a 2-page one.
However, if you find that you have used several quotes that are lengthening your essay, retain quotes from secondary sources that are most related to your topic, and eliminate the rest. Again, only cite the sources that are most relevant to your topic.
7. Avoid Block Quotes
The best way to avoid longer essays is by avoiding direct quotations from other authors. This can be done by paraphrasing their content and just citing the sources without using many words.
Avoiding block quotes will make the paragraphs short and your arguments more captivating to the reader. Therefore, avoid using essay or sentence generators, as these will quote other sources.
However, note that using external sources to support your points and arguments is always advisable when writing an essay. Such supporting content is important for the grades and to back up your claims.
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Weak Words to Avoid in Writing an Essay
Now that we have explored the most applicable methods or techniques that can help make your essay shorter, it is important to identify the unnecessary things to avoid in an essay to avoid going beyond the word count.
1. The passive voice
As we have noted, the passive voice makes your sentences unnecessarily lengthy. On the other hand, the active voice makes the sentences more compelling and clear because they are straight to the point.
Consequently, the active voice uses lesser words compared to the passive voice. Therefore, it is important to avoid the passive voice in an essay.
2. Adverbs and Adjectives
While adjectives modify nouns while adverbs modify verbs, good and well-utilized words in a sentence do not require modifying.
In most cases, adjectives and adverbs weaken strong nouns and verbs, thus weakening your overall writing.
Such weak words add no value to your paragraphs; you must avoid them when writing an essay.
When editing your essay and you find adverbs with “ly” as their endings, you can eliminate them because they act as filler words that add no value to the point you are trying to communicate.
When it comes to adjectives, they do not add meaning to the sentence and are, therefore, unnecessary.
3. Conjunctions
Conjunctions such as and, or, however, but, and, e.g., connect two different sentences that can be written independently. They are unnecessary when you want to make an essay shorter.
These are some of the words that make an essay ridiculously long and create the need to be precise. Eliminating them reduces the word count and shortens the essay.
4. Running Starts and Needless Transitions
Running starts are commonly used phrases that act as an introduction to the sentence. They include “it is, “there is, “the fact that, “and so on. This is basically the opposite of what we discussed in our post on making an essay longer, as we outlined.
Those phrases add unnecessary words to your essay. Needless transitions can be “furthermore,” “then,” indeed,” “however,” and so on.
The bottom line is that when you are told to write a specific number of pages or meet a particular word count, it is imperative to meet the requirements because you will lose some points.
5. First-Person Language
This is a common thing in any essay writing task. It is always advisable that one should avoid using first-person language when writing an essay. This is because the first person is not formal and tends to be confrontational.
Instead of first-person or second-person language, always use a third-person approach. While this does not contribute i reducing the word count, it gives a lot of formality to your essay and puts a warm reading tone.
In addition, using the third person promotes the objectivity of your arguments by presenting them in a manner that can relate to any person, in this case, your readers. Read our guide on avoiding the first-person language in an essay and apply that in your future writing.
Following the above tips will make it easier to shorten your essays.
Watch this video to learn more about this.
With over 10 years in academia and academic assistance, Alicia Smart is the epitome of excellence in the writing industry. She is our managing editor and is in charge of the writing operations at Grade Bees.
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⭐️ Word Count Reducer: the Benefits
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✒️ reduce word count generator: what is it.
Cut-Down-Word-Count Generator is a free online tool that summarizes texts and reduces sentence and word count. It cuts out unnecessary words , phrases, and sentences but doesn't change the sense of a text. This is a helpful instrument for students, journalists, and other people who work with loads of written information.
Besides reducing your writing, you can also use the tool to summarize books, short novels, and articles on any topic. Artificial intelligence finds keywords and decides which sentences and words are the most essential.
The tool is also fully compatible with Grammarly – you can edit the text on our page if you have an extension.
✂️ How to Cut Down Words in My Essay?
Automatic tools are great when you need to work with extensive text . However, consider manual summarizing for more flexibility.
Here's how to reduce your word count manually:
- Find and highlight the key messages . If you do it thoroughly, you will preserve the initial sense of a text.
- Cut out adjectives and adverbs . Many of them are just filler words that serve only the aesthetic features of a text. That is why you won't lose the main points if you delete them.
- Look for synonyms and synonymic collocations . To avoid plagiarism in academic papers, use synonyms when referring to another author's thoughts. And you will still need to give them a reference.
- Change structures . Simplifying sentences is another way to reduce the word count. Just rewrite lengthy and overcomplicated grammar.
- One paragraph – one idea . Each section should focus only on one idea or answer one question. Keep your paragraphs at 200-300 and sentences at 15-25 words.
Words and Phrases to Avoid
You will also need to work on vocabulary . In this part, we will explain how to avoid excessive wording and bring your essay to academic standards.
👍 Word Cutter for Essays: Do's and Don'ts
This list of practical recommendations will help you use the word remover to its max.
- Don't paste long texts . The word limit allows us to summarize extensive passages, but we don't recommend it. Instead of cutting the whole text, work with each part separately.
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- Divide texts into logical parts . The AI will identify the main points quicker and have fewer error risks. It will also make it easier for you to navigate and spot mistakes.
- Check the results . It will be easier for you to manually correct inaccuracies at the very first stage. The tool is fast, but the human brain is more capable of understanding writing subtleties.
- Remove plagiarism . This is not a paraphrasing tool , so you must work on plagiarism. If it is just for personal use, you can leave the text as it is. Otherwise, you will need to quote or paraphrase the text to avoid plagiarized content.
- Work on word choice . Some texts you use might not be suitable for academic writing or your instructor's requirements. Devote some time to put the vocabulary in order.
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Original text
In the current study, several limitations of the research are necessary to mention. While random sampling will ensure representativeness and a low level of bias, there is a risk of limited outcomes in quantitative analysis. Since the questionnaires use structured and close-ended questions, there is a possibility of limited outcomes, which means that the results cannot always represent the actual occurrence in generalized forms.
Since respondents have limited response options that the researcher designed, the outcomes thus ultimately depend on the perspective taken by a scholar when creating the questions. Another significant limitation of the study is the limited availability of secondary data that can be applied to the research context. While the subject matter is widespread, there has been little research on implementing a sports education instructional program at educational facilities. Finally, data may not be robust enough to make conclusions regarding study findings.
Full text: Jeddah University: Sports Health Education Instructional Program - 4403 Words | Free Paper Example
Reduced version:
Since the questionnaires use structured and close-ended questions, there is a possibility of limited outcomes, which means that the results cannot always represent the actual occurrence in generalized forms. Another significant limitation of the study is the limited availability of secondary data that can be applied to the research context. While the subject matter is widespread, there has been little research on implementing a sports education instructional program at educational facilities.
- 10 Tips for Cutting Your Word Count | The University of Adelaide
- Top Words to Avoid in Academic Writing | Useful Advices & Tricks
- Summarizing: How to effectively summarize the work of others | SFU Library
- The Writing Center | When to Summarize, Paraphrase, and...
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Working within a specific word count limitation is often problematic for a student. Sometimes you go far beyond the limits during writing and then don't know how to cut down the content to avoid grade reduction.
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If you need to submit a shorter essay but don't understand how to shorten the word count effectively, welcome to our essay reducer . Our online, free tool can help you quickly and easily, giving you the exact word count you need for submission.
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🔗 References
✂️ how to reduce words in essay online.
Now, let's say a few words about our word reducer for essays – here, we show how it works and how it can help you improve the essay's word count and free you from unnecessary wordiness. You need to take only a couple of steps to receive a neatly reduced essay from our generator:
- Copy the text you want to work on.
- Paste the text into the tab at the center of the main page – the maximum you can insert in the excessive word remover is 17,000 characters.
- Stipulate the number of sentences you want to have in the resulting text.
- Tick or untick the box "show keywords depending on whether you want to specify the keywords that need to be preserved in the text.
- Click the “Reduce” button.
Once you click the button, your text will be processed with the smart tool to give you a condensed variant of the content that meets your sentence quantity requirement.
There is no single standard for an essay's word count. Students receive various assignments from their professors, ranging from around 1 page (250-300 words) to large-scale works for 10 pages or more (3,000+ words).
So, you should be ready for any essay project when you start your study process and prepare for the rising word count of essays at higher study levels.
🔢 How to Reduce Essay Word Count
Depending on your circumstances, you may need to engage various word count reduction techniques in writing.
Here's what we recommend for quick, hassle-free word count minimization :
- Remove articles,
- Get rid of unnecessary adverbs,
- Write clearly,
- Use active voice,
- Revise your transitions,
- Delete unnecessary intros.
Below we’ll explain all the details.
Remove Articles
Many students use the article "the" in places where it can be mostly skipped. So, by working on removing "the," you can bring the word count significantly down without large-scale content rework.
Oust Adverbs and Adjectives
In most cases, adverbs and adjectives are used as elements of figurative language and do not add any vital content to your text. Thus, by removing them altogether, you don't undermine the meaning of your essay and deliver the same facts and arguments, though in a far more concise form.
Manage Wordiness
When you write an essay, the temptation is very high to use well-known, sophisticated language forms, such as "in order to," "in the course of," etc. But the fact is that they don't make any sense and steal the vital space for important data. So, it would help if you cut them out of the text to keep only meaningful words.
Opt for Active Voice
According to statistics, passive-voice constructions are always longer and harder to comprehend than active voice. So, revise your use of passive voice in the text and transform all passive phrases into active voice to see how much your proper use of space improves.
Work on the Transitions
Transitions improve the flow of any academic writing but may also be redundant if overused in places that don't need binding with transitions. We recommend going through these phrases and removing some of them from the text to help manage your word count.
Delete Unnecessary Intros
The "running start" use is a common problem among students. Revise your sentences' beginnings to see where you abuse this technique and remove these running starts to ease the reading and shorten the word count.
Thank you for reading this article! Note that you can also use our free paraphraser and title generator at different stages of work on your assignment.
❓ Essay Reducer FAQ
❓ how to make an essay shorter.
You can use many methods for shortening an essay, such as reducing the number of redundant articles, conjunctions, transition phrases, and introductory words. You can also use shorter and simpler words to reduce the essay's overall page and character count.
❓ How does this tool reduce words in essay online?
Our automatic tool applies all the principles we've mentioned above. It reviews the use of articles, conjunctions, and transitions and removes all the unnecessary clutter in your sentences, leaving only the gist. This way, you manage to deliver the same message in a shorter form.
❓ What is a good word count for an essay?
There's no optimal word count for an essay, as tasks differ in length depending on your level of study. It's okay to write an essay of up to 1,000 words at school and 300-500 words for an admission essay. Undergraduate and graduate essays, however, should be a minimum of 2,000 words to present an in-depth examination of your topic.
❓ How to increase the word count of an essay?
Increasing the word count is simpler than reducing it. You only need to pick separate facts and arguments you've given in the body of your essay and expand them with additional evidence and interpretations. As a result, you receive a well-informed discussion without wordiness or redundancy.
- Writing Concisely - UNC Writing Center
- 7 Tips for Clear and Concise Writing - 2022 - MasterClass
- 10 Tips for Cutting Your Word Count
- Summarizing - Academic Integrity at MIT
- Summarising - Academic Writing in English
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Text Compactor: Online Shorten Essay Tool
It cannot be easier to use our text compactor. Insert any text into the given window, choose the needed settings, and press the button. The results will appear in seconds!
For a person engaged in academic writing, it is crucial to save time wherever possible. There is nothing more crushing than realizing that a source you were using doesn’t fit your topic. This is especially true when it happens halfway through the text. The hours you've spent reading are lost forever, and you still have to look for new sources. This is exactly why we use essay compactors – to avoid situations such as these.
This isn’t the only reason for using summarizers. They can also be useful when you're working on your own texts. The main aims might be a) to create summaries to use as examples and b) to shorten your writing. Below, our team has discussed these points in further detail. We have also offered advice on how to effectively condense an essay on your own.
📈 Why Is a Text Compactor Useful?
👍 tips to make a text compact, 👌 online text compactor: the benefits, 🔗 references.
During your studies, you may encounter a very diverse set of tasks. You may have to write a synopsis , analyze an article, compose an essay, etc. Online tools like paragraph compactors are meant to help you with all kinds of assignments. They are free, quick, and ready to use whenever!
Besides, a text compactor has the following benefits:
- Reduces information to key ideas. When composing your papers or evaluating the work of others, you should be able to summarize the presented arguments and conclusions. Online tools automatically select and reveal all the critical elements from the given text.
- Helps to memorize and understand the data. Remembering hundreds or even thousands of sentences at a time is almost impossible. A single one can go on for an entire paragraph and have complicated jargon. Summarizing tools can shorten your sentences to a manageable length, helping you understand and memorize them better.
- Saves time. Summaries, in general, cut down the reading time. It is one of the reasons research papers typically include an abstract before the main text. In addition, digital summarizers will save you a lot of time writing and rewriting the summaries yourself.
- Assists in reviewing materials. When you study for your exams, you have tons of information to go through. If you insert the text of an article or a book chapter into the text compactor, you will immediately see its meaning. This way, you save precious revision time and keep your material organized.
- Creates abstracts, abridged texts, and more. As mentioned above, you will get many different assignments during your studies. Sometimes, you will have to write an abstract for a project. Or you might need to give a speech based on an academic paper. Online text summarization is an easy solution for these tasks and many others.
You may find it challenging to decide which elements of your work are essential. This becomes particularly worrying when your deadlines are approaching and your paper is still well above the word count. That’s why sentence compactors turn out to be life-saviors for many students.
If you insist on doing the work yourself, we have a couple of tips for you. Pay attention to them, and you won’t have any trouble shortening your writing.
Two short sentences are better than a single long one.
Lengthy sentences can be challenging to follow. They are usually packed with numerous prepositions and linking words that can be easily avoided. Breaking up drawn-out sentences into several parts will help reduce text complexity. Just pick a linking phrase or comma that you can replace with a dot and do so. But first, check what punctuation marks you should keep .
Cut down on filler words.
We are familiar with “parasite” words that appear in speech (such as “like,” “kind of,” “you know,” etc.). We may not even notice that we often use them in essay writing. Fillers are words and expressions that don’t contribute to the text’s meaning. For example, phrases like “as a matter of fact” don’t add any new information and only take up space. Try to delete them all from your writing.
Try not to sound redundant.
Like fillers, redundancies are pointless repetitions that can be removed without losing meaning. To illustrate, in the expression “final outcome,” the first word is unnecessary. That’s because both of them mean the same thing. Modifying text to get rid of the redundancies can significantly shorten it.
Stick with the active voice whenever possible.
It may seem that the passive voice sounds more professional and scholarly. However, it can also make sentences longer, more awkward, and harder to understand. Consider switching to the active voice wherever you can. It will improve readability and save space. Remember, you can always use an online sentence shortener. It will provide you with the results in seconds!
We hope that our tool will help you in your work and that you have found our text compactor useful. We have another option if you didn't like the summary you received or expected something different. Try our alternative summary generator , which is just as easy and quick to use!
How to Shorten an Essay
It is critical to make an essay more concise while maintaining its persuasiveness when shortening it. Keeping the vital arguments and evidence in the text is essential, while redundancies and complicated structures can be safely removed.
How to Shorten a Speech
Your presentation may serve various purposes. When you’re shortening it, the most important thing is not to lose the main message. Highlight the key points and use as simple and concise language as possible. This way, you can communicate your ideas effectively in less time.
How to Shorten a Paragraph
According to the rules of academic writing, one paragraph should convey one main idea. This idea is formulated in the topic sentence, and the rest sentences support and confirm it. Your task here is to preserve the meaning of the topic sentence and not lose key evidence and arguments; you can throw away unnecessary details.
- When to Summarize, Paraphrase, and Quote – The Writing Center, George Mason University
- Writing Concisely – The Writing Center, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Eliminating Wordiness – Writing Resources, Hamilton College
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The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger
I never thought i was the kind of person to fall for a scam..
On a Tuesday evening this past October, I put $50,000 in cash in a shoe box, taped it shut as instructed, and carried it to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, my phone clasped to my ear. “Don’t let anyone hurt me,” I told the man on the line, feeling pathetic.
“You won’t be hurt,” he answered. “Just keep doing exactly as I say.”
Three minutes later, a white Mercedes SUV pulled up to the curb. “The back window will open,” said the man on the phone. “Do not look at the driver or talk to him. Put the box through the window, say ‘thank you,’ and go back inside.”
The man on the phone knew my home address, my Social Security number, the names of my family members, and that my 2-year-old son was playing in our living room. He told me my home was being watched, my laptop had been hacked, and we were in imminent danger. “I can help you, but only if you cooperate,” he said. His first orders: I could not tell anyone about our conversation, not even my spouse, or talk to the police or a lawyer.
Now I know this was all a scam — a cruel and violating one but painfully obvious in retrospect. Here’s what I can’t figure out: Why didn’t I just hang up and call 911? Why didn’t I text my husband, or my brother (a lawyer), or my best friend (also a lawyer), or my parents, or one of the many other people who would have helped me? Why did I hand over all that money — the contents of my savings account, strictly for emergencies — without a bigger fight?
Spring Fashion Issue
We want moore.
When I’ve told people this story, most of them say the same thing: You don’t seem like the type of person this would happen to. What they mean is that I’m not senile, or hysterical, or a rube. But these stereotypes are actually false. Younger adults — Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X — are 34 percent more likely to report losing money to fraud compared with those over 60, according to a recent report from the Federal Trade Commission. Another study found that well-educated people or those with good jobs were just as vulnerable to scams as everyone else.
Still, how could I have been such easy prey? Scam victims tend to be single, lonely, and economically insecure with low financial literacy. I am none of those things. I’m closer to the opposite. I’m a journalist who had a weekly column in the “Business” section of the New York Times. I’ve written a personal-finance column for this magazine for the past seven years. I interview money experts all the time and take their advice seriously. I’m married and talk to my friends, family, and colleagues every day.
And while this is harder to quantify — how do I even put it? — I’m not someone who loses her head. My mother-in-law has described me as even-keeled; my own mom has called me “maddeningly rational.” I am listed as an emergency contact for several friends — and their kids. I vote, floss, cook, and exercise. In other words, I’m not a person who panics under pressure and falls for a conspiracy involving drug smuggling, money laundering, and CIA officers at my door. Until, suddenly, I was.
That morning — it was October 31 — I dressed my toddler in a pizza costume for Halloween and kissed him good-bye before school. I wrote some work emails. At about 12:30 p.m., my phone buzzed. The caller ID said it was Amazon. I answered. A polite woman with a vague accent told me she was calling from Amazon customer service to check some unusual activity on my account. The call was being recorded for quality assurance. Had I recently spent $8,000 on MacBooks and iPads?
I had not. I checked my Amazon account. My order history showed diapers and groceries, no iPads. The woman, who said her name was Krista, told me the purchases had been made under my business account. “I don’t have a business account,” I said. “Hmm,” she said. “Our system shows that you have two.”
Krista and I concurred that I was the victim of identity theft, and she said she would flag the fraudulent accounts and freeze their activity. She provided me with a case-ID number for future reference and recommended that I check my credit cards. I did, and everything looked normal. I thanked her for her help.
Then Krista explained that Amazon had been having a lot of problems with identity theft and false accounts lately. It had become so pervasive that the company was working with a liaison at the Federal Trade Commission and was referring defrauded customers to him. Could she connect me?
“Um, sure?” I said.
Krista transferred the call to a man who identified himself as Calvin Mitchell. He said he was an investigator with the FTC, gave me his badge number, and had me write down his direct phone line in case I needed to contact him again. He also told me our call was being recorded. He asked me to verify the spelling of my name. Then he read me the last four digits of my Social Security number, my home address, and my date of birth to confirm that they were correct. The fact that he had my Social Security number threw me. I was getting nervous.
“I’m glad we’re speaking,” said Calvin. “Your personal information is linked to a case that we’ve been working on for a while now, and it’s quite serious.”
He told me that 22 bank accounts, nine vehicles, and four properties were registered to my name. The bank accounts had wired more than $3 million overseas, mostly to Jamaica and Iraq. Did I know anything about this? “No,” I said. Did I know someone named Stella Suk-Yee Kwong? “I don’t think so,” I said. He texted me a photo of her ID, which he claimed had been found in a car rented under my name that was abandoned on the southern border of Texas with blood and drugs in the trunk. A home in New Mexico affiliated with the car rental had subsequently been raided, he added, and authorities found more drugs, cash, and bank statements registered to my name and Social Security number. He texted me a drug-bust photo of bags of pills and money stacked on a table. He told me that there were warrants out for my arrest in Maryland and Texas and that I was being charged with cybercrimes, money laundering, and drug trafficking.
My head swam. I Googled my name along with “warrant” and “money laundering,” but nothing came up. Were arrest warrants public? I wasn’t sure. Google led me to truthfinder.com, which asked for my credit-card information — nope. “I’m in deep shit,” I texted my husband. “My identity was stolen and it seems really bad.”
Calvin wanted to know if I knew anyone who might be the culprit or if I had any connections to Iraq or Jamaica. “No,” I said. “This is the first I’m hearing about any of this, and it’s a lot to take in.” He asked if I had ever used public or unsecured Wi-Fi. “I don’t know. Maybe?” I said. “I used the airport Wi-Fi recently.”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s unfortunate. It’s how many of these breaches start.” I was embarrassed, like I’d left my fly unzipped. How could I have been so thoughtless? But also — didn’t everyone use the airport Wi-Fi?
Calvin told me to listen carefully. “The first thing you must do is not tell anyone what is going on. Everyone around you is a suspect.”
I almost laughed. I told him I was quite sure that my husband, who works for an affordable-housing nonprofit and makes meticulous spreadsheets for our child-care expenses, was not a secret drug smuggler. “I believe you, but even so, your communications are probably under surveillance,” Calvin said. “You cannot talk to him about this.” I quickly deleted the text messages I had sent my husband a few minutes earlier. “These are sophisticated criminals with a lot of money at stake,” he continued. “You should assume you are in danger and being watched. You cannot take any chances.”
I felt suspended between two worlds — the one I knew and the one this man was describing. If I had nothing to do with any of these allegations, how much could they truly affect me? I thought of an old This American Life episode about a woman whose Social Security card was stolen. No matter how many times she closed her bank accounts and opened new ones, her identity thief kept draining them, destroying her credit and her sanity. (It turned out to be her boyfriend.) I remembered another story about a man who got stuck on a no-fly list after his personal information was used by a terrorist group. It dawned on me that being connected to major federal offenses, even falsely, could really fuck up my life.
Calvin wanted to know how much money I currently had in my bank accounts. I told him that I had two — checking and savings — with a combined balance of a little over $80,000. As a freelancer in a volatile industry, I keep a sizable emergency fund, and I also set aside cash to pay my taxes at the end of the year, since they aren’t withheld from my paychecks.
His voice took on a more urgent tone. “You must have worked very hard to save all that money,” he said. “Do not share your bank-account information with anyone. I am going to help you keep your money safe.” He said that he would transfer me to his colleague at the CIA who was the lead investigator on my case and gave me a nine-digit case number for my records. (I Googled the number. Nothing.) He said the CIA agent would tell me what to do next, and he wished me luck.
If it was a scam , I couldn’t see the angle. It had occurred to me that the whole story might be made up or an elaborate mistake. But no one had asked me for money or told me to buy crypto; they’d only encouraged me not to share my banking information. They hadn’t asked for my personal details; they already knew them. I hadn’t been told to click on anything.
Still, I had not seen a shred of evidence. I checked my bank accounts, credit cards, and credit score; nothing looked out of the ordinary. I knew I should probably talk to a lawyer or maybe call the police, though I was doubtful that they would help. What was I going to say — “My identity was stolen, and I think I’m somehow in danger”? I had no proof. I was also annoyed that my workday had been hijacked. It was 2 p.m., and I had already pushed back one deadline and postponed two work calls. I had to get myself out of this.
The next man who got on the line had a deeper voice and a slight British accent flecked with something I couldn’t identify. He told me his name was Michael Sarano and that he worked for the CIA on cases involving the FTC. He gave me his badge number. “I’m going to need more than that,” I said. “I have no reason to believe that any of what you’re saying is real.”
“I completely understand,” he said calmly. He told me to go to the FTC home page and look up the main phone number. “Now hang up the phone, and I will call you from that number right now.” I did as he said. The FTC number flashed on my screen, and I picked up. “How do I know you’re not just spoofing this?” I asked.
“It’s a government number,” he said, almost indignant. “It cannot be spoofed.” I wasn’t sure if this was true and tried Googling it, but Michael was already onto his next point. He told me the call was being recorded, so I put him on speaker and began recording on my end, too. He wanted to know if I had told anyone what was going on.
I admitted that I had texted my husband. “You must reassure him that everything is fine,” Michael said. “In many cases like this, we have to investigate the spouse as well, and the less he knows, the less he is implicated. From now on, you have to follow protocol if you want us to help you.”
“I don’t think I should lie to my husband,” I said, feeling stupid.
“You are being investigated for major federal crimes,” he said. “By keeping your husband out of this, you are protecting him.” He then repeated the point Calvin had made about my phone and computer being hacked and monitored by the criminals who had stolen my identity.
By that point, my husband had sent me a series of concerned texts. “Don’t worry. It will be okay,” I wrote back. It felt gross to imagine a third party reading along.
Michael snowed me with the same stories Calvin had. They were consistent: the car on the Texas border, the property in New Mexico, the drugs, the bank accounts. He asked if I shared my residence with anyone besides my husband and son. Then he asked more questions about my family members, including my parents, my brother, and my sister-in-law. He knew their names and where they lived. I told him they had nothing to do with this. In fact, I was now sure I wanted to consult a lawyer.
“If you talk to an attorney, I cannot help you anymore,” Michael said sternly. “You will be considered noncooperative. Your home will be raided, and your assets will be seized. You may be arrested. It’s your choice.” This seemed ludicrous. I pictured officers tramping in, taking my laptop, going through our bookshelves, questioning our neighbors, scaring my son. It was a nonstarter.
“Can I just come to your office and sort this out in person?” I said. “It’s getting late, and I need to take my son trick-or-treating soon.”
“My office is in Langley,” he said. “We don’t have enough time. We need to act immediately. I’m going to talk you through the process. It’s going to sound crazy, but we must follow protocol if we’re going to catch the people behind this.”
He explained that the CIA would need to freeze all the assets in my name, including my actual bank accounts. In the eyes of the law, there was no difference between the “real” and the fraudulent ones, he said. They would also deactivate my compromised Social Security number and get me a new one. Then, by monitoring any activity under my old Social Security number and accounts, they would catch the criminals who were using my identity and I would get my life back. But until then, I would need to use only cash for my day-to-day expenses.
It was far-fetched. Ridiculous. But also not completely out of the realm of possibility. “Do I have any other options?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” he said. “You must follow my directions very carefully. We do not have much time.”
He asked me how much cash I thought I would need to support myself for a year if necessary. My assets could be frozen for up to two years if the investigation dragged on, he added. There could be a trial; I might need to testify. These things take time. “I don’t know, $50,000?” I said. I wondered how I would receive paychecks without a bank account. Would I have to take time off from work? I did some mental calculations of how much my husband could float us and for how long.
“Okay,” he said. “You need to go to the bank and get that cash out now. You cannot tell them what it is for. In one of my last cases, the identity thief was someone who worked at the bank.”
Michael told me to keep the phone on speaker so we would remain in contact. “It’s important that I monitor where this money goes from now on. Remember, all of your assets are part of this investigation,” he said. Then he told me that one of his colleagues would meet me at my apartment at 5 p.m. to guide me through the next steps.
“You can’t send a complete stranger to my home,” I said, my voice rising. “My 2-year-old son will be here.”
“Let me worry about that,” he said. “It’s my job. But if you don’t cooperate, I cannot keep you safe. It is your choice.”
It’s impossible to explain why I accepted this logic. But I had been given marching orders and a deadline. My son would be home soon, and I had to fix this mess. I put on sneakers in case I needed to run. I brought a backpack for the cash. I felt both terrified and absurd.
It was jarring to see trick-or-treaters in my Brooklyn neighborhood, people going about their lives. The air was crisp, and dead leaves swirled on the ground. I was on high alert for anyone who might be following me. At one point, a man in sunglasses and a hoodie trailed me for a few blocks. At Michael’s suggestion, I ducked into a parking garage until he passed.
When I reached the bank, I told the guard I needed to make a large cash withdrawal and she sent me upstairs. Michael was on speakerphone in my pocket. I asked the teller for $50,000. The woman behind the thick glass window raised her eyebrows, disappeared into a back room, came back with a large metal box of $100 bills, and counted them out with a machine. Then she pushed the stacks of bills through the slot along with a sheet of paper warning me against scams. I thanked her and left.
Michael was bursting with praise. “You did a great job,” he said. “I have to go for a moment to see about the details of your case; I’m going to have you speak to my colleague if you have any questions.” He put a woman on the line. She was younger, with an accent I couldn’t identify. She told me to go home and await further instructions.
As I walked back to my apartment, something jolted me out of my trance, and I became furious. No government agency would establish this as “protocol.” It was preposterous. “I need to speak with Michael,” I told the woman on the phone. He got on right away. “I don’t even believe that you’re a CIA agent,” I said. “What you’re asking me to do is completely unreasonable.”
He sighed. “I’m sending you a photo of my badge right now,” he said. “I don’t know what else to tell you. You can trust me, and I will help you. Or you can hang up and put yourself and your family in danger. Do you really want to take that risk with a young child?”
My Two Cents
How to protect yourself against scams, what charlotte cowles wishes she’d known..
I waited for a stoplight at a busy intersection. I could see my apartment window from where I stood. My son was playing inside with a neighbor’s daughter and their nanny. A picture of Michael’s badge appeared on my phone. I had no way of verifying it; it could easily have been Photoshopped. “I don’t trust you at all,” I said to Michael. “But it doesn’t seem like I have any other choice.”
When I got home, Michael told me to get a box, put the cash in it, take a picture of it, then tape it shut. I found a floral-printed shoe box that had once contained a pair of slippers I’d bought for myself — a frivolous purchase that now seemed mortifying. Michael told me to label it with my name, my case number, my address, a locker number he read to me, and my signature. Then he directed me to take another picture of the labeled box and text it to him.
“My colleague will be there soon. He is an undercover CIA agent, and he will secure the money for you,” he said. What exactly would that entail? I asked. “Tonight, we will close down your Social Security number, and you will lose access to your bank accounts,” he explained. “Tomorrow, you’ll need to go to the Social Security office and get a new Social Security number. We’ll secure this money for you in a government locker and hand-deliver a Treasury check for the same amount. You can cash the check and use it for your expenses until the investigation is over.”
“Why can’t I just use this cash?” I asked. “Why do you have to take it and give me a check?”
“Because all of your assets under your current identity are part of the investigation,” he said. “You are being charged with money laundering. If we secure this cash and then issue you a government check under your new Social Security number, that will be considered clean money.”
“I’ll need to see your colleague’s badge,” I said. “I’m not just going to give $50,000 of my money to someone I don’t know.”
“Undercover agents don’t carry badges,” he said, as if I’d asked the CIA to bring me a Happy Meal. “They’re undercover. Remember, you are probably being watched. The criminals cannot know that a CIA agent is there.”
In a twisted way, this made some amount of sense to me. Or maybe I had lost my grip on reality so completely that I was willing to resign myself to this new version of it. Most important, I didn’t know what else to do. Even if Michael wasn’t working for the CIA (which struck me as more and more likely), he was sending a man to our address. I felt a sickening dread that he might ask to come inside. If giving him this money would make him go away, I was ready to do it. I’d been on the phone for nearly five hours. I wanted to take my son trick-or-treating. I was exhausted.
Michael seemed to sense that I was flagging and asked if I’d had lunch. I hadn’t. He told me to eat something but keep him on the line; his agent was on the way to my address but running late. “You can meet him outside if that would make you more comfortable,” Michael said, and I felt relieved. While I gnawed on a granola bar at my desk, he got chatty and asked about my job. I told him I was going to Washington, D.C., later that week. “Oh, great. You could come to my office in Langley,” he said. “Where are you staying?”
A little after 6 p.m., Michael told me to go downstairs. His colleague was arriving. My husband had just come home from work and was reading to our son. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?” he asked as I put my coat on. I motioned to the phone and shushed him. Then I whispered, “I have to go downstairs and meet a guy who’s helping with the identity-theft case. I’ll explain more later.” He frowned and silently mouthed, “What?” I told him I had to go.
I met the SUV at the curb and put the money in the back seat. It was 6:06 p.m. Even if I’d tried to see who was driving, the windows were tinted and it was dusk. He maybe wore a baseball cap. When I turned around, I could see the backlit faces of my husband and son watching from our apartment nine stories above.
As I walked back inside, Michael texted me a photo of a Treasury check made out to me for $50,000 and told me a hard copy would be hand-delivered to me in the morning. He was working on setting up my appointment with the Social Security office. “You will receive a confirmation text shortly,” he said. “Stay on the line until you do.” I felt oddly comforted by this. An appointment would give me something legitimate, an actual connection to a government agency.
I took my son trick-or-treating, my phone on speaker in my pocket. I felt numb, almost in a fugue state, smiling and chatting with my neighbors and their kids. At one point, I checked to see if Michael was still there; his female colleague answered and said he’d be back soon. Then, when we got home and I checked again, the line was dead. I panicked and called back. The woman answered. “Michael is busy,” she said. “He’ll call you in the morning.”
I was confused. Did this mean I didn’t have a Social Security number at all anymore? I pictured myself floating, identity-less. “Do I have an appointment at the Social Security office?” I asked.
“Michael will call you tomorrow,” she repeated. “He hasn’t been able to secure your appointment yet. The Social Security office is closed now.”
I went into my bedroom and shut the door, feeling my face grow hot. I had a physical sensation of scales falling from my eyes; the room shimmered around me, spots raining from the ceiling. I saw the whole day peel away, like the layers of an onion — Michael, the FTC officer, the Amazon call — revealing my real life, raw and exposed, at the center. “Oh my God,” I said, my hands tingling. “You are lying to me. Michael was lying. You just took my money and I’m never getting it back.” That wasn’t true, the woman said. She understood that I was upset. She was sorry. Everything would be fine. “You’re a fucking liar,” I hissed, and hung up.
Through choking sobs, I told my husband what had happened. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, incredulous. “I would have stopped you.” That I’d been trying to protect him suddenly seemed so idiotic I couldn’t even say it out loud. Our son looked on, confused. “Mama’s sad,” he announced, clinging to my leg. We put him to bed and then I called my parents and my brother. At their urging, I called 911. Around 10:30 p.m., three police officers came over and took my statement. I struggled to recount what I’d done; it seemed like a bad dream. I felt like a fool.
“No government agency will ever ask you for money,” one cop informed me, as if I’d never heard it before. I wanted to scream, “I know. ” Instead, I said, “It didn’t really feel like he was asking.”
The police told me not to worry; the scammers wouldn’t be back. “They got what they wanted,” another officer said, as though it would reassure me. I gave them the photos and recordings I had. They promised to check traffic cameras for the car that had taken the money.
When I woke up the next morning, a few seconds passed before I remembered the previous day. I was my old self, in my old bed, milky dawn light on the walls. Then it all came crashing back, a fresh humiliation, and I curled into the fetal position. I felt violated, unreliable; I couldn’t trust myself. Were my tendencies toward people-pleasing, rule following, and conflict aversion far worse than I’d ever thought, even pathological? I imagined other people’s reactions. She’s always been a little careless. She seems unhinged. I considered keeping the whole thing a secret. I worried it would harm my professional reputation. I still do.
In the days that followed, I kept revisiting the fake world of that afternoon, slipping through a portal into an alternate life. I would get paranoid that someone was reading my texts, watching me as I took my son to school, or using my Social Security number to wire money and rent cars. It was a relief that I wasn’t actually in trouble with the law, but then again — I’d lost $50,000 and I wasn’t getting it back. I checked my accounts and credit cards obsessively. I called my bank. They gave me instructions to freeze my credit, file reports with the FBI and FTC, and run anti-virus software on my laptop to check for malware, which I did. I cried a lot. My husband felt helpless; he still doesn’t like to talk about it. Instead, he researched new locks for our doors and looked into security cameras. One night I shook him awake, convinced that someone was trying to break in. “It’s only the wind,” he said. “We’re safe.”
Fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money. It took me years to save, stashing away a few thousand every time I got paid for a big project. Part of it was money I had received from my grandfather, an inheritance he took great pains to set up for his grandchildren before his death. Sometimes I imagine how I would have spent it if I had to get rid of it in a day. I could have paid for over a year’s worth of child care up front. I could have put it toward the master’s degree I’ve always wanted. I could have housed multiple families for months. Perhaps, inadvertently, I am; I occasionally wonder what the scammers did with it.
Because I had set it aside for emergencies and taxes, it was money I tried to pretend I didn’t have — it wasn’t for spending. Initially, I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to afford my taxes this year, but then my accountant told me I could write off losses due to theft. So from a financial standpoint, I’ll survive, as long as I don’t have another emergency — a real one — anytime soon.
When I did tell friends what had happened, it seemed like everyone had a horror story. One friend’s dad, a criminal-defense attorney, had been scammed out of $1.2 million. Another person I know, a real-estate developer, was duped into wiring $450,000 to someone posing as one of his contractors. Someone else knew a Wall Street executive who had been conned into draining her 401(k) by some guy she met at a bar.
I felt a guilty sense of consolation whenever I heard about a scam involving someone I respected. If this could happen to them, maybe I wasn’t such a moron. As a journalist, it’s my instinct to research and talk to experts, so I dove into books and podcasts about scams, desperate to make sense of my own. I had known that fraud was on the rise but was shocked to learn the numbers — financial losses ballooned by more than 30 percent in 2022. I read that self-laceration is typical; half of victims blame themselves for being gullible, and most experience serious anxiety, depression, or other stress-related health problems afterward. I heard about victim support groups. I went to therapy.
When I discovered that Katie Gatti Tassin, a personal-finance expert who writes the popular Money With Katie newsletter, lost $8,000 five years ago to a grandmotherly-sounding woman pretending to call from Tassin’s credit union, I called her to ask how she’d coped. “Everyone was so patronizing,” she told me. “The response was basically ‘It’s your fault that this happened.’”
If I had to pinpoint a moment that made me think my scammers were legitimate, it was probably when they read me my Social Security number. Now I know that all kinds of personal information — your email address, your kids’ names and birthdays, even your pets’ names — are commonly sold on the dark web. Of course, the scammers could also have learned about my son from a 30-second perusal of my Instagram feed.
It was my brother, the lawyer, who pointed out that what I had experienced sounded a lot like a coerced confession. “I read enough transcripts of bad interrogations in law school to understand that anyone can be convinced that they have a very narrow set of terrible options,” he said. When I posed this theory to Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who studies coerced confessions, he agreed. “If someone is trying to get you to be compliant, they do it incrementally, in a series of small steps that take you farther and farther from what you know to be true,” he said. “It’s not about breaking the will. They were altering the sense of reality.” And when you haven’t done anything wrong, the risk of cooperating feels minimal, he added. An innocent person thinks everything will get sorted out. It also mattered that I was kept on the phone for so long. People start to break down cognitively after a few hours of interrogation. “At that point, they’re not thinking straight. They feel the need to put an end to the situation at all costs,” Kassin said.
I wondered how often scammers are caught and about the guy who’d driven the car to my apartment. But when I asked experts, they doubted he’d be a meaningful lead. One pointed out that he might have been a courier who was told to come pick up a box.
I still don’t believe that what happened to me could happen to anyone, but I’m starting to realize that I’m not uniquely fallible. Several friends felt strongly that if the scammers hadn’t mentioned my son, I would never have fallen for this. They’re right that I’d be willing to do — or pay — anything to protect him. Either way, I have to accept that someone waged psychological warfare on me, and I lost. For now, I just don’t answer my phone.
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Free Essay Shortener for Students
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Summarize your research paper or article using these easy steps:
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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.
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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.
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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.
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can be shortened to:
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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.
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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.
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"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.
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❓ 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.
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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
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Our free word cutter for essays uses AI technology to shorten texts in these easy steps:
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✂️ How to Cut Words in an Essay?
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🖋 Essay Word Cutter Benefits
Text summarizing is a crucial process in academic writing. It demonstrates your capacity to organize and deliver the key facts, story points, ideas, etc. A person can easily understand a decent summary without reading the original material. Thus, students love our essay shortener for the following reasons:
If you need to summarize your hard-won draft essay to fit the word count requirement and are pressured to fulfill a fast-approaching deadline, you can make a few adjustments to your content. Follow these guidelines to reduce your word count in a shorter time:
- Remove conjunctions
- Eliminate adverbs and adjectives
- Omit unnecessary articles
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- Use an active voice
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Remove Conjunctions
Conjunctions are words or phrases that connect two independent sentences, words, or phrases that can often be rewritten into separate statements.
The most common conjunctions are and , but , or , because , and however , among others.
These conjunctions increase the word and character counts in an essay.
Eliminate Adverbs and Adjectives
Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives, prepositions, or other adverbs in sentences. Adjectives describe and qualify nouns and pronouns. Using adjectives and adverbs in an essay reduces the quality of your writing, while omitting superfluous adjectives and adverbs makes the text more concise .
Omit Unnecessary Articles – The/That
Avoid overusing the words “ the ” and “ that ” in your essay since they increase the wordiness of your content.
Decrease Wordy Phrases
Identify the needless words and lengthy phrases that clutter your essay and eliminate them or replace them with more functional words and phrases. Avoiding complex terms and long sentences makes it easy for anyone to understand the topic easily .
Use an Active Voice
Articles written in an active voice use fewer words than those in a passive voice. An active voice makes the essay clearer and more compelling , thus delivering a convincing argument.
Choose Shorter Words and Avoid Unnecessary Transitions
To reduce the character count of your essay, replace long words with their shorter synonyms.
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The word “utilize” can be replaced by use.
Additionally, the use of transition words is essential to maintaining a proper flow in your writing, thus making the article engaging to the reader. However, transitions make a text wordier . That’s why it’s vital to strike the right balance between coherence and reasonable word count.
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📍 Essay Word Cutter – FAQ
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The most efficient and effective way is to use our free online essay cutter to do the heavy lifting. However, if you have time and prefer to summarize your own, you can apply the tips shared in this article to reduce the word count in your essay.
📍 How to reduce word count in an essay?
You can use the tips highlighted above to trim your essay’s word count. If you’re strained with time, you can utilize our free summary generator to shorten your essay and achieve impeccable results quickly, within the click of a button.
📍 How to check word count on Word?
Check the status bar when you need to know how many words, pages, characters, paragraphs, or lines are in a Word document. For a partial word count, select the words you want to count. The status bar shows the word count for that selection and the entire document.
🔗 References
- How to effectively summarize the work of others - SFU Library
- Summarizing - Academic Integrity at MIT
- How to reduce word count without reducing content
- How to Increase or Decrease Your Paper's Word Count
- 10 Tips for Cutting Your Word Count
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Here are a few simple tricks you can use to quickly tighten your text and meet the limit. 1. Delete "The" You can often omit the word "the" from your text without losing any meaning. Example: Original: The clarity of your writing depends on both the content and the style. (13 words, 70 characters)
Example 1 "In my opinion, there are many people who want to lose weight." This sentence contains 12 words. Here's how we can shorten it by performing a Sentence Cleanup. First, you never have to say, " In my opinion, " because if it were not your opinion, you wouldn't be stating it. Okay? So, let's cross out " in my opinion. "
1. Delete your three Worst Paragraphs I usually aim to go over my word count intentionally so I can creatively make the essay shorter in a way that increases my marks. If I go over the word count, I can look back over my piece and find my worst performing paragraphs and remove them.
To shorten an essay, you can: Eliminate redundancy Combine sentences with similar meanings Avoid referring back Listen to your writing Further, we will give examples of sentences that can be shrunk with their revisions. Note: You can reverse some tips from our article about essay lengthening. The deadline is too short to read lengthy guides?
Even though this has changed over the years- from 650 to 500 words in the past -the current Common App essay word count is somewhere between 250 to 650 words. Can you go over the essay word limit? You must be careful about staying within the word limit for each application. Look at the essay prompts closely.
Frequently asked questions How can I shorten my college essay? 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.
1. Your Essay Outline is the Key. Before starting an essay, authors usually ponder about the essay and create a rough essay sketch in their minds. Creating a good outline is of fundamental importance. One must scribble down all the ideas and narratives that come to mind.
Published on September 29, 2021 by Kirsten Courault . Revised on June 1, 2023. Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit. If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words.
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."
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
Essay length guidelines. Type of essay. Average word count range. Essay content. High school essay. 300-1000 words. In high school you are often asked to write a 5-paragraph essay, composed of an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. College admission essay. 200-650 words.
1. Rank your Arguments' strengths and weakness The first technique for making your essay shorter is by ranking your arguments. If your essay is longer than the requirement, rank the points used to support your arguments. A good essay should contain only the most vital and valid points.
Here are 10 tips to keep your manuscript concise: 1. Look out for sentences beginning with "there is a previous study on," "it has been reported that," or similar phrases. Such sentences should be accompanied by reference citations, which make the above phrases redundant. These phrases can be deleted, leaving only the citation.
Change sentence structure. Altering the structure of sentences can also contribute to successful paraphrasing. Consider the original sentence from a history essay: "The revolution had a profound impact on the nation's social fabric." Paraphrased version: "The revolution greatly influenced the nation's social fabric."
Paragraph. Condense articles, papers, documents, and more down to the key points. You can easily control how long your results are using the length slider.
Cut-Down-Word-Count Generator is a free online tool that summarizes texts and reduces sentence and word count. It cuts out unnecessary words, phrases, and sentences but doesn't change the sense of a text. This is a helpful instrument for students, journalists, and other people who work with loads of written information.
References Text Shortener Guide Summarizing is an essential part of academic writing. It shows your ability to separate and present the main findings, plot elements, thoughts, etc. A good summary lets another person easily understand it without reading the original text.
There's no optimal word count for an essay, as tasks differ in length depending on your level of study. It's okay to write an essay of up to 1,000 words at school and 300-500 words for an admission essay. Undergraduate and graduate essays, however, should be a minimum of 2,000 words to present an in-depth examination of your topic.
How to use this summarizer. 1. Insert, paste or download your text. 2. Pick the way you want to summarize. 3. Adjust your summary length. 4. Get your summary in seconds!
Insert any text into the given window, choose the needed settings, and press the button. The results will appear in seconds! We will write a custom essay specifically for you for only 11.00 9.35/page Learn More 17,000 characters left 3 h o urs! We'll deliver a 100% original paper this fast Learn More Number of sentences in results: Compact
On a Tuesday evening this past October, I put $50,000 in cash in a shoe box, taped it shut as instructed, and carried it to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, my phone clasped to my ear.
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.
You can use our tool with a few simple steps: 1. Copy and paste the academic content into the input box. 2. Select the target audience you are writing for, the tone of voice, and the language of your essay. 3. Press the "Generate" button to let the essay shortener eliminate redundant phrases and highlight key points.
Shorten the text. Our free word cutter for essays uses AI technology to shorten texts in these easy steps: Paste the text you want to shorten. It should be a maximum of 18,000 characters in one go. Indicate the length of the text you want to receive as a result of summarization. Click "Shorten the text" and get the results.
The length of a good CV is constantly under debate. For example, some job-seekers think 1 page will suffice, where more experienced job seekers may struggle to fit it all into 4 or more pages. ... How to shorten a long engineering CV. Members'-only content Fri 16 Feb 2024. The length of a good CV is constantly under debate. For example, some ...