essay word count allowance

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10% over or under the word count rule?

I’ve had a few of my assignments allow for 10% above or below the word count, but some project outlines don’t mention this allowance. Is this a uni-wide rule for essays and written work? Would it be safe to assume this applies to all assignments even if it doesn’t explicitly mention it in the assignment info?

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What are the six different essay lengths?

This is the second of three chapters about Essays . To complete this reader, read each chapter carefully and then unlock and complete our materials to check your understanding.   

– Discuss why essays might vary in length

– Outline the six major lengths of academic essay

– Provide defining features for each essay length

Chapter 1: What is an academic essay?

Chapter 2: What are the six different essay lengths?

Chapter 3: What are the seven different types of academic essay?

Before you begin reading...

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The length of essay you’re assigned will likely depend on where you are exactly in your academic course. Generally, assignments at the start of a bachelor’s degree will be shorter than those required in a student’s final years, just like master’s  and doctoral-level essays will continue to increase in both length and difficulty.

1. The One-Paragraph Essay

Generally about 150 to 250 words in length, the one-paragraph essay may be assigned by academic tutors simply in order to practise the basic concepts of paragraph writing, or it may also be used for specific purposes such as to practise summarising an article that’s been read in class or to write an extended definition of a concept. Additionally, one-paragraph essays may also be used as a diagnostic to quickly determine the level of a student’s writing. Unlike other essay lengths, for the one-paragraph essay, you’ll need to include at least some introductory, body and conclusive elements within the same paragraph.    

2. The Three-Paragraph Essay

Usually around 500 words in length, the three-paragraph essay is generally used to introduce students to the concept that all essays should maintain an introduction , body section and conclusion if the writer wishes to produce cohesive and a logical writing. The introduction and conclusion will be the first and last paragraphs and tend to be a little shorter in length, while the central body paragraph will contain the essay’s content or argument. A simple table explaining the balance of content in a three-paragraph essay has been provided below:

3. The Five-Paragraph Essay

Around 1,000 words in length, the five-paragraph essay is generally set by tutors who are content that their students understand the introduction-body-conclusion essay  structure and wish to allow more freedom to expand the ideas and arguments presented by the writer in the body section of the essay. This length of essay still only dedicates one paragraph to the introduction and conclusion , but allows three paragraphs to be dedicated to the exploration of the theme in the essay’s body. At this length, certain essay types such as cause and effect essays or compare and contrast essays may now be utilised. The following is a simple diagram of the balance of paragraph lengths in a five-paragraph essay.

4. The Extended Essay

The extended essay is the most common type of essay that’s assigned during a bachelor’s or master’s degree , and it may be of any length – although it’s unusual for such essays to be above 5,000 words. The most common lengths for an extended essay are 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 words, with a word count allowance of plus or minus 10%. Such essay types will most certainly require research and referencing skills , and may also begin to follow more complex structures such as are found in dissertations and theses rather than simply following the introduction-body-conclusion structure of shorter essays.

5. The Dissertation

Generally assigned as the final project for both bachelor’s   and master’s degree , the typical length of an academic dissertation is 10,000 or 15,000 words. Unlike shorter essay types , dissertations have more complex structures and are almost always based around primary research (original research that the writer has conducted themselves). The following table demonstrates some of the key parts of a dissertation as well as the rough word count  percentages for each section:

6. The Thesis

Finally, the thesis is the longest academic essay type and the one that’s reserved for doctorate students studying PhDs. Generally between 40,000 and 60,000 words in length, the doctorate thesis may contain all the elements of a dissertation but in much more detail and with more careful investigation. Such essays  are almost certainly original and are based on primary research , with a larger focus on the accuracy of the literature review , data collection and data analysis . Many students will never encounter this essay type. 

Once you can recognise which essay length you’ve been assigned, the next question covered in Chapter 3 is about determining the type of essay you have to write. This is because each essay type will require particular styles, structures, foci and language.

To reference this reader:

Academic Marker (2022) Essays . Available at: https://academicmarker.com/academic-guidance/assignments/essays/ (Accessed: Date Month Year).

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Once you’ve completed all three chapters about essays , you might also wish to download our beginner, intermediate and advanced worksheets to test your progress or print for your students. These professional PDF worksheets can be easily accessed for only a few Academic Marks .

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Home » Marquette University » Is It Okay To Be Under The Word Count?

Is It Okay To Be Under The Word Count?

Table of Contents

As a rule, never submit anything that is more than 10% below a word limit . The limit is there for a reason, if you’re under it significantly then you’re either going to give the impression that you didn’t make sufficient effort, that you rushed it or that you didn’t understand the topic.

Is it better to be under or over the word count?

Your best bet is to write an essay and forget about the word count , which will probably end up with you being over it. Then when you come to reading it through, delete any repeated points, unnecessary words or irrelevant facts.

Is it okay to write less than the word limit?

No. You should never exceed the word limit for an essay . You should be able to trim your essay, even if it means writing way less than the word limit.

How close to the word count should I be?

Although many colleges give you roughly 10% leeway on the word limit, you should aim for your finished paper to be as close to the suggested word count as possible .

Do you need to meet the word count?

Getting an accurate word count is important for writing college essays and qualifying for scholarship opportunities . But you shouldn’t just add any words to help you meet the required length; instead, make sure you’re adding quality words to balance essay length with essay quality.

Is it bad to be under the word limit for college essays?

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. You should aim to stay under the specified limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely.

How important is word count in college essays?

Overall, it’s best to stay within the word count limit or range — it’s provided for a reason! Writing too much will likely result in your essay being cut off, and writing too little may cause readers to think that you aren’t truly interested in their school. If no range is given, remember to stick to 400-600 words.

How many marks do you lose for going over word count?

The falsification of a word count may result in the failure of the paper. There is no penalization for essays which exceed the word limit by up to 5% of the imposed limit. However, if you exceed the word limit by any more than 5%, a fixed penalty of five marks will be deducted from your assessment grade.

What is the shortest An essay can be?

around 150 words Essays can be anywhere from 250 to 650 words total.” The shortest word limits for college essays are usually around 150 words (less than half a single-spaced page). Rarely will you see a word limit higher than around 650 words (over one single-spaced page).

How many words is considered a long essay?

The most common lengths for an extended essay are 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 words , with a word count allowance of plus or minus 10%.

Does a 500 word essay have to be exactly 500 words?

500-word essays do not have to be exactly 500 words , but they should be as close as possible. The essay prompt may say “in under 500 words” or “in at least 500 words,” which would state whether 500 is the minimum or maximum word count.

Why is a word count important?

It is possible to effectively convey your point in 450 words , while other subjects require much more research and information to sufficiently discuss a topic. In addition, find the word count that works best for your reader’s expectations. Keep them captivated in your content and make it useful.

What do you do if your essay is too short?

5 Helpful Tips for Serious Students

• expanding the opposing view.
• adding an additional alternate view (from a neutral or surprising angle)
• adding another case study or example that pushes your own claim TOO far (and then explaining why your argument is not as weak as that extreme case)

How do I increase my word count?

How to Increase Your Essay Word Count

• Add Examples. Skim through your essay looking for any place you have used an example to make a point.
• Address Different Viewpoints.
• Clarify Statements.
• Find Additional Sources.
• Use Quotations.
• Rework Introduction and Conclusion.
• Page Count.

How do you beef up in an essay?

• Ways to Expand (& Improve) an Essay.
• Expand individual paragraphs.
• Ask how and why questions.
• Add (more) concrete examples and evidence.
• Expand the introduction and/or conclusion.
• Add a sentence or two at the end of each paragraph summarizing (and/or refuting) the.
• Write new paragraphs.

Do colleges check word count?

The admissions counselors are skilled at estimating the length of your essay . If they specify “an essay of no fewer than 250 words,” they expect at least one typewritten, double-spaced page with normal fonts and margins. And if they ask for no more than two typewritten pages, they will be annoyed to receive ten.

Do admissions officers care about word count?

One rule of thumb that is frequently tossed around is 10%, although it’s worth noting that admissions consultants tend to promote this rule more than any admissions officer does . However, if you can stay within 10% of the word limit for an essay, you probably are okay.

Is a 5000 word essay long?

5,000 words is 10 pages single-spaced or 20 pages double-spaced . Typical documents that are 5,000 words include college dissertations, theses, and in-depth blog posts and journal articles. It will take approximately 17 minutes to read 5,000 words.

Is 500 words good for a college essay?

500 to 600 words allows you to give them a proper flying experience and gives you the words necessary to differentiate your world from the world of other applicants . In order to produce a great final draft essay, your rough drafts should be even longer than 650 words.

How do you lower word count in college essay?

10 Tricks to Reduce Your Word Count in Academic Writing

• Delete “The” You can often omit the word “the” from your text without losing any meaning.
• Erase “That”
• Remove Adverbs and Adjectives.
• Use Shorter Words.
• Trim Wordy Phrases.
• Choose Active Voice.
• Revise Needless Transitions.
• Eliminate Conjunctions.

How many words over the limit is acceptable?

Assignment length requirements are usually given in terms of numbers of words. Unless the lecturer tells you that these limits are strict, it is normally acceptable to be 10% above or below this word limit (so, for example, a 2000 word assignment should be between 1800 and 2200 words).

By Travis Thornton

Travis Thornton is an education expert who has dedicated his life to helping students achieve their academic goals. He has worked as a teacher, tutor, and administrator in both public and private schools, and he currently serves as the dean of admissions at a prestigious university.

Travis believes that every student has the potential to succeed, and he tirelessly works to help them reach their full potential. He is a passionate advocate for education, and he believes that every student should have access to a quality education.

Travis is also a father of three young children, and he loves spending time with his family. He enjoys playing sports and watching movies together.

You might also like:

Does marquette give good merit aid, what percent of marquette students are catholic, what are five things you should do when answering an essay question.

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Assignment length requirements are usually given in terms of numbers of words.

Unless the lecturer tells you that these limits are strict, it is normally acceptable to be 10% above or below this word limit (so, for example, a 2000 word assignment should be between 1800 and 2200 words). If the assignment uses the words “up to” (as in “up to 2500 words”) that usually means that you cannot go above the limit.

Use the tool below to calculate the acceptable range for an assignment (based on +/- 10%).

Unless the lecturer tells you otherwise, the word limit does not include ‘administrative’ sections of the assignment: the cover or title page, table of contents, table of figures, reference list, list of works cited, bibliography, or any appendices.

The word limit that you are given reflects the level of detail required . This means that if your assignment is too long, you're either taking too many words to explain your point or giving too many / too detailed examples. If your assignment is too short, either there is more to the answer than you have written or the assignment has not gone into enough detail about the answer.

• Don't try to remove single words from your assignment. It is unlikely to reduce the assignment's length significantly, but it may confuse your argument . Instead, aim to remove or condense whole sections of your assignment.
• You should not include something just because it is a fact, or just because it is included in your course materials. Include something only if it is relevant to your argument.
• Be direct. State your point rather than writing many paragraphs to ‘lead up’ to it.
• Go back to the question . Which sections relate to the point and which are secondary?
• Go back to the plan . Which paragraphs fit in the overall structure? Which paragraphs overlap and can be combined?
• Remove sections where you
• Over-explain your point
• Over-specify your point
• Repeat yourself
• Write off-topic or ramble
• Remove multiple examples where one or two are sufficient.
• Remove hedging language that adds little to the argument (e.g., it would seem that, it is possible that).

If you are often over the word count you should look at your writing style. See writing concisely for more.

Explain your argument fully

• Make sure every argument in your head and in your plan is on the page.
• Would a general (i.e., non-specialist) reader understand your point? Have someone else read over your assignment and ask you questions about it. What do they think is missing?
• Are there gaps in your argument?
• Does each point logically follow the last one, or do you jump over important points?

Look for the ‘hidden’ answer

• What theories do you think the marker expects?
• How does this relate to the materials from lectures and study guides? Use the course information in your answer to the assignment question.
• Are there complications or contradictions in the argument or in your research? Explain them and explore them.

Flesh it out

• Define any special terminology you've used that a general reader would not be familiar with.
• Illustrate with more examples and/or quotations.
• Contextualise and explain the quotations you use. How do they relate to your argument?

Page authorised by Director - Centre for Learner Success Last updated on 12 December, 2018

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Why is Word Count Important (How to Manage Assignment Paper Length)

Word count is a crucial factor in writing projects which affects how much time you are going to need to complete it in time. It is a grading criterion which is entirely within the student’s control and failure to stay within the usual allowance range of 10% can result in penalties to the final grade. To put it another way, word count guidelines are there to help students with their assignments, so it important to always pay attention to this!

Understanding the main purpose for assigning a specific limit on the number of words in an assignment should help you write a better paper that stays on track and help you avoid unnecessary filler content. Given the importance of this factor, we will be covering this in more depth first, before moving on to tips on how to manage the word count and make the paper longer or shorter, as per your requirement.

Table of Contents

What is the purpose of word counts for an assignment?

1.       word count guidelines clarify the level of detail which is being expected.

Word counts are one of the most important clues that teachers give to students to inform them what is expected of them in the assignment. We have covered in our guide on assignment structure that combining the word count with the grading criteria can easily give you a rough outline and draft for your paper, which will then make the actual writing work much easier. You can also use our assignment time calculator to estimate roughly how long you will need.

If you end up writing a fair bit more or less than the stated guideline, it should be an indication for you that you have either:

• not collected your thoughts properly
• not phrased your points in the right way
• not put everything together into a concise and coherent paper

.. or a combination of these factors.

If you ever face a situation in which you are really struggling to meet the word count, then it is time for some introspection and reflection on what you have written compared to what you have learnt in your coursework. This is because word count guideline and limits are anything but random – you can be sure that they’ve been chosen after careful consideration so try not to make unfounded assumptions that ‘there must be a mistake with the word given’!

To summarize, the main issue that teachers have with shorter papers isn’t actually that they didn’t meet the word count – it’s the fact that a paper with a lower word count is likely to be lower in quality with weaker points which have not been fully substantiated to the extent required.

2.       Word count limits emphasize the need to be precise and concise

Limits on the number of words allowed in a paper also pushes students towards being precise in the points that they choose to include in their assignment and present it in a concise manner. Without word counts, students will have a hard time by determining themselves how much content needs to go into each section or subsection.

So, without word counts, some students may potentially struggle to write a good paper and up with content which is too thin (as they do not know what is being expected of them). Other students may wander all over the place and end up writing too much unnecessarily. Hence, they are important guidelines that help stress the importance of quantity over quality – writing a lot doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ve written good content!

3.       Word count requirements fairness in grading of all students

Another point worth considering is that word counts help make the grading scale uniform and standardized for all students – it levels the playing field by ensuring that all students make the points which they need to within the same number of words. Going one step further, word count guidelines can also be standardized across different courses, modules, universities and even countries, making the odds even for all students everywhere (well, at least in theory).

What is the purpose of word count allowance?

When a teacher specifies the word count for an assignment, they are not going to scrutinize whether you have stopped a few words short or went a few words over. What they’re trying to convey to you is that to answer the assignment requirement properly, you will roughly need the number of words that they have specified to cover all necessary points concisely.

Hence, you will almost always have a word count allowance for your assignments since the actual number specified is only intended to be a ballpark figure to guide you on the level of detail required. The standard allowance is usually 10% plus or minus so if your assignment length has been specified as 2,000 words, it would fine to turn in a paper that ranges from 1,800 words to 2,200 words. If the word count allowance was specified as 5% instead, then would mean that your paper needs to between 1,900 words to 2,100 words in length.

On the other hand, if there is no specific note about such an allowance range in the assignment requirements file, try to check the module outline file since it may be given there instead. Should that not give you any result, then check the university guidelines and see if you can find it mentioned there. If you don’t have any luck with that either, then you should probably just ask your teacher directly. In any case, try not to make an assumption on the word count allowance.

How to boost word count and make an essay paper longer

For some students, word counts are things to be dreaded and they may often find themselves falling short of the minimum word count which has been specified. It doesn’t have to be all that hard! You can follow these tips to make your essay paper longer easily in an organic way that doesn’t make your teacher suspect that you’ve resorted to some cheap tricks to achieve this.

1.       Add critical analysis to paraphrased points

A crucial part of academic assignment writing is to draw on points mentioned in other credible sources like peer-reviewed journal articles or trustworthy news outlets. When doing this, paraphrasing is an extremely important skills that you need to develop to avoid plagiarism. Even if you are providing the source from where you have taken an idea, we generally advise not to quote directly unless unavoidable. We have dedicated guide for how to effectively paraphrase ideas from other sources in your words and this guide includes some helpful tips on how to get better at this skill.

When paraphrasing content from other sources, you should always add a critical analysis of the point which you are referencing. Apart from increasing the word count of you paper, this helps you tick another checkbox. Teachers expect to see you engage with the material taken from a credible source and this approach would be proof of that.

To show you an example of how you could do this, you can see the table below. We follow a few steps to end up with more than twice the number of words that we started out with.

• We start with a source text from Porter’s well-known paper on competitive forces . We have chosen a section of the paper which has 54 words in total.
• Building on this, we can paraphrase this part in our own words , while giving the reference for the source text as per APA format and we end up writing 39 words for this.
• Lastly, we could just add a couple of lines after our paraphrased sentence to explain what we understood from th e source material. This would help the teacher realize that we are not just regurgitating information from other places. It signals to them that we have actually understood the points and concepts being discussed. This adds another 73 words to our total count.

So, by paraphrasing a source text of 54 words, we ended up doubling that (39+73 = 112 words ) with relatively little effort. For more information on this, check out our dedicated guide on how to critically analyze and engage with existing literature.

2.       Add relevant examples to support your points

You can also make use of examples to add more credibility to the points that you are trying to make. This also comes with the benefit of informing your teacher that you were able to grasp the idea or concept better as you were able to match it to a suitable example. So, taking the same scenario as above regarding competitive forces, we can then add another sentence at the end like this:

In this way, we’ve added another 94 words on top of the 112 from earlier, so we have now added around 206 words to the paper. To put this in context, if this were part of a 2,000-word paper, we have effectively written around 10% of the required word count fairly easily. To identify how and where you can add examples organically, you may need to skim over your essay a couple of times and try to get a feel for which parts could use an example or two.

3.       Include a secondary supporting reference for your point

If you feel it is appropriate, you can also include an additional point from a different source which supports the previous statement and adds further weight to the message which you are trying to convey. Having too many references is better than having too few references. However, you should try to find a middle ground and make sure to follow up referenced points with critical analysis so that your entire paper isn’t just a mix of views of others with no originality to the points you are making.

4.       Include facts, figures, or other statistical data

This would be done in a similar way to the previous suggestion in which you can provide some facts and figures from reliable sources to support the information you have just presented. You could potentially also do it the other way around by starting with a stat or figure and explaining it in your own words.

5.       Try to balance your points with alternate viewpoints (and address them)

This is the opposite of the above suggestion. You can also try to increase the words in your assignment in an organic way by presenting some opposing arguments and then trying to take a stance on which seems more appropriate or suitable to the topic of your essay. For nearly every single point that you make, there are likely to be differing viewpoints from others – you have to pick your battles though as inserting conflicting viewpoints for every single statement would make your paper dry and monotonous.

If you do use this option, then you have to make sure that you address the opposing viewpoints with suitable counterarguments and why one view is superior to the other.

6.       Always add labels for figures and tables

Labels for figures and tables are typically included in the word count of assignments unless otherwise specified. There’s no good reason NOT to use labels for each and every figure and table which you include in paper. Apart from being a standard requirement in many academic formats/styles, it is a fairly easy way to increase the word count of your paper, so it’s a win-win to always do this.

7.       Make proper use of transition (connecting) words

You can also make use of transition and connecting words like the following to increase your word count while also creating a coherent flow between your points.

• Words that help build on ideas: ‘Additionally’, ‘Moreover’, ‘Furthermore’, ‘In fact’
• Words that imply sequence or chronology: ‘Thereafter’, ‘Subsequently’
• Words indicating inference: ‘Therefore’, ‘Hence’, ‘Thus’, ‘As a result’ ‘Consequently’
• Words indicating similarity: ‘Similarly’, ‘Likewise’
• Words indicating contrast in ideas: ‘Although’, ‘Even though’, ‘However’, ‘Nevertheless’, ‘In contrast’, ‘On one hand’ (which is paired with ‘while on the other hand’), ‘From another perspective’, ‘Regardless’,
• Words for giving examples: ‘For instance’, ‘For example’, ‘As an example’
• Words for summarizing ideas: ‘In other words’, ‘In conclusion’, ‘Ultimately’
• Words that can help when paraphrasing: ‘According to’, ‘As mentioned/stated/claimed by’, ‘In their paper’

8.       Check the assignment requirements one more time

If you have done all the suggestions above and still find that you are short of the word count and are lacking ideas on how to expand further, then you should take a look at the assignment requirements again. Perhaps there could be some keywords in there for ideas, concepts or information that are expected, which you may have potentially forgotten or overlooked in the heat of writing the assignment.

9.       Avoid tricks like adjusting font and margins

Most students have a natural tendency to ‘under-write’ thinking they have a covered a topic or point adequately in a smaller number of words than are needed. However, if you find yourself trying to increase the word count of your paper using unnecessary phrases then you should realize with your intuition that you have not articulated your thoughts adequately. This means that the quality of your essay isn’t likely to be all that good and so you’re going to end up with a lower grade.

Another reason why you should avoid desperate tricks like using some large typeface fonts or adjusting the margins is because they’re fairly obvious to spot to a trained eye. You might not notice it, given your relative inexperience, but you can bet that your teachers would have seen almost all the plays in the book and spot weird formats in an instant.

As an example, a common trick that some students do is to add in some unnecessary words between some paragraphs and set the font color to white. The algorithm of some plagiarism detection software have been beefed up in recent times to detect this trick and automatically places a markup on such things that are out of the ordinary for teachers to review manually. In other instances, teachers who can spot that the content seems to be lacking compared to the word count specified can download the Word version of your submitted file, change the formatting details to standard style (which includes the font color) and detect this trick easily enough.

10.   Avoid unnecessary filler and fluff

You should be careful not to add in fluff material which would make it very difficult for teachers to get the gist of the points that you are trying to make. Remember, most of your teachers have probably been ‘in the game’ for a long time now and are sure to have come across a wide variety of students and the tactics that they use to pad their paper and reach the word count. As a result, it is usually very easy for them to tell that you have just filled your paper low quality content to meet the required word count.

How to shorten an essay paper?

There are going to be other times when you will want to cut down the length of your paper as you may have already exceeded the word count, which is typically the case for those writing long thesis or dissertations. If you are in a position where you have gone significantly over the word count and beyond the allowance range, then it means that you probably haven’t narrowed down or focused on just the most important and relevant points.

You can reduce your word count by avoiding things like repeating long form of words which are often represented by commonly used abbreviations and acronyms. This includes topics like like Human Resources Management (HRM) or concepts like Resource Based View (RBV). The first time that you use these kinds of words in your paper, you should mention the full form and include the abbreviation or acronym in brackets. Thereafter, you can continue using the shortened form for the rest of your paper.

How many words to write if word count is not specified?

If the necessary word count has not been mentioned for an assignment, then you should try to consider some other cues in the assignment requirements files. We have a guide on the standard word count weights (percentages) – this can help plan how many words to allocate to each section and then add them all up.

What is included in the assignment word count?

1.       in-text references.

In-text references are included in the word count, which is typically why some referencing formats specify the use of the phrase ‘et al.’ (which is derived from the Latin word for ‘and others’) when the source you are citing has multiple authors. In some formats like APA, you should use this phrase if there are more than 2 authors, while in another format like Harvard, you only need to use this when citing works with more than 3 authors.

2.       Labels for tables and figures

What is not included in the assignment word count, 1.       abstract / executive summary, 2.       table of contents, 3.       footnotes, 4.       references / bibliography, 5.       appendix, suggested word counts.

Around 200-300 words should be sufficient for Abstract / Executive Summary.

2.       Introduction and conclusions

Typically, you do not want to exceed 10% of the overall word count for introduction and conclusions. If the paper that you are writing is a thesis or a dissertation of 10,000 words or more, then you can even go as low as 5% of the overall word count but use your own judgement for the optimal length of these section. Most importantly, try to check the weights assigned to these sections in the scoring rubric and make sure to match that.

3.       Personal Statement

Other misconceptions about word count.

The counter for words in an MS Word document as well as most plagiarism detection software like Turnitin to which you submit your assignment does not include the spacing between words in the overall word count. These are counted under the separate counter for ‘Characters (with spaces)’.

The impact of different referencing styles on word count

This was much more important in the past, when assignment papers were almost always submitted as hard copies and, in these cases, the referencing format and style had a big impact on whether you had met the word count of your essay or not.

This is because each of the standard styles had their specific guidelines for page margins, the spacing between text, the specific font to be used and its size and other similar factors. If you had followed these correctly, teachers would be able to roughly gauge the total number of words that you have written just by looking at the number of pages.

Now, you’re probably thinking that counting the exact number of words on a hard copy assignment, especially if it is long, is impractical as it would take a long time. We can set you straight on that – teachers have an easy trick to get a rough estimation of the number of words in your paper.

• They would start by picking a few random lines in your page and counting the number of words in each of them to get an average estimation of the words per line
• They would then count the number of lines on a single page
• Finally, they can just multiply that by the total number of pages excluding the standard parts which are not included such as table of contents, references section etc.

So, do not try to be a wise ass – your teachers have been doing this for so long that it is almost second nature for them to tell if a student has met the word count, and whether they have used any obvious tricks to make it seem like their paper is long than it is.

The key differences in different formatting styles are summarized below to help you get a better understanding of this point.

Hu B,. Hu, M., Yang. Y. (2016). Open or closed? Technology sharing, supplier investment, and competition.  Manufacturing Service Operations Management .

Porter, M. E. (1979). How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy. Harvard Business Review [Online]. Available from: https://hbr.org/1979/03/how-competitive-forces-shape-strategy [Accessed 14 November 2021]

Reuters (2019). De Beers curbs diamond supply as earnings drop. Reuters [Online]. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-anglo-results-debeers/de-beers-curbs-diamond-supply-as-earnings-drop-idUSKCN1UK1WB [Accessed 13 November 2021]

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The Best College Essay Length: How Long Should It Be?

College Essays

Figuring out your college essay can be one of the most difficult parts of applying to college. Even once you've read the prompt and picked a topic, you might wonder: if you write too much or too little, will you blow your chance of admission? How long should a college essay be?

Whether you're a terse writer or a loquacious one, we can advise you on college essay length. In this guide, we'll cover what the standard college essay length is, how much word limits matter, and what to do if you aren't sure how long a specific essay should be.

How Long Is a College Essay? First, Check the Word Limit

You might be used to turning in your writing assignments on a page-limit basis (for example, a 10-page paper). While some colleges provide page limits for their college essays, most use a word limit instead. This makes sure there's a standard length for all the essays that a college receives, regardless of formatting or font.

In the simplest terms, your college essay should be pretty close to, but not exceeding, the word limit in length. Think within 50 words as the lower bound, with the word limit as the upper bound. So for a 500-word limit essay, try to get somewhere between 450-500 words. If they give you a range, stay within that range.

College essay prompts usually provide the word limit right in the prompt or in the instructions.

For example, the University of Illinois says :

"You'll answer two to three prompts as part of your application. The questions you'll answer will depend on whether you're applying to a major or to our undeclared program , and if you've selected a second choice . Each response should be approximately 150 words."

As exemplified by the University of Illinois, the shortest word limits for college essays are usually around 150 words (less than half a single-spaced page). Rarely will you see a word limit higher than around 650 words (over one single-spaced page). College essays are usually pretty short: between 150 and 650 words. Admissions officers have to read a lot of them, after all!

Weigh your words carefully, because they are limited!

How Flexible Is the Word Limit?

But how flexible is the word limit? What if your poignant anecdote is just 10 words too long—or 100 too short?

Can I Go Over the Word Limit?

If you are attaching a document and you need one or two extra words, you can probably get away with exceeding the word limit by such a small amount. Some colleges will actually tell you that exceeding the word limit by 1-2 words is fine. However, I advise against exceeding the word limit unless it's explicitly allowed for a few reasons:

First, you might not be able to. If you have to copy-paste it into a text box, your essay might get cut off and you'll have to trim it down anyway.

If you exceed the word limit in a noticeable way, the admissions counselor may just stop reading your essay past that point. This is not good for you.

Following directions is actually a very important part of the college application process. You need to follow directions to get your letters of recommendation, upload your essays, send supplemental materials, get your test scores sent, and so on and so forth. So it's just a good general rule to follow whatever instructions you've been given by the institution. Better safe than sorry!

Can I Go Under the Word Limit?

If you can truly get your point across well beneath the word limit, it's probably fine. Brevity is not necessarily a bad thing in writing just so long as you are clear, cogent, and communicate what you want to.

However, most college essays have pretty tight word limits anyways. So if you're writing 300 words for an essay with a 500-word limit, ask yourself: is there anything more you could say to elaborate on or support your points? Consult with a parent, friend, or teacher on where you could elaborate with more detail or expand your points.

Also, if the college gives you a word range, you absolutely need to at least hit the bottom end of the range. So if you get a range from the institution, like 400-500 words, you need to write at least 400 words. If you write less, it will come across like you have nothing to say, which is not an impression you want to give.

What If There Is No Word Limit?

Some colleges don't give you a word limit for one or more of your essay prompts. This can be a little stressful, but the prompts generally fall into a few categories:

Writing Sample

Some colleges don't provide a hard-and-fast word limit because they want a writing sample from one of your classes. In this case, a word limit would be very limiting to you in terms of which assignments you could select from.

For an example of this kind of prompt, check out essay Option B at Amherst :

"Submit a graded paper from your junior or senior year that best represents your writing skills and analytical abilities. We are particularly interested in your ability to construct a tightly reasoned, persuasive argument that calls upon literary, sociological or historical evidence. You should NOT submit a laboratory report, journal entry, creative writing sample or in-class essay."

While there is usually no word limit per se, colleges sometimes provide a general page guideline for writing samples. In the FAQ for Option B , Amherst clarifies, "There is no hard-and-fast rule for official page limit. Typically, we anticipate a paper of 4-5 pages will provide adequate length to demonstrate your analytical abilities. Somewhat longer papers can also be submitted, but in most cases should not exceed 8-10 pages."

So even though there's no word limit, they'd like somewhere in the 4-10 pages range. High school students are not usually writing papers that are longer than 10 pages anyways, so that isn't very limiting.

Implicit Length Guideline

Sometimes, while there's no word (or even page) limit, there's still an implicit length guideline. What do I mean by this?

See, for example, this Western Washington University prompt :

“Describe one or more activities you have been involved in that have been particularly meaningful. What does your involvement say about the communities, identities or causes that are important to you?”

While there’s no page or word limit listed here, further down on page the ‘essay tips’ section explains that “ most essay responses are about 500 words, ” though “this is only a recommendation, not a firm limit.” This gives you an idea of what’s reasonable. A little longer or shorter than 500 words would be appropriate here. That’s what I mean by an “implicit” word limit—there is a reasonable length you could go to within the boundaries of the prompt.

But what's the proper coffee-to-paragraph ratio?

Treasure Hunt

There is also the classic "treasure hunt" prompt. No, it's not a prompt about a treasure hunt. It's a prompt where there are no length guidelines given, but if you hunt around on the rest of the website you can find length guidelines.

For example, the University of Chicago provides seven "Extended Essay" prompts . You must write an essay in response to one prompt of your choosing, but nowhere on the page is there any guidance about word count or page limit.

However, many colleges provide additional details about their expectations for application materials, including essays, on FAQ pages, which is true of the University of Chicago. On the school’s admissions Frequently Asked Questions page , they provide the following length guidelines for the supplemental essays: 

“We suggest that you note any word limits for Coalition or Common Application essays; however, there are no strict word limits on the UChicago Supplement essays. For the extended essay (where you choose one of several prompts), we suggest that you aim for around 650 words. While we won't, as a rule, stop reading after 650 words, we're only human and cannot promise that an overly wordy essay will hold our attention indefinitely. For the “Why UChicago?” essay, we suggest about 250-500 words. The ideas in your writing matter more than the exact number of words you use!”

So there you go! You want to be (loosely) in the realm of 650 for the extended essay, and 250-500 words for the “Why UChicago?” essay.

Help! There Really Is No Guidance on Length

If you really can't find any length guidelines anywhere on the admissions website and you're at a loss, I advise calling the admissions office. They may not be able to give you an exact number (in fact, they probably won't), but they will probably at least be able to tell you how long most of the essays they see are. (And keep you from writing a panicked, 20-page dissertation about your relationship with your dog).

In general, 500 words or so is pretty safe for a college essay. It's a fairly standard word limit length, in fact. (And if you're wondering, that's about a page and a half double-spaced.) 500 words is long enough to develop a basic idea while still getting a point across quickly—important when admissions counselors have thousands of essays to read!

"See? It says 500 words right there in tiny font!"

The Final Word: How Long Should a College Essay Be?

The best college essay length is usually pretty straightforward: you want to be right under or at the provided word limit. If you go substantially past the word limit, you risk having your essay cut off by an online application form or having the admissions officer just not finish it. And if you're too far under the word limit, you may not be elaborating enough.

What if there is no word limit? Then how long should a college essay be? In general, around 500 words is a pretty safe approximate word amount for a college essay—it's one of the most common word limits, after all!

Here's guidance for special cases and hunting down word limits:

If it's a writing sample of your graded academic work, the length either doesn't matter or there should be some loose page guidelines.

There also may be implicit length guidelines. For example, if a prompt says to write three paragraphs, you'll know that writing six sentences is definitely too short, and two single-spaced pages is definitely too long.

You might not be able to find length guidelines in the prompt, but you could still hunt them up elsewhere on the website. Try checking FAQs or googling your chosen school name with "admissions essay word limit."

If there really is no word limit, you can call the school to try to get some guidance.

With this advice, you can be sure you've got the right college essay length on lockdown!

Hey, writing about yourself can even be fun!

What's Next?

Need to ask a teacher or friend for help with your essay? See our do's and dont's to getting college essay advice .

If you're lacking in essay inspiration, see our guide to brainstorming college essay ideas . And here's our guide to starting out your essay perfectly!

Looking for college essay examples? See 11 places to find college essay examples and 145 essay examples with analysis !

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Ellen has extensive education mentorship experience and is deeply committed to helping students succeed in all areas of life. She received a BA from Harvard in Folklore and Mythology and is currently pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University.

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• How long is an essay? Guidelines for different types of essay

How Long is an Essay? Guidelines for Different Types of Essay

Published on January 28, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The length of an academic essay varies depending on your level and subject of study, departmental guidelines, and specific course requirements. In general, an essay is a shorter piece of writing than a research paper  or thesis .

In most cases, your assignment will include clear guidelines on the number of words or pages you are expected to write. Often this will be a range rather than an exact number (for example, 2500–3000 words, or 10–12 pages). If you’re not sure, always check with your instructor.

In this article you’ll find some general guidelines for the length of different types of essay. But keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity – focus on making a strong argument or analysis, not on hitting a specific word count.

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Table of contents

Essay length guidelines, how long is each part of an essay, using length as a guide to topic and complexity, can i go under the suggested length, can i go over the suggested length, other interesting articles.

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In an academic essay, the main body should always take up the most space. This is where you make your arguments, give your evidence, and develop your ideas.

The introduction should be proportional to the essay’s length. In an essay under 3000 words, the introduction is usually just one paragraph. In longer and more complex essays, you might need to lay out the background and introduce your argument over two or three paragraphs.

The conclusion of an essay is often a single paragraph, even in longer essays. It doesn’t have to summarize every step of your essay, but should tie together your main points in a concise, convincing way.

The suggested word count doesn’t only tell you how long your essay should be – it also helps you work out how much information and complexity you can fit into the given space. This should guide the development of your thesis statement , which identifies the main topic of your essay and sets the boundaries of your overall argument.

A short essay will need a focused, specific topic and a clear, straightforward line of argument. A longer essay should still be focused, but it might call for a broader approach to the topic or a more complex, ambitious argument.

As you make an outline of your essay , make sure you have a clear idea of how much evidence, detail and argumentation will be needed to support your thesis. If you find that you don’t have enough ideas to fill out the word count, or that you need more space to make a convincing case, then consider revising your thesis to be more general or more specific.

The length of the essay also influences how much time you will need to spend on editing and proofreading .

You should always aim to meet the minimum length given in your assignment. If you are struggling to reach the word count:

• Add more evidence and examples to each paragraph to clarify or strengthen your points.
• Make sure you have fully explained or analyzed each example, and try to develop your points in more detail.
• Address a different aspect of your topic in a new paragraph. This might involve revising your thesis statement to make a more ambitious argument.
• Don’t use filler. Adding unnecessary words or complicated sentences will make your essay weaker and your argument less clear.
• Don’t fixate on an exact number. Your marker probably won’t care about 50 or 100 words – it’s more important that your argument is convincing and adequately developed for an essay of the suggested length.

In some cases, you are allowed to exceed the upper word limit by 10% – so for an assignment of 2500–3000 words, you could write an absolute maximum of 3300 words. However, the rules depend on your course and institution, so always check with your instructor if you’re unsure.

Only exceed the word count if it’s really necessary to complete your argument. Longer essays take longer to grade, so avoid annoying your marker with extra work! If you are struggling to edit down:

• Check that every paragraph is relevant to your argument, and cut out irrelevant or out-of-place information.
• Make sure each paragraph focuses on one point and doesn’t meander.
• Cut out filler words and make sure each sentence is clear, concise, and related to the paragraph’s point.
• Don’t cut anything that is necessary to the logic of your argument. If you remove a paragraph, make sure to revise your transitions and fit all your points together.
• Don’t sacrifice the introduction or conclusion . These paragraphs are crucial to an effective essay –make sure you leave enough space to thoroughly introduce your topic and decisively wrap up your argument.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
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Library Support: Plagiarism and Good Academic Practice

What are the penalties for being over or under the word count.

The University's Academic Regulations have a section on exceeding word limits (section 6 L) - which covers what is and is not counted as part of the word count. It also covers what the penalties are for going over the word count.

In short, should the work be over the word count, how far it goes is taken into consideration and brings the overall mark down. For those assignments which are pass/fail, going over the word count can result in a fail grade.

• Plagiarism and Good Academic Practice
• Last Updated May 15, 2023
• Answered By Elaine Pocklington

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Arts Sciences

Penalties for over-length coursework

Assignment briefs will include clear instructions about word counts, the inclusion of footnotes, diagrams, images, tables, figures and bibliographies etc. and you are expected to adhere to the requirements for each assessment. If you exceed these parameters you may receive a reduction in marks.

When writing essays, you must clarify the rules on word count and referencing style with the lecturer who set the assignment, as there are different rules and guidelines for each department / subject. You can usually find this information on the course Moodle page.

For example, it is common practice across the Faculty of Arts and Humanities that footnotes are included in the word count, but the bibliography is not. Some science departments specify the length they require in terms of pages (and may also specify font and margins) rather than words, because equations, graphs etc. are difficult to count.

The length of coursework for a BASC-coded module will be specified in terms of a word count or number of pages. Assessed work should not exceed the prescribed length. For submitted coursework that has a maximum length specified, the following procedures will apply:

• For written assignments that exceed a specified maximum length by less than 10% the mark will be reduced by five percentage points (i.e. 5 marks), but the penalised mark will not be reduced below the pass mark: marks already at or below the pass mark will not be reduced. For example, if you are taking a module between Levels 4 and 6 and your word limit is 2,000 words and you write between 2,001 and 2,199 words, you will lose 5 marks so a mark of 71% would be reduced to 66%, a mark of 43% would be reduced to 40% but a mark of 39% would not be reduced. If you were taking a Level 7 module, and you submit work between 2,001 and 2,199 words for a 2,000 word assessment, you would lose 5 marks so a mark of 71% would be reduced to 66%, a mark of 53% would be reduced to 50% but a mark of 49% would not be reduced.
• For work that exceeds a specified maximum length by 10% or more the mark will be reduced by ten percentage points (i.e. 10 marks), but the penalised mark will not be reduced below the pass mark: marks already at or below the pass mark will not be reduced. For example, if you are taking a module between Levels 4 and 6 and your word limit is 2,000 words and you submit work that exceeds 2,200 words, you will lose 10 marks so a mark of 71% would be reduced to 61%, a mark of 43% would be reduced to 40% but a mark of 39% would not be reduced. If you were taking a Level 7 module, and you submit work that exceeds 2,200 words for a 2,000 word assessment, you would lose 10 marks so a mark of 71% would be reduced to 61%, a mark of 53% would be reduced to 50% but a mark of 49% would not be reduced.
• Where the maximum word count is exceeded by a small amount, likely to fall within the margin of error of conflicting word counts generated by different software, the BASc E xamination B oard will exercise academic judgement in determining whether the word limit has been exceeded. In all such cases an independent count will be made by the Department and in no case will discretion be exercised where the count exceeds the maximum set for the assignment by more than 2%. Work that is deliberately submitted over-length will be subject to the over-length penalties outlined above.
• In the case of coursework that is submitted late and is also over length, the greater of the two penalties will apply.

Please note: there is no longer a UCL-wide policy on over-length submissions and so the penalties above relate to BASC-coded modules and modules taught by departments (including the School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) within the Faculties of Arts and Humanities and Social and Historical Sciences only. It is your responsibility to check with each of your teaching departments to determine the over-length penalties for each of the other modules you are taking.

Minimum Length

Please note there is no automatic penalty for under-length essays providing there is sufficient suitable content.

Further information:

• Academic Manual Chapter 4, Section 3: Module Assessment

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Word limits

Few issues seem to cause more angst among some students than the issue of word counts.

Some modules have assignments that state "a maximum of X words" or "write no more than X words" but students still tend to ask if they can have 10% extra.  Some seem surprised when I say that the words "maximum" and "no more than..." mean what they say.

New comment

Could that be because students get other advice from elsewhere?  The "elsewhere" in my experience has been social science, technology, psychology, philosophy and history modules.  In all of those we have been permitted to go 10% over, no limit for going under but expected to not waffle.  I have had warnings that if we submit a TMA approaching 10% over and it has repetitious language or too many points saying the same thing, that some marks can be removed for not being concise.  But it has also been made clear that going a bit over the limit would never result in marks being removed.

I see from your blog you deal with language modules.  Could it be the absolute word-count is specific to that discipline?

Alternatively, I assume you remove marks for being one word over the limit?  If not, there is no penalty, and if there is no penalty, there is no crime.  That would also explain their reaction.

Anyway, if you are finding students are surprised at what you say, either OU students are particularly stupid, or they are getting a different message from somewhere else.  Given the angst they exhibit, that does suggest the experience of your students is the same as mine: they are getting a different message from elsewhere.

PS Ditto the mid-day deadline for TMAs.  It's midnight really since there is no penalty (just huge risk) using the 12 hour grace period.

on modules I have studied students have been told the word limit is given because all the necessary information can be given within that number of words, so, if you go over the limit you are probably including material not required,

on a personal level I have noticed that if I think about it more I can sometimes say the same thing another way using less words, just doing this on a few sentences can make quite a difference to word count,

Simon, reading the first paragraph of your comment I was surprised as none of the modules I've taken allow 10%, then I read your second paragraph and yes as you know my modules have been language modules, so perhaps it is the Modern Language Faculty policy,

In language modules, the word counts and attitudes towards them vary (and I do not think this is problematic as long as it is clear). 

My point is that sometimes the rubric says "about X words" or even "X words".  In these cases, students are allowed up to 10% extra but when the rubric is "no more than..." or a maximum of ...", it seems that this is not ambiguous and it means what it says and the 10% does not apply.

Hello Frances

I agree that in most cases, making the word limit by careful editing can vastly improve the quality of a text.  I almost never find it impossible to cut down texts that I write (eg I might have written something like "it is usually possible to reduce the length of my own texts")

hello Patrick, I did say 'on a personal level' meaning my own work, you have expressed it better and I am learning,

thank you for the noun phase link in your previous post I am working my way through Sarah North, English: A Linguistic Toolkit at the moment, Frances

Is it possible the Level 1 modules they do before the language modules do allow the 10%?

hello Simon, I'm not sure what you mean by level 1 modules before language modules as the language modules start at level 1, beginners and lower intermediate, the only level1 English module, which is now compulsory, is L161 and when I studied it 2yrs ago no 10%, this is what the assessment guide says: 

'....On the other hand, if the length of your answer is much longer than the specified length, your tutor will stop marking after the limit has been reached.'

my other 3 level 1 modules were all foreign language modules, all these modules including L161 gave a min and max word limit, I have read on forums before about this 10% and had wondered what they meant, Frances

You can also start the language degrees with AA100 The arts past and present which, although I haven't done it, I'd bet that allows the 10%.  Perhaps that could cause the confusion too.

Simon a student taking English and another language would need to already be able to speak the target foreign language at lower intermediate level 1 and a student taking one of the 2 foreign language pathways would need to be up to level 2 in at least one of the foreign languages if they used up half their 120 level 1 credits on A100, so yes if you want to and are already well versed in your target foreign languages,

infact when the compulsory L161 was brought in taking up 30 credits at level 1 a lot of language students taking 2 foreign languages complained that they would now not be able to take one of the beginners level 1 modules for their chosen languages, so I don't think they would want to spend 60 credits on A100,

and A100 is part of the humanities faculty not the languages faculty, just as the U214 module I am currently studying is not part of the languages faculty,  ok! Frances

The links on noun phrases and the one on processes might be useful for you if you later take E304.

Your question about being one word over is an intriguing one and I feel conflicted.  On the one hand, it is a very small number.  On the other hand, is it really ever possible for a student not to take off one word?  Going over by one word perhaps suggests that they are not really bothered to get things completely right. I know that if I wanted to cut one word from this shortish message, I would be able to do it easily.

I quite agree Patrick

I xxxxx agree Patrick 

See I managed to take out one word. 

A bit late too the party but better late than never eh?

I've completed a BA Honours in History with the OU and have now started a BA Honours in Creative Writing.  There is absolutely no continuity, in my own experience, in terms of word count practice.  Even if a question says 'no more' I will always ask if the 10 percent rule applies, because in both my History and creative writing degree, I have had tutors who have said, 'no more, means no more', and I have others who have said, 'no no the 10 percent rule always counts'.  Maybe the fault does not lie with the  students and maybe there needs to be greater continuity in how these rules are applied?

I think no more than means just that and that the word limit is the limit.

Thanks for the comment, Trevor.

Reducing the word count is an important skill, I think.  Occasionally my computer crashes when I am halfway through writing something and I usually find when I restart I write more concisely and effectively.  I suppose this shows how important revising a piece of writing is but we often think we do not have the time.

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There are three essay portions to the application: “Statement of Purpose,” “Outstanding Achievements” and “Additional Information.” Although “Outstanding Achievements" and “Additional Information” are optional, it is highly recommended that you complete these essays.

This application uses plain text formatting. You are encouraged to use a word processor like Microsoft Word to compose your essays and to check your word count (250 words for each essay), spelling and grammar. You can then copy and paste your text onto the application text area. 

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Many assignments need to be written in the form of an essay. The structure of essay-style assignments varies but should generally include an introduction, a main body and a conclusion. You'll find detailed guidance under the Assessment tab of your module website for each assignment. The following is a general list of sections you should include:

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You should write the full question (title) at the top of your assignment. It'll contain keywords (known as content and process words).  Understanding the question  has more information on these.

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Word Count Allowance on assignments?

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What's the OU's tolerance on the word count?

said · 14/03/2011 23:43

I know I could email my tutor but thought I'd get a quicker response here? Anyone? I keep cutting but it's starting to lose any coherence now.

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

always check with your tutor. some will refuse to mark anything above the word limit even if its only fifty words of the conclusion of a four thousand word essay.

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I thought you had to be exact and they would then stop reading and only mark you on what was within the word count. That's what my tutor warned us against on our ETMA.

Tutor has told me it's 10%. Phew! Thanks all. Will remember to use more tables next time though, good tip

I teach an OU course and we have just had this discussion with the office. Apparently, many students are under the false impression that there is a 10% leeway - there isn't. The word limit is the actual maximum and if you go over, then you lose marks. Refs are not counted. Usually there is just a warning if it is the first TMA. That's how it is for our course - so you might want to check. Even some tutors don't seem to be clear about this.

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We were just told this and it is still being discussed - as you no doubt realise - there is no easy way to exclude refs from a count so it a royal PITA for the tutor!

I cut and paste to a new document and remove the footnotes so I get an exact word count. Footnotes don't count, but references within the work do. Or they did when I did my OU studies.

Well, from memory, the TMA booklet says something about if you exceed the 10% tolerance re the word count a second time, you will lose 10% off your mark. Wish suggests that there is a 10% tolerance. Anyway, my tutor has said it's ok so I'm sticking with that unless told otherwise. Deducting the in-text refs would be a major PITA - but doing the whole thing has been a major PITA when trying to use Open Office for the first time and needing to cut and paste diagrams - which aren't included in the word count?

i wish everyone would agree with a bog standard system, on our course it's 10% and not allowed any quotes or headings

Why can't you quote?

quotes don't count on webcounts i mean

AFAIK on our course there's 10% leeway. Footnotes and biblio don't count, but the in text references do.

I'm going to ask about this varying from course to course and get back.

Any update Acinonyx ?

I posted the query online but haven't had a reply. If I do I will be sure to post it here.

• Remove all adjectives - a "bad disaster" is just " a disaster" - you don't need to put the "bad" in and you save words.
• At an early draft stage, write a summary of the main points - an executive summary - then focus your next draft on these points. - One of the impressions I get from your report is that you've done a lot of work but have had difficulty deciding what needs to go in / could be left out. With these assignments you need to focus on the purpose - for example TMA02 when you come to write it, has a purpose to convince the reader that your proposal is a good idea and to agree to do it. So here, you need to apply the test of "does this help make a good case for my proposal?"
• Get someone else to read it - and ask them to feed back to you what they understood.
• Look for places where you repeat yourself.
• Avoid excess information give, give the reader what they need to understand and make judgement on what you are telling them."

Ha ha. Got my TMA back. Very happy with result but my tutor has made a few "You could have said more on x..." type comments. No, really, I couldn't. Aargh!

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Why AI can’t spell ‘strawberry’

How many times does the letter “r” appear in the word “strawberry”? According to formidable AI products like GPT-4o and Claude , the answer is twice.

Large language models (LLMs) can write essays and solve equations in seconds. They can synthesize terabytes of data faster than humans can open up a book. Yet, these seemingly omniscient AIs sometimes fail so spectacularly that the mishap turns into a viral meme, and we all rejoice in relief that maybe there’s still time before we must bow down to our new AI overlords.

oh pic.twitter.com/K2Lr9iVkjQ — Rob DenBleyker (@RobDenBleyker) August 26, 2024

The failure of large language models to understand the concepts of letters and syllables is indicative of a larger truth that we often forget: These things don’t have brains. They do not think like we do. They are not human, nor even particularly humanlike.

Most LLMs are built on transformers, a kind of deep learning architecture. Transformer models break text into tokens, which can be full words, syllables, or letters, depending on the model.

“LLMs are based on this transformer architecture, which notably is not actually reading text. What happens when you input a prompt is that it’s translated into an encoding,” Matthew Guzdial, an AI researcher and assistant professor at the University of Alberta, told TechCrunch . “When it sees the word ‘the,’ it has this one encoding of what ‘the’ means, but it does not know about ‘T,’ ‘H,’ ‘E.’”

This is because the transformers are not able to take in or output actual text efficiently. Instead, the text is converted into numerical representations of itself, which is then contextualized to help the AI come up with a logical response. In other words, the AI might know that the tokens “straw” and “berry” make up “strawberry,” but it may not understand that “strawberry” is composed of the letters “s,” “t,” “r,” “a,” “w,” “b,” “e,” “r,” “r,” and “y,” in that specific order. Thus, it cannot tell you how many letters — let alone how many “r”s — appear in the word “strawberry.”

This isn’t an easy issue to fix, since it’s embedded into the very architecture that makes these LLMs work.

I thought Dune 2 was the best movie of 2024 until I watched this masterpiece (sound on). pic.twitter.com/W9WRhq9WuW — Peter Yang (@petergyang) March 7, 2024

TechCrunch’s Kyle Wiggers dug into this problem last month and spoke to Sheridan Feucht, a PhD student at Northeastern University studying LLM interpretability.

“It’s kind of hard to get around the question of what exactly a ‘word’ should be for a language model, and even if we got human experts to agree on a perfect token vocabulary, models would probably still find it useful to ‘chunk’ things even further,” Feucht told TechCrunch. “My guess would be that there’s no such thing as a perfect tokenizer due to this kind of fuzziness.”

This problem becomes even more complex as an LLM learns more languages. For example, some tokenization methods might assume that a space in a sentence will always precede a new word, but many languages like Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Lao, Korean, Khmer and others do not use spaces to separate words. Google DeepMind AI researcher Yennie Jun found in a 2023 study that some languages need up to 10 times as many tokens as English to communicate the same meaning.

“It’s probably best to let models look at characters directly without imposing tokenization, but right now that’s just computationally infeasible for transformers,” Feucht said.

Image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E don’t use the transformer architecture that lies beneath the hood of text generators like ChatGPT. Instead, image generators usually use diffusion models, which reconstruct an image from noise. Diffusion models are trained on large databases of images, and they’re incentivized to try to re-create something like what they learned from training data.

Asmelash Teka Hadgu, co-founder of  Lesan  and a fellow at the  DAIR Institute , told TechCrunch , “Image generators tend to perform much better on artifacts like cars and people’s faces, and less so on smaller things like fingers and handwriting.”

This could be because these smaller details don’t often appear as prominently in training sets as concepts like how trees usually have green leaves. The problems with diffusion models might be easier to fix than the ones plaguing transformers, though. Some image generators have improved at representing hands, for example, by training on more images of real, human hands.

“Even just last year, all these models were really bad at fingers, and that’s exactly the same problem as text,” Guzdial explained. “They’re getting really good at it locally, so if you look at a hand with six or seven fingers on it, you could say, ‘Oh wow, that looks like a finger.’ Similarly, with the generated text, you could say, that looks like an ‘H,’ and that looks like a ‘P,’ but they’re really bad at structuring these whole things together.”

That’s why, if you ask an AI image generator to create a menu for a Mexican restaurant, you might get normal items like “Tacos,” but you’ll be more likely to find offerings like “Tamilos,” “Enchidaa” and “Burhiltos.”

As these memes about spelling “strawberry” spill across the internet, OpenAI is working on a new AI product code-named Strawberry, which is supposed to be even more adept at reasoning. The growth of LLMs has been limited by the fact that there simply isn’t enough training data in the world to make products like ChatGPT more accurate. But Strawberry can reportedly generate accurate synthetic data to make OpenAI’s LLMs even better. According to The Information , Strawberry can solve the New York Times’ Connections word puzzles, which require creative thinking and pattern recognition to solve and can solve math equations that it hasn’t seen before.

Meanwhile, Google DeepMind recently unveiled AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2, AI systems designed for formal math reasoning. Google says these two systems solved four out of six problems from the International Math Olympiad, which would be a good enough performance to earn as silver medal at the prestigious competition.

It’s a bit of a troll that memes about AI being unable to spell “strawberry” are circulating at the same time as reports on OpenAI’s Strawberry . But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman jumped at the opportunity to show us that he’s got a pretty impressive berry yield in his garden .

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