How long is an essay in most cases?
The essay is one of the most common academic publications. In this case, the student doesn’t have an opportunity to use a simple set of sentences, slang, or various jargon words.
! Never forget the fact that this type of document is clearly structured and has a certain number of requirements that must be strictly followed.
As part of your college studies, a professor can tell you what specific volume of pages, words, or sentences you should write in your essay. Nevertheless, if you don’t have precise requirements for the number of pages in your work, then you can write until you fully disclose your topic. Many students quite successfully use the independent choice of the essay volume, since in this case, we can speak of just a few paragraphs that can fully illuminate a particular issue.
How long is an academic essay?
As for writing an essay for elementary school students, your teacher may ask you to complete a quite standard research work, the word count of which will consist of 3-5 pages (or longer). In this case, you will be able to place about 275 words on one page. In turn, high school students most often write essays up to 4 pages.
If you’re a learner at a college or university, then the number of paragraphs and word count that you need to use for an essay of a similar level most often depends on the subject you are studying and also what is the purpose of writing this type of research paper. At the same time, if you’re writing an essay for entering college or receiving a scholarship, in this case, the information about the volume of your document may be announced in advance for you by the admission committee. For example, when you study the conditions for admission to various higher educational institutions, then most often, you can meet such requirements:
- One page of text;
- 275 words (and it is not a limit);
- 5 to 7 paragraphs (in some cases it may be longer).
As you probably already understood, the requirements for the length and number of words in each essay can be completely different. It all depends on the purpose of writing the work and on the conditions that your professor will ask you. Therefore, answering the question of how long should your essay be, you must think upon the question of which requirements your work should meet.
Main types of essays
The point is that regardless of how long is an essay such an academic paper has a considerable number of varieties. This, in turn, assumes that each task will have its own length and structure of work. Nevertheless, if we talk about the most common types of tasks, the following should be noted:
- Analytical essay. You will most often be able to meet this type of academic paper as a student in high school. In this case, you will need to find a piece of specific information or text and indicate your own observations on a given topic. In this case, it is necessary to highlight such points as ideas and facts clearly and also search for a particular meaning of the chosen topic.
- Narrative essay. A narrative essay tells a certain kind of exciting story about a specific person, event, or place. When writing this type of research paper, your main task will be to attract reader’s attention due to the unique presentation of the content. In other words, your paper creation process should begin with specific events and lead to a very unexpected and surprising end to the story. Could it be long?
! Keep in mind the terms and give special attention to formatting style.
- A reasoned essay. In this essay, the task you need to prove to your teacher that your opinion, the chosen theory, or a specific hypothesis about a particularly important subject, is the only true one. Usually, this type of essay is not really a long one, so be calm and keep on writing.
! Remember the main difference between this type of task and a convincing essay is that in this case in paragraphs, you need to defend your own word and show how it differs from me from other people.
Besides, if you’re writing a compelling essay, then the ultimate goal is to convince readers to join your points of view and do not concentrate on how long your essay should be.
Peculiarities of diagnostic and reflective types of essay
Diagnostic essay most often can be found at the beginning of the academic course. For example, your professor may ask you to write free content that will be devoted to a specific topic or issue. At the same point, the central purpose of writing this type of research paper is to demonstrate your writing skills as well as find out the strengths and weaknesses of your writing style in the essay paragraphs. Most often, this type of essay does not have specific time limits for writing.
! This type of essay does not require a preliminary study, so you can begin writing immediately after receiving the research paper task.
Reflective work is a type of important essay task that is intended to check one of your life experiences. In this case, you need to describe how this or that event changed your life and also what points you managed to learn thanks to the knowledge gained. In this case, there are several varieties of essays.
One of them may be intended to be viewed exclusively by the free student audience or for other academic purposes. Another type of essay implies publication in a scientific journal and, accordingly, requires a specific appeal from the writer and most often intended for a narrow circle of readers. This type of essay can be a long one, so don’t waste your time in vain.
How to make a long essay writing plan?
Any essay has a lot of requirements for writing, as well as the structure that you need to adhere to. So, traditionally, the essay includes:
- Introduction paragraphs with a statement of the problem;
- The central paragraphs outlining theses statement and arguments;
- Conclusion paragraphs with a detailed consequence.
Given this structure, many students think that the essay itself is written exactly the same way, in a straight line of words. However, this is not the right approach. Often, those who choose a similar plan for writing an essay can greatly miscalculate. Starting to write an introduction, the student puts forward a specific idea, then begins to randomly provide some theses, dragged by the head and ears arguments and often carries him/her to some unknown abstract reasoning.
Thus, in conclusion, we see absolutely not what was required to be proved. A common situation, isn’t it? Probably for many scholars it really is. And all because you need to adhere to a slightly different plan.
Tips on how to write a final part of an essay
At the initial stage of writing a long essay, you should consider what kind of thought you want to convey. This will be the central “backbone” of your assignment. Then an introduction is done what is worth doing next? Should I start with the thesis? Of course not!
Think about the conclusion. This is the secret of a successful essay. When you just begin writing the essay, you should already know how to finish it, and then summarize theses with argumentation for this issue.
It is like a thread on which you sequentially string beads. And as in an exquisite necklace, these “beads” should be harmoniously combined with each other. This should be felt between the theses, an internal semantic unity.
When the essay, together with all its key elements, is ready, it’s too early to rewrite it on a clean copy. First, you need to read and check it thoroughly. And then think about how to make it even better. You can also try these tips for better results:
- Cut off excess by making it more concise;
- Make the language more colorful using metaphors, allegories, associations, paradoxes;
- Give ease of narration;
- Assess whether the text sufficiently expresses your position, personality, etc.
Tips on using the correct essay structure
The essay doesn’t have strict word requirements for composition since its central features are the expressiveness of thoughts, the persuasiveness, and brightness of phrases. But how to write an essay if there is no experience? The following scheme will help you navigate the writing of this type of composition:
- Title page of essays. The procedure for filling the title page is quite formal, but don’t forget that, in fact, it is the word cover of the future essay.
- Introduction part. Here the question or problem is clearly formulated. It will be revealed a bit later in the subsequent word text. It is necessary to justify why this particular subject of discussion was chosen and highlight the essence of the topic using artistic means or other stylistically and logically relevant components and methods of speech.
- Body section. It is necessary to disclose the issue thoroughly, that is, describe your own beliefs and provide evidence (lifetime situations, logical conclusions, examples from the literature, etc.) that have somehow influenced your assessment of the problem. At the same point, it is very convenient to divide the body section into subheadings, making out each in the form of a thesis and fixing it in the text with argumentation. If you want to convince the reader that you are right, then it will be better to give two-word arguments (one is not enough, and the use of three or more arguments will increase the semantic load and the volume of the text).
- Conclusion. You draw conclusions from the situation or summarize the above. In literary texts, the conclusion is often absent, or the composition is deliberately not completed. This artistic tool shows the author’s ironic attitude to the topic or the ambiguity of the conclusion.
Goals and objectives of the great essay
Based on the distinguishing features of an essay assessment, it can be safely stated that the purpose of the essay is to express an opinion of the author regarding something. The structure of writing a great essay indicates that this opinion must undoubtedly be confirmed.
Thus, defining the goals and objectives of the essay, we can say that the meaning of its writing words is the substantiation of one’s vision of the essence, ways of solving a specific problem.
The introduction text generally indicates the goals or objectives of the essay. However, if you don’t know how to create an essay, write it, then define the purpose for yourself. At the same point, body paragraphs are some helpful stages of work to reveal your vision of the situation in essays.