Therefore, this article will look to provide you with a brief overview of some of the things that you should look to deal with when considering the problems you may have with your word count. With this in mind, one of the first things that I would do is consider what actually ‘counts’ towards your essay word count by looking in the guidance that you have received from your institution and your individual assessor to check what they expect of you.

Now many of you may think ‘Well, I don’t to do that because every word I write should count towards my essay word count so I need to structure my essay accordingly’ – WRONG!!

More often than not only the words you write in the main body of your work will count towards your essay word count. As a result, this means that your footnotes, title (i.e. main heading/question), subtitles/subheadings, and bibliography will NOT count towards your essay word count because they are not part of the main body of your work and, with regards to the footnotes and bibliography, are meant to give your work greater credibility and legitimacy by showing that you are able to utilise other people’s views in your work and critique them.

Sounds simple doesn’t it?

If it only it was that easy . . .

The unfortunate reality is that very often you will be told your footnotes WILL count towards your essay word count and so you will have to make allowances for them and look to abbreviate where necessary/possible to save words for the main body of your work according to an academically acceptable system and this can be made all the more complex where your computer does not know the difference between the main body of the essay and the references so make sure to BE AWARE!

What about when you are asked to use a form of ‘in-text’ referencing like Harvard Referencing?

Again, you must check to see whether these reference will be included in your essay word count because it is all too easy to assume that they will be just because they are included in the same area of your work as your discussion and analysis. Therefore, where they are not included it is usually a good idea to keep a tally of the words that you use for your Harvard References so that you can subtract them from your total at the end and get the right word count.

Why is it so important to get the right essay word count?

Getting the right essay word count is essential because whilst many of you may have heard the ‘mythical’ view that most institutions only check the word count for one out of every dozen essay papers that they receive, what with technology’s ongoing advancement, can you really afford to take the chance. This is because the unfortunate reality is that very often if you are even ONE SINGLE WORD over you could lose anything up to 20% of your overall mark that could be the difference between an ‘A’ and a ‘C’ grade or even a ‘PASS’ or a ‘FAIL’.

Of course you may be at one of those institutions where there is a 5% excess, but DO NOT take this for granted – make sure that you know what 5% of your word count is from the moment you starting writing (simply divide your word count by 20 on a calculator) and DO NOT go over it!

But how do I manage essay word count when it comes to actually writing the work in practice?

You should see some of the many panicked faces that I have seen when you tell a student that, after having written a number of 2,000 words (or less essays), they will now have to write 4,000 words and – dare I say it – even a 10,000 word dissertation!

The reason why most people start to worry is that they get fixated on the number for obvious reasons because ‘10,000′ is a lot bigger than ‘2,000′ – I know that this may be a bit ‘Noddy’ for some of you but bear with me as I am getting to my point.

However, what these same people fail to appreciate is that there is actually very little difference between the strategies that you should be adopting for writing 2,000 words when you are then asked to write 10,000 words. This is because whilst many of you may just be able to rattle off 2,000 words you may actually be costing yourselves marks if you do not take a moment to think (of course ignore what I am saying if you are already getting top grades for everything you write because you obviously know something that I do not and I would love to know your secret!). Therefore, when it comes to producing any piece of work according to an essay word count I would advise you to have the following word in mind – ‘PLANNING’.

Well, when thinking about the planning of any of your work I would look to consider your essay strutures as being an essential aspect of this aspect of your essay writing and so I would advise you to first ask yourself the following five questions -

(a) What am I being asked to do?
(b) What does this mean to me?
(c) How will this effect my writing style?
(d) What do I already know about what I have been asked to write about?
(e) Where can I find more information?

Then, depending on the nature of the subject that you have been asked to write about you may be required to undertake a great deal of research or the information may already be available to you (i.e. if you are writing about law then you are clearly going to need to refer to court decisions and legislation as well as other people’s views allied to your own, but if you are writing about a play then you may still refer to other people’s views but your own view is likely to become all the more significant for the reader so think about what the reader/assessor requires from you).

But how does this effect the essay word count?

The answer is it should get you thinking about the structure of your work which you can then detail in the first paragraph by way of an abstract (particularly for a dissertation or thesis) or you may refer to it in the way that I do for an essay as the ‘Introduction to the Introduction’ (see my book via my website at the bottom of this article for more information) because you are using this to tell the reader about your approach to the subject matter and in what order this will be undertaken. Then the next paragraph will be your ‘actual’ introduction that serves to present the main issue that is to be discussed and its importance to the particular aspect of the subject area you are studying.

From there the rest of your work should be looking to consider matters related to this issue so that, for example, if you are asked to consider the ‘Effectiveness of the Youth Justice System in the UK’ you may begin by saying why this issue is so important before then looking at what successes their have been and the efforts made to deal with any problems. This can be effectively achieved by looking at the effectiveness of practices including the use of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOS), cautions and exclusion order. Then, finally, you should be looking at concluding with a summary of the key points derived from your discussion relating to the overall subject matter that you have been analysing so as to draw the work to a close.

In terms of the word count itself I have found that it is generally a good idea to not write less than seven lines and/or three sentences and NOT much more than 250 words per paragraph so that you keep your arguments and analysis as part of your discussion clear and concise without proving too detriment to your essay word count.

With this in mind, I generally also like to look to work to the following four basic rules with regards to the content of each paragraph -

(a) First, make a point that you consider to be important.
(b) Second, explain why that point is important.
(c) Third, offer any supporting evidence from other people’s work and show why it supports what you are saying.
(d) Fourth, consider whether there is anything that conflicts with what you are saying and then use that to move into your next paragraph so that the flow of your work is enhanced.

Of course these rules may need to be adapted depending on the nature of the work that you have been set, but in principle these are just some of the thoughts that go through my head when thinking about the essay I am writing and the essay word count that is available for that work.

If you would like a great deal more information and support in this regard then you can find it in the form of my e-journal ‘The Secret Guide To Academic Writing & Study’ that I produced myself and am currently distributing to students like you at a remarkably inexpensive one-off price through my website at http://www.academicfx.co.uk.

You may also contact me if you wish for further details and assistance in this regard as I have a number of other affordable resources that I can supply you with via postmaster@academicfx.co.uk.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_J_Douglas

This means that students are handing in work that contains spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, unclear or clumsy writing, and referencing and formatting errors. Some students have even greater problems with issues like the clarity and consistency of their argument or their essay organisation. These types of mistakes are costing you grades!

You might be very surprised how much your grades can be improved through editing your own work before you hand it in. This article will explain ten ways you can improve your essay writing yourself.

1. Spelling and Consistency

Spelling is a very important aspect of essay writing that many students overlook. Usually this is because of spell-checking programs, upon which many students rely. However, it is important to remember that if you have mistyped a word that is not a spelling mistake, the spell-checker will not find it. For example, you could mistype ‘hole’ instead of ‘whole’, ‘four’ instead of ‘for’, or ‘though’ instead of ‘thought’. Once you have completed writing your first draft, read your work through carefully to look for these kinds of mistakes.

It is crucial that you are consistent throughout your essay. This applies to many things such as the spelling of words (some people switch between American and Australian/British English), the spelling of names, and the capitalisation of words. For example, if you are using Australian/British English you must do so throughout your essay. You cannot use the word ‘recognise’ and then later use the word ‘organize’. You must stick with ‘organise.’ If you capitalise the first letter of ‘Church’ the first time, you cannot refer to it as ‘church’ later in your essay.

2. Grammar

It is very difficult to write an essay with perfect grammar, as there are many rules that must be followed and thousands of exceptions to these rules that you must know. However, there are many things that you do yourself to improve the grammar in your essay and assignment writing.

Ensuring consistency of tenses is one of these. Often students change tenses in the middle of an essay without realising; changing from present to past or vice versa. A quick check at the completion of writing your essay can ensure that you have used the correct tense throughout the essay.

Here is another grammar tip: When writing about a decade, you must write (for example) 1980s not 1980’s. If you write 1980’s, this indicates something belonging to the year 1980, because you are using a possessive apostrophe. To indicate a decade, you must write 1980s.

3. Paragraphing

Many students write paragraphs that are too long. A paragraph should only contain one main idea. There is no definite length for a paragraph, but normally you would have at least three paragraphs on one type-written page. Long paragraphs can cause confusion for the reader, since they would contain several ideas, and they make your essay look poorly planned.

4. Repetition

Developing a sophisticated and creative writing style can take time. One thing you can do immediately to improve your writing style is ensure that you do not repeat the same words too often in your essays. Using varied language to express yourself with mean that your writing is interesting, and will appear more stylish.

5. Essay Organisation

For some reason, many schools and universities do not spend sufficient time teaching students how to organise their essays properly. Beyond the knowledge that an essay must contain an introduction, a body and a conclusion, many students do not have a clear understanding of how to organise an essay correctly.

Here are a few tips. When writing an argumentative essay, your introduction must do two things to be considered an introduction. It must first answer the essay question. It must then introduce all the main ideas you will discuss in your essay to convince the reader why your answer is correct. An introduction should be roughly ten per cent of your essay length. So for an essay of 1,000 words, write an introduction of 100 words.

Use topic sentences. These are sentences at the beginning of each new topic that tie your essay together. They introduce new topics and explain why they are relevant to the essay question. Topic sentences give your essay an internal logic, and help you to write a convincing argument.

6. Direct and Indirect Quotations

This is an example of a direct quotation: Dr. Lisa Lines argues that ‘the role of women in combat during the Spanish Civil War is highly significant’.

This is an example of an indirect quotation: Dr Lisa Lines believes the women played a very important role in combat during the Spanish Civil War.

It is preferable not to include too many direct quotations in an essay. Essays of a very high standard are written almost entirely in the student’s own words, with many references to the sources they have used (using indirect quotations). You should only quote directly from a source when it is absolutely necessary, for example, if you had a need to point out a particular person’s opinion on an issue, or if an issue or opinion is particularly controversial. Otherwise, it is highly favourable for you to demonstrate that you have read, understood, and assimilated the source into your own knowledge of the subject. The best way to do that is to present the ideas in your own words and then provide the reference.

7. Formal Language

When writing an academic essay, you must use formal language. You cannot use contractions such as ‘don’t', ‘can’t’ or ‘won’t’. You must write these words out in full (’do not’, ‘cannot’ or ‘will not’). You should also refrain from using any colloquial language (slang) in an academic essay.

8. Your Research

The research component of writing an essay should take up the majority of your time. It is the longest stage of the essay writing process. How much time you spend will depend on your year level, the word length of the essay, the type of essay (minor, major or tutorial paper) and what percentage of your grade it is worth. It also depends on what grade you are aiming for.

The way that you record your research is vital to the essay writing process. If you do not record your research properly, you could spend hours (or even days or weeks) doing your research, and then when you begin to write your essay you may discover that you have to go back and re-do things, like search for page numbers or correct quotations. This is a waste of your time!

You must record your research in a way that makes essay writing easier for you. It must be accurate, include all the information you need, and give you a chance to record your own ideas and thoughts on the material you are reading as you go along. Do not leave this to the end!

9. Referencing and Bibliography

(This point may not be relevant to high school students who are not yet required to include references in their essays.)

This stage is crucial to essay writing; however, it is often over-looked by students. If you do not reference properly at university you can get in serious trouble for what is called ‘unintentional plagiarism’. One type of unintentional plagiarism is when students have found information during their research and included it in their essay (even if they have completely re-worded it) but then did not provide a reference. If you do this, you are actually claiming someone else’s work as your own, which is plagiarism. Unintentional plagiarism is very different to deliberate plagiarism, which is when students are cheating on purpose. However, it can get you in just as much trouble. This is why you must learn how to reference correctly!

You must find out from your school or university which referencing system you need to use for each subject you study. Then, spend some time learning how to reference using that system correctly.

Once you know how to do it, and if you have organised and recorded your research properly, referencing your research as you are writing your essay should be simple. You should have all the information you need right in front of you. That is why it is so important for you to keep track of which books you use and on which page numbers you find information while you are doing your research.

10. Polish Your Writing

After you have written your first draft, you should edit it yourself before you have anyone else look at it. This means that you should read it very carefully; looking for mistakes and things you can improve. Since editing requires that you look for a number of different things, it can be a good idea to read over your essay several times.

The first time you read your essay, just concentrate on the writing itself. Look for spelling mistakes, things that are not explained clearly, and grammar that could be improved. Do not look for anything else at this stage.

The second time you read your essay, look for problems with your content. This is the point at which you check to see if the information you have used to write your essay is correct, if you have answered the question properly, and if you have argued your case successfully.

Dr. Lisa Lines
Director and Head Editor
Elite Editing & Tutoring

Email: info@eliteediting.com.au
Web: http://www.eliteediting.com.au

Our PhD qualified academic editors will professionally edit your essay, assignment, thesis or dissertation. We provide an online service for high school, college, university and postgraduate students worldwide. Our professional editors are waiting to help you improve your grades. Submit your document for editing today.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lisa_Lines

Because the majority of scholarships require applicants to write at least one essay, it’s very important that the essay you write speaks to the scholarship judges. Not only must you meet their specific criteria, but you must also make sure there are no spelling or grammatical errors.

Additionally, you need to make sure the quality of your essay is up to par with their requirements, which may seem very intimidating. Many students struggle with the writing process to begin with, and having to craft a well-written essay on another topic may seem like too much work to bother with.

However, if you are serious about obtaining scholarship money for college, then you need to prepare for the fact that you will have to write an essay or two for most of the scholarships you apply for. While many scholarships have writing prompts you are expected to answer in your essay, the primary goal for judges is to gain an understanding of you who are as a person – your beliefs and ideas should show through when you’re writing the essay.

Starting the Essay

Unfortunately, the beginning of your essay is oftentimes the hardest part. How do you begin? Well, there are a few general guidelines to keep in mind when you’re starting your essay.

1. Understand the Purpose

First and foremost, you must gain an understanding of why you are writing this essay. What reason could the judges have had for picking their particular question to base your essay on? Analyze the writing prompt. Figure out why you are writing what you’re writing. You can also write down the essay question and figure out how many parts the question has, and what order you need to structure your essay in according to the prompt.

You can also figure out if the essay question requires any research beforehand, or whether the question can be answered through your life experiences alone. Additionally, because the ultimate goal behind any scholarship essay question is to learn more about you, figure out how the judges will learn more about you through your essay.

2. Goals

Before beginning any essay, you need to figure out what your goals for the essay are. These goals will vary depending on the specific essay question and whom you are writing the essay for. For example, one of your goals may be to show the judges through your writing that you have a healthy balance between your personal life and your academic life. Another goal may be to demonstrate that you were able to succeed despite many difficult obstacles you faced throughout your life.
These goals are only examples, and your goals may be similar or different depending on the essay topic. The bottom line is to formulate a set of goals for your writing and allow your personal character to show through. During this process, you’ll also want to develop an overall theme for your essay that relates you to the subject you are writing about, whatever the topic might be.

3. Create an Outline

While some people choose to begin writing without having a plan in place, for a scholarship essay you might find it easier to begin with an outline in place. With an outline, you can be sure you are covering every point you want to hit on in your essay, and you’ll have a guideline to follow when you’re trying to structure your essay in a logical way.

Once you’ve determined your writing goals, settled on a theme for your essay and created a general outline, it’s time to write the first draft. Notice I said “first” draft – an essay is rarely, if ever, ready on the first try. When you’ve written your first draft, it’s time to go over your essay and see which areas could use a bit of improvement.

Revise

The key to crafting a well-written essay is to show the judges rather than telling them. If there are specific examples in your essay that tell something, jazz it up by showing the judges why that’s important and how that example is relevant to your life and the essay topic. Additionally, remember to keep the essay in present tense as much as possible. It might not always work, but if you can use it, do so!

Another tip to keep in mind when you’re revising your essay is to eliminate as many unnecessary words as possible. You want to be as succinct as you can, which means saying what you need to say in as few words as possible. Sometimes you’ll discover that isn’t always possible, but if you notice a part of your essay that can be revised using fewer words, it’s always a good idea.

Double-check your introduction and ensure it’s captivating enough to gain the attention of the judges. If they aren’t interested by the first sentence, they’re probably not going to read the rest of your essay. In a way, your introduction is the most important part of the paper – it gives your readers an idea of what’s to come next.

Finally, you need to finish up with a solid conclusion. Don’t merely re-summarize every point in your essay. Instead, sum up the main point and keep it short and sweet. Once you’ve revised your essay, set it aside for awhile so you can come back to it with fresh eyes. You may discover it needs more work, and you’ll probably notice a few mistakes you didn’t catch beforehand.

Once you think you have a well-crafted, acceptable essay, you can congratulate yourself. You’ve made it through the hardest part of the scholarship application! Regardless of the essay topic or whom you’re writing the essay for, it’s important to keep the above guidelines in mind in order to create the best essay you possibly can. The important things to remember is to let your unique views come through in the essay so the judges can, ultimately, learn about you through the essay prompt.

Writing the scholarship essay may seem like an impossible task, but with a bit of hard work and the above tips to guide you, you can create a well-written essay that lets the judges know what a unique individual you are.

Andre Alonzo is Owner/Publisher of the Scholarship Talk For more information about college scholarships, scholarship tips

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andre_Alonzo

Before delving into the nitty-gritties of gathering and putting though formulated and gathered ideas on the essay topic, writers must be sure that they have clearly understood the topic and have sufficiently construed the denotations and connotations of the key terms used in the essay topic of thesis statement. This enables writers to locate essay subject into its appropriate conceptual and philosophical framework. Many writers especially inexperienced students usually falter in the writing of essays due to an abysmal lack of understanding of the defined requirements of the essay task outlined in the thesis statement. Critical terms to watch out for include the imperatives like ‘analyse’, ‘critique’, ‘describe’, ‘discuss’, ‘explore’, etc.

Writers must understand the different requirements of custom essay writing tasks implied by these thesis statement or essay topic imperatives. An essay that analyses is unmistakably different from the one that describes. The former requires a critical presentation of concurrent and divergent perspectives whilst the later requires the outlining and illustrating of the dynamics and dimensions of an issue or any object in focus without necessarily critiquing any aspects.

Failure to correctly interpret the essay task imperatives often results in undesirables like failure or failure to obtain one’s set satisfactory goals and standards and the impact of failure may deteriorate into feelings of dissatisfaction and profound disdain of one’s self.

When writers get to understand the actual requirements of the custom essay task, they are empowered to conduct relevant and adequate researches in order to gather all relevant and related facts and opinions that will enable them to present balanced and professionally articulated arguments and standpoints in the custom essay Writing also exerts significant demands on the exploit of a writer’s polished and prolific writing acumen. The manipulation of language in inventive, incisive and non-overbearing parlance comes as the crux of the actual custom essay writing exercise. Writers who fail to pay adequate attention to the aspects of presentation run the risk of letting their research and knowledge substance waste away in the knitting of unprofessional and mediocre write ups. This again must be expected to precipitate failure.

Admittedly, custom essay writing requires the integration of key and core research, writing and writing traits succored on supportive personal skills that entail discipline and acute time management among other qualities.

Step One: Brainstorming

For some students, this step has already been completed . They’ve locked into their essay subject, and they’re not going to change it. But for others – those less sure and those faced with a tricky essay prompt – some brainstorming might be required.

As I’ve mentioned in other articles, the best time to brainstorm is right before you fall asleep and right after you get up. These are times when the brain is uncluttered, and fresh ideas have a better chance of coming to the surface. Long walks or drives on an open road can also work well to open the mind, as long as you make sure to watch where you’re going!

Step Two: Freewriting

Once you’ve settled on your topic, or even have a general sense of it, you can begin freewriting. This involves simply letting your mind roam through your topic while you write down everything that pops into your head. These can be single words or phrases, fragments of ideas or full blown concepts. Don’t worry about good sentences here and most importantly, don’t edit yourself. This is the time when you discover what your idea is really all about.

Step Three: Outlining

Outlining is extremely valuable and critical to a well organized essay. Look at your free writing and begin to organize your ruminations into a cohesive outline. Not only will this help you arrange your ideas clearly, it will also stimulate additional ideas, related to your topic, that might not have come up in the freewriting.

Important Note: Students often want to skip this step and jump into their first draft. Instead, resist that urge to start writing, work hard on your outline, and watch how much time you will save in the long run.

Step Four: 1st draft

Begin your essay, using the outline as a guide. Again, the first draft can be a time of discovery, as new ideas flow in. Stress content over mechanics here, as your essay begins to take shape.

Step Five: Revision

Revising your essay is detailed work involving rereading, rewriting, reviewing, rethinking, rearranging, restructuring, tightening, deleting, moving, expanding, unifying, correcting and checking. Some questions to ask yourself in this process include: Is my basic premise working? What parts of the essay are good? What parts are boring? Does my essay flow naturally from one idea to the other, or am I repeating myself? Do my paragraphs consist of one basic idea, with sentences supporting it? Have I made any grammatical errors? Have I varied my vocabulary and sentence structure? Do I have an opening grabber and a satisfying conclusion?

This would also be the time to ask for help from those whose opinions about good writing you respect.

Step Six: Polishing

Here’s where a good essay becomes great. Add similes, metaphors, interesting comparisons, humor. Comb your work for cliches and overused words or expressions and delete or replace. Hone your opening so that it draws the reader irrevocably into the rest of the essay. Look for ways to further tighten your essay by bringing back a concept you introduced at the beginning. This “bookend” technique, if used correctly, can close your essay with tremendous impact, and make it a stand out in the reader’s mind. Be scrupulous. Don’t back off. Keep working until every issue has been addressed.

Utilizing these six basic steps will surely decrease some of the anxiety surrounding the writing process, while at the same time improving the quality of your application essays

Therefore, this article will look to provide you with a brief overview of some of the things that you should look to deal with when considering the problems you may have with your word count. With this in mind, one of the first things that I would do is consider what actually ‘counts’ towards your essay word count by looking in the guidance that you have received from your institution and your individual assessor to check what they expect of you.

Now many of you may think ‘Well, I don’t to do that because every word I write should count towards my essay word count so I need to structure my essay accordingly’ – WRONG!!

More often than not only the words you write in the main body of your work will count towards your essay word count. As a result, this means that your footnotes, title (i.e. main heading/question), subtitles/subheadings, and bibliography will NOT count towards your essay word count because they are not part of the main body of your work and, with regards to the footnotes and bibliography, are meant to give your work greater credibility and legitimacy by showing that you are able to utilise other people’s views in your work and critique them.

Sounds simple doesn’t it?

If it only it was that easy . . .

The unfortunate reality is that very often you will be told your footnotes WILL count towards your essay word count and so you will have to make allowances for them and look to abbreviate where necessary/possible to save words for the main body of your work according to an academically acceptable system and this can be made all the more complex where your computer does not know the difference between the main body of the essay and the references so make sure to BE AWARE!

What about when you are asked to use a form of ‘in-text’ referencing like Harvard Referencing?

Again, you must check to see whether these reference will be included in your essay word count because it is all too easy to assume that they will be just because they are included in the same area of your work as your discussion and analysis. Therefore, where they are not included it is usually a good idea to keep a tally of the words that you use for your Harvard References so that you can subtract them from your total at the end and get the right word count.

Why is it so important to get the right essay word count?

Getting the right essay word count is essential because whilst many of you may have heard the ‘mythical’ view that most institutions only check the word count for one out of every dozen essay papers that they receive, what with technology’s ongoing advancement, can you really afford to take the chance. This is because the unfortunate reality is that very often if you are even ONE SINGLE WORD over you could lose anything up to 20% of your overall mark that could be the difference between an ‘A’ and a ‘C’ grade or even a ‘PASS’ or a ‘FAIL’.

Of course you may be at one of those institutions where there is a 5% excess, but DO NOT take this for granted – make sure that you know what 5% of your word count is from the moment you starting writing (simply divide your word count by 20 on a calculator) and DO NOT go over it!

But how do I manage essay word count when it comes to actually writing the work in practice?

You should see some of the many panicked faces that I have seen when you tell a student that, after having written a number of 2,000 words (or less essays), they will now have to write 4,000 words and – dare I say it – even a 10,000 word dissertation!

The reason why most people start to worry is that they get fixated on the number for obvious reasons because ‘10,000′ is a lot bigger than ‘2,000′ – I know that this may be a bit ‘Noddy’ for some of you but bear with me as I am getting to my point.

However, what these same people fail to appreciate is that there is actually very little difference between the strategies that you should be adopting for writing 2,000 words when you are then asked to write 10,000 words. This is because whilst many of you may just be able to rattle off 2,000 words you may actually be costing yourselves marks if you do not take a moment to think (of course ignore what I am saying if you are already getting top grades for everything you write because you obviously know something that I do not and I would love to know your secret!). Therefore, when it comes to producing any piece of work according to an essay word count I would advise you to have the following word in mind – ‘PLANNING’.

Well, when thinking about the planning of any of your work I would look to consider your essay strutures as being an essential aspect of this aspect of your essay writing and so I would advise you to first ask yourself the following five questions -

(a) What am I being asked to do?
(b) What does this mean to me?
(c) How will this effect my writing style?
(d) What do I already know about what I have been asked to write about?
(e) Where can I find more information?

Then, depending on the nature of the subject that you have been asked to write about you may be required to undertake a great deal of research or the information may already be available to you (i.e. if you are writing about law then you are clearly going to need to refer to court decisions and legislation as well as other people’s views allied to your own, but if you are writing about a play then you may still refer to other people’s views but your own view is likely to become all the more significant for the reader so think about what the reader/assessor requires from you).

But how does this effect the essay word count?

The answer is it should get you thinking about the structure of your work which you can then detail in the first paragraph by way of an abstract (particularly for a dissertation or thesis) or you may refer to it in the way that I do for an essay as the ‘Introduction to the Introduction’ (see my book via my website at the bottom of this article for more information) because you are using this to tell the reader about your approach to the subject matter and in what order this will be undertaken. Then the next paragraph will be your ‘actual’ introduction that serves to present the main issue that is to be discussed and its importance to the particular aspect of the subject area you are studying.

From there the rest of your work should be looking to consider matters related to this issue so that, for example, if you are asked to consider the ‘Effectiveness of the Youth Justice System in the UK’ you may begin by saying why this issue is so important before then looking at what successes their have been and the efforts made to deal with any problems. This can be effectively achieved by looking at the effectiveness of practices including the use of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOS), cautions and exclusion order. Then, finally, you should be looking at concluding with a summary of the key points derived from your discussion relating to the overall subject matter that you have been analysing so as to draw the work to a close.

In terms of the word count itself I have found that it is generally a good idea to not write less than seven lines and/or three sentences and NOT much more than 250 words per paragraph so that you keep your arguments and analysis as part of your discussion clear and concise without proving too detriment to your essay word count.

With this in mind, I generally also like to look to work to the following four basic rules with regards to the content of each paragraph -

(a) First, make a point that you consider to be important.
(b) Second, explain why that point is important.
(c) Third, offer any supporting evidence from other people’s work and show why it supports what you are saying.
(d) Fourth, consider whether there is anything that conflicts with what you are saying and then use that to move into your next paragraph so that the flow of your work is enhanced.

Of course these rules may need to be adapted depending on the nature of the work that you have been set, but in principle these are just some of the thoughts that go through my head when thinking about the essay I am writing and the essay word count that is available for that work.