How to Lengthen an Essay: 5 Tricks that Every Student Should Try

Have you ever stared at the requested word or page count confusingly trying to figure out if there is a mistake? In moments like this, you might even think something like, “There is no way that someone can write that much on this topic.” While there are some ways to increase page counts by changing the font size or expanding spacing between the lines and characters, meeting the word count requirements might be a little trickier. Don’t panic, we will help you with this. There are some essay tricks and hacks that will help you to fulfill the requirements and make your essay longer.

1. Avoid Abbreviations

Abbreviations were made to make our life easier, and our writing or speaking simpler. However, when you are writing an essay that should be much bigger than what you have already written, abbreviations are not the words to use in an essay.

Basically, just use the full names when it comes to the abbreviation like USA or APA that can often be spotted in a lab report, case study or research paper. See, the United States of America and American Psychological Association take more space and more words.

2. Replace Contractions with Full Versions

This one is also pretty basic. Whenever you can use a contraction (a shortened form of one or more words that usually include an auxiliary verb), just use the full form of it. For example, instead of putting “isn’t” or “can’t,” use “is not” or “can not.” Is not it just an amazing way to make your essay longer?

3. Use Quotes

If your professor or teacher allows you to use quotes in your essay and also includes them into your word count, you are a lucky person because this is the way to meet the minimum word count without putting too much effort.

Quotes, especially long ones, can be used in any part of your essay, usually as an example or supporting evidence for your claims. You can also use quotes to start your essay with a catchy first sentence or in the conclusion part to end your essay with a touch of wisdom from a famous writer. By the way, we actually have a list of best practices that famous writers use. Check them out as they might come in handy in your essay writing.

4. Put More Details

You are probably constantly taught at your school how to be laconic and brief. Of course, this is one of the skills that everyone needs in the modern world – to be able to transfer your thoughts and opinion into beautiful and concise sentences. Well, it’s great if you can do that, but try to restrain yourself from using this skill while writing an essay that you need to add length to.

You should definitely try to evolve your thoughts in detail. Put more effort into descriptions and explanations. You might also make your introduction longer by elaborating your thoughts for a while and not going straight to the point from the very start of your paragraph.

5. Use Transition Phrases and Sentences

Transitional sentences are great to close your paragraph. However, you can use such sentences throughout your essay as many times as you want as they help to make your essay more logical, tying everything together and helping to move from one subject to another.

Examples:

• However, there are also other ways to achieve this goal.
• While both of these characters share some similar features, their ways of solving the same problem are drastically different.

How to lengthen an essay with words of transition?

Transition words and sentences, in their turn, are great to make the writing more smooth and polished. They can be used in different parts of sentences depending on their purpose:

• To add something (additionally, also, moreover, besides, as well as)
• To compare (similarly, equally, in the same way)
• To contrast (but, however, though, nonetheless, yet)
• To summarize (after all, in summary, to summarize, therefore, in conclusion)   
• To emphasize (especially, particularly)
• To sequence (meanwhile, first of all, while, next)

By using these words through your essay, you can significantly increase the length of it. But use them wisely as any professor or teacher will instantly spot an essay that is staffed with unnecessary words. If you have too little written and too large word count ahead, you might consider requesting help from a writing team.

Final Thoughts

So, these are our essay length hacks that can help you if the word count of your essay should be much more than you can squeeze from the topic. It’s not always a treatment as overusing one or more of these tips through your essay will be definitely noticeable. However, when your essay lacks 50 words or so, our easy tricks will come in handy to meet the required number of words. Don’t forget to check if this won’t violate any rules or guidelines provided by your learning institution and let us know what you think of these tricks.