You can test sentences by deleting various words and seeing if the meaning actually stays pretty much the same. Definitely delete sequences of descriptive or explanatory words and replace them with one word that summarises the list, even if you lose some of the nuance.īeyond that, eliminating redundancy is about finding parts of your writing that inadvertently say the same thing twice. You’re likely to have achieved this in steps above, but there may still be some redundancy in your writing that’s increasing the word count unnecessarily. Whenever you spot one, use a thesaurus to identify one word which conveys the same idea. You can often replace these with single words to reduce your word count.Īgain, there isn’t a set rule for identifying these, but go through your text looking for phrases of several words that seem to be expressing one concept. There are certain phrases in English that have become fixed and are used repeatedly in the same form. Say what you mean directly and drop the extra verbs wherever you can. These can be useful to express tentativeness, which is often a good thing in academic writing, but sometimes it’s just not necessary. The auxiliary verbs you might want to remove in academic writing are ones like “could”, “may”, “might” and so on. As always, keep it concise and to the point. Delete auxiliary verbsĪs with adjectives and adverbs above, auxiliary verbs might make your sentences more aesthetic if read in close detail, but that shouldn’t be your goal with academic writing. For example, “writer of fiction” could just as well be “fiction writer”. You can often avoid using “of” just by changing the word order. “Of” is frequently a good candidate for deletion. It’s only one word, but this adds up if done consistently over a long document. The idea is to convert chunks of text that use a lot of prepositions (thus adding spaces and increasing your word count) into rephrased, shorter versions without prepositions.įor example, you could replace “tea from China” with “Chinese tea”. This tactic is a little harder to explain. Keeping everything clear and simple will make this process easier for them. This will reduce the word count.Īgain, remember that your reader will most likely be scanning your text at high speed, not reading it in close detail. Rather than having longer sentences linked with “and” or “but”, just delete those connectives and have two separate sentences. This is another tip that will reduce the flow of the text but is effective in reducing word count. Avoid detailed descriptions unless they are absolutely necessary for following your argument and you are sure that the reader needs the detail. Instead of using adjectives, try to keep your prose clear and straightforward, and get straight to the point. You probably won’t lose credit for duller writing, but you will for exceeding the word count. Whilst adjectives make your writing livelier and more interesting to read, you can nearly always sacrifice them to reduce word count in academic writing. Tip: using ctrl + f to search through your document for “ly” is a quick way to find a lot of adverbs. For example, “dropped rapidly” could be replaced with “plummeted”. At the very least, adverb-verb pairs can be converted into a better chosen verb on its own. Delete adverbsĪdverbs are usually very deletable in academic writing. In that case, you’re actually making the experience more pleasant for them by cutting out the extras in your writing. They may not even notice your prose style particularly, instead looking for the important content to follow the thread of your argument. This isn’t a literature contest - it’s about getting your ideas down on paper in the least amount of words possible.Īlso remember that the person reviewing your work and giving you credit is most likely going to scan through it at high speed. This may make your writing less pleasant to read, but realistically you can’t be marked down for that. The goal here is to reduce your writing down to its bear bones, leaving little else behind. Reduce word count by simplifying your style Quite often those can take at least a thousand words off on their own. It’s not about making it faster to read, necessarily.Īlso, make the following quick checks that might let you cut out a lot of word Word count actually means reducing the number of spaces (i.e. There are one or two things you can do to reduce word count without affecting (By the way, you’re reading a site about East Asian Studies – if you’re Substance of your writing, but you’ve got no choice if you want to hand the This can be a painful task, because you don’t want to lose the More often than not, you end up needing to reduce word count in your academic Some tricks to reduce word count in academic writing
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