Popular Tricks Used by Students to Make an Essay Longer

9 Ways How to Make an Essay Longer and Meet the Word Count

Often, students find themselves in a pickle when asked to write lengthy essays. This is due to their inability to generate sufficient words to fill the multiple pages. Students may possess the necessary points for the essay but lack adequate content to fill the pages.

However, if you prefer to do it yourself, continue reading. This article will discuss various strategies for students to lengthen their essays without making them look sloppy.

9 Practical Ways to Make an Essay Longer

You can lengthen your essay by including additional evidence, examples, and illustrations, utilizing quotations, using longer phrases, and expanding on the topic. This way, you will meet the word count requirement while enhancing the essay’s content. This increases the likelihood of earning a higher grade.

Allow us to examine each of the best nine ways to lengthen an essay and instruct you on the most effective method that does not dilute the content or arguments.

1. Choose the longer Assignment Prompt

As you complete your essay, you may believe that you have addressed all of the instructor’s prompts. However, you may have skipped or overlooked something that would have added additional content to your essay in some instances.

In this case, you should double-check all instructions and ensure that you include everything requested to lengthen your essay.

Simultaneously, you may discover a new perspective or angle for approaching the assignment by re-reading the instructions or prompt.

This is the section where you re-examine the assignment to incorporate new perspectives on top of what you have already written. This has the added benefit of increasing the thoroughness of your essay while also lengthening it.

If you cannot reframe the prompt, you may seek assistance from your instructor or classmates. They may provide you with new ideas for expanding and lengthening your essay.

2. Include every Detail in your essay

Before beginning to write an essay, the first step is to create an outline that will guide you as you draft the final draft. The outline includes bullet points that you will expand on or explain further in the body of your essay.

To lengthen your essay, it is critical to double-check the outline to ensure that you have included everything outlined.

For instance, while drafting the essay, you may have overlooked some details that seemed excessive at the time. If this is the case, it is preferable to include the omitted items to lengthen your essay.

If, however, you did not create an outline before writing the essay, you can still do so after it is complete.

It is never too late to create an outline because it will assist you in narrowing your focus on what your target audience or instructor wishes to learn. You may come across new ideas that will enhance the content of your essay. This will lengthen an article.

3. Lengthen your Introduction

An introduction is critical to the success of any essay. This is because the paragraph serves as a hook for your readers, motivating them to continue reading the article.

Additionally, the introduction establishes the tone for the essay. Though it is usually a single paragraph, it is not required to be brief. This could be a lengthy paragraph.

When reviewing your introductory paragraph, ask yourself the following question: How can I improve it by expanding on existing ideas or providing additional information?

You can expand on previously stated ideas to help your readers prepare for what they will read in the body paragraphs.

By including additional information, you can expand on the subject and ensure that the target audience understands the concepts or arguments better when they read the remainder of the paper.

Additionally, you can lengthen the essay by enhancing the introduction’s attention-grabbing ability, including a quote or a story.

4. Add more references and evidence

This is a very practical technique for lengthening an essay. This is because it strengthens or establishes the arguments’ credibility. When writing an essay, you are expected to include arguments backed up by evidence from credible sources.

As a result, the more evidence and references you provide, the stronger your arguments will be.

Returning to your original outline is one way to incorporate additional evidence and references into your essay.

Determine how to strengthen each point made using the new evidence and references. This will lengthen your essay.

When writing a persuasive essay, it’s critical to anticipate refutations or the reasons why your readers will disagree with your thesis statement.

Locate evidence that will balance out opposing viewpoints and incorporate it into each paragraph that contains your topic sentence. This will lengthen your essay.

5. Using relevant quotations

Additionally, this is a very pragmatic approach that can lengthen an essay. While evidence and references can be used to bolster or support your arguments, you can also use relevant and credible quotes from the evidence to bolster or support those arguments.

The quotations should be pertinent to your argument and should not be excessively lengthy (not more than two sentences).

Assume you’ve been given a prompt to write about a case study or a book you’ve read.

In this case, you can bolster your essay by including pertinent quotes from the case study or book. Your essay will lengthen as a result without violating any writing conventions.

Not only will quotes lengthen your essay, but they will also save you time during the writing process because you will copy-paste the text into your essay.

To avoid plagiarism, it is critical to include an in-text citation immediately after the quote and to include the source reference at the conclusion of the essay (reference page).

6. Expand and improve your examples and descriptions

Another technique for lengthening an essay is to include relevant examples while elaborating on your points. This is critical in assisting your readers in comprehending and even connecting with the concepts you are attempting to explain in your essay.

This is where you begin your sentence with the phrase “for instance…” Examples can be drawn from personal experience or credible sources with citations.

In descriptive or personal essays, you can include detailed descriptions to lengthen the essay. You can enhance your descriptions with sensory details or imagery.

For instance, you can describe how someone feels, hears, tastes smells, or sees. When you use one of these senses to describe a situation, you will create an image in your mind.

This will lengthen your body paragraphs and, as a result, your essay. Additionally, examples and descriptions can help you expand your body paragraphs and improve their clarity.

7. Enhance the transitions to lengthen the essay

This is an excellent technique for lengthening an essay, as transitions are necessary when writing a good essay. Students should ensure that transitions between paragraphs are seamless.

Transitions indicate that one paragraph is coming to an end and a new one is beginning. They take up more space on a page, which is why they lengthen an essay. Additionally, they improve or professionalize the essay.

The following are some examples of effective transition phrases or words that can lengthen your essay: “because”, “on the contrary”, and “with this in mind”. Transitional phrases or words can appear at the start or end of a new paragraph.

When they appear at the start of a new paragraph, they inform the reader that a new point will be discussed within the paragraph.

If it occurs at the conclusion of a paragraph, it indicates an explanation of a point has concluded, and a new point is about to be discussed in the following paragraph.

8. Eliminate Contractions to make paragraphs longer

While there is nothing wrong with using contractions in your essay, they give your essay a casual tone.

When you want to make your work sound more serious, omit contractions favouring much longer versions. The longer versions will inevitably lengthen your essay.

When it comes to abbreviations, their use in an essay can help shorten a sentence and thus the essay. On the other hand, your article will be longer if you use actual words rather than acronyms.

Consider the following two sentences: “The WHO has established a stringent protocol that should be followed to aid in the fight against coronavirus disease.” “The World Health Organization has established a stringent protocol to assist in the fight against coronavirus disease.”

The first sentence is significantly shorter than the second sentence due to the use of an abbreviation. This is the polar opposite of the methods discussed in that post for condensing an essay.

9. Enhance your Conclusion to make it long

Finally, improving the conclusion can lengthen an essay while improving its quality. A conclusion enables you to restate your thesis statement, review the essay’s major points, and discuss the essay’s implications for future research, topics, or communities. As such, you should ensure that such points are included.

The implications of your essay can significantly lengthen it, as you are free to write whatever you want and to elaborate on what you have already written.

Again, you can improve your conclusion by considering it from your readers’ perspective. In this case, you will supplement the conclusion with additional content that will resonate with the readers. This lengthens an essay.