On word counts

Many of my written assignments have word counts associated with them — for instance, “roughly 1500 words” or “about 1000 words.”

You should never EVER pad your writing, adding extra unnecessary words, in order to meet the word count specified on the assignment. (Click here for a thorough discussion of why padding will do more harm than good.)

The word counts that I attach to my assignments should function as guidelines for the depth and complexity of your argument. I expect every word in written assignments, especially those that are argument-based (i.e., thesis-driven), to be necessary in carrying forward and executing the argument — no warm-ups, no cool downs, no extra addenda or interesting-but-unnecessary contexts, no digressions. Assuming every word is deployed in argumentation, then a 1500-word assignment requires an argument deep and complex enough that 1500 words are required to fully and convincingly explain it. (The key ideas here are economy, depth, complexity, argumentative rigor, and focus: for more on what I mean by each, click here.)

If you are working on a 1500-word assignment, but you could make your argument equally effectively in 1000 words, then your argument is insufficient for that assignment: cut it back to its true length, and then deepen and complexify it into something that really requires 1500 words to get across.

I never look at the word count on a student’s writing unless the argumentation of that writing comes off as significantly shallower or simpler than the assignment demands. If it does, I’ll turn to the word count — either to confirm my suspicion that, yes, it is too short (and should have gone deeper), or that it used too many words to get too little done, and should have been cut back and then deepened. (I’ll instruct my TAs to use the same approach.)

Thus, no student of mine should be counting words with much exactitude. If your writing assignment goes a little bit over or under the word count, I won’t even notice — a good rule of thumb is that it should come within 100 words of the word count I suggest, but even if it comes up 200 words short or long, it may likely be acceptable, assuming that it truly uses its space economically to achieve true argumentative depth and complexity.

Once in a while, at the other end of things, I’ll get a writing assignment that grossly exceeds the word count that I’ve asked for — say, by 300 words or more. This can be due to a number of reasons: perhaps the student is still not using words economically (in which case the grade will suffer); perhaps the student got really excited about the topic and just couldn’t stop! That latter case is charming, and in many ways should be encouraged, but it won’t do well in my classes: for one thing, I require many of my essay assignments to be read aloud, in real-time, and an overlong essay can ruin the structure of the meeting; for two, part of argumentation is knowing how to use judicious restraint, figuring out which passion to bring to which argumentative circumstance — a scholar who brings the same level of argumentation to every circumstance, without considering the needs and availability of their audience, will not get their argumentation really heard in any circumstance.