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Cutting Down the Words - Read first post before asking about word count!


Afterglow

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  • 4 months later...

Never use contractions in a formal essay!!

I did my EE in history and it ended up being a comfortable 3890 words, I believe.

Look to rearrange sentence structure to make it more concise, that's generally how I cut down on words.

If you can, see if you can cut down on the length of your quotes, use ellipses to take out the parts of the quote you don't need.

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  • 1 month later...

I'm working on my physics EE right now. Without the equations and tables, I'm currently at around 5050 words, so I need to cut by more than a thousand words. I did the "of the" trick, changed sentence structures, changed some phrases ('the coefficient of viscosity' for instance) to physical symbols, etc. I tried adding some footnotes (that removed about 100-120 words only though) to the essay.

Any other suggestions, anyone?

[note, my EE used to be around 6000 words and I cut it 5050 already without removing any ideas.. I hope you guys can have some magical suggestions :D I know that's a long shot, but hey! :D ]

Edited by Eyas
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  • 1 month later...

Just read your essay 5 times per day. Sleep on it. Re-read it the next day and you will find so many useless words and nonsenses. Yes, it can be a pain reading your own work sometimes, but after revision, it gets really concise and to the point.

And I don't completely agree with procrastination squeezes creativity, but it has its advantages... I am kidding.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

One thing that you need o remember when cutting words, do not just simply delete them. Instead, open a new document and paste it there. So that your time created those words will not have been a waste. You also can use it as back ups later on. Some of my friends ens up have to ramble on more words for their EE since she has cuts too many info.

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The wonders of footnotes! I was a good amount over my word limit, so I ended up just copying sentences that weren't too important, but still needed to be said. So, i would copy the sentence, put a superscript where it was, throw a text box at the bottom of the page, paste, make font smaller, and wah-lah. Also, converting things into tables and charts really helps.

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  • 5 months later...

The coverpage is not included in the word count, but subheadings are, am I correct?

Correct. And I didn't count the title of my EE in my word count when I repeated it at the top of my introduction. The IB doesn't care if you repeat the title of your essay vefore you've even started, trust me. I just did it so the examiner wouldn't forget what my question was when he/she started reading the introduction.

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  • 4 months later...

I know that it says that footnotes do not count towards the word count, but I was wondering what about the sign that denotes the footnote? (the 1, 2, 3 etc. that signify the footnote in the text) Because Microsoft word is counting each one of those as a word, and if you count that then my EE is over the world limit but if you don't then it is under, so does it count or is Microsoft Word wrong?

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I know that it says that footnotes do not count towards the word count, but I was wondering what about the sign that denotes the footnote? (the 1, 2, 3 etc. that signify the footnote in the text) Because Microsoft word is counting each one of those as a word, and if you count that then my EE is over the world limit but if you don't then it is under, so does it count or is Microsoft Word wrong?

Well I certainly didn't count the footnote numbers into my essays! Microsoft Word needs to straighten that out, actually, as I don't know of any reason why you'd ever want to count the little [1] or [2] thingys as a valuable contribution to anything! I went through all my essays and subtracted them from the overall word total (well, where it made a difference to hitting the top end of the limit, that is). Being honest, even for the analness of the IB, counting those little numbers in would be extremely petty :D

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  • 6 months later...
  • 1 month later...

I have the opposite problem, i need more words lol. any ideas?

my topic " How did the use of US Radar lead to the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor?"

and i've got to 1920 words and kind of said everything, should i expand my question to "how did the use of US technologies lead to the japnese victory at pearl harbor" or would that be too broad?

Edited by 2401 Tangents
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  • 1 month later...
Guest Red XII
I think contractions count as 2 words... not sure

Use active voices. It always cuts things down.

My english teacher hates contractions and advises me against using them in any formal writing...is it different for EE? I haven't really been told anything about it yet (from school).

EE is definitely formal writing - don't use any contractions in it.

As for cutting down words, I've been able to eliminate hundreds of words simply by rewording sentences to say the same thing in as few words as possible. You should be able to cut a lot of words before you have to start cutting content. Sure, the essay doesn't sound as good and sounds much more dry using minimum-word-count sentence constructions, but the IB doesn't really care whether your writing is interesting.

Remember, examiners are grumpy old men locked in their basements. They expect to be bored.

My process for reducing words:

1. Reread, removing all filler words and unnecessary words.

2. Minimize word counts in each sentence without changing the meaning.

3. Cut quotes down to remove anything not completely necessary.

4. Remove information, starting with the weakest points.

Good luck!

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have the opposite problem, i need more words lol. any ideas?

my topic " How did the use of US Radar lead to the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor?"

and i've got to 1920 words and kind of said everything, should i expand my question to "how did the use of US technologies lead to the japnese victory at pearl harbor" or would that be too broad?

If you've already finished with everything you want to say on Radar, I don't think there would be a problem with including another technology :P . I would advise that you pick one more technology to include in your essay, if you want to . If you include more than one, it would end up being too broad. So if you can, try picking a technology that's somewhat related to Radar, (possibly Radio?) Otherwise, (to me at least) the topic would sound somewhat odd.

Just make sure to talk it over with your supervisor lol.

If you don't want to use another technology, you could include something like physical surveillance, as I think that would mesh nicely with Radar.

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