Making your essays longer is an art that many students are still struggling to master. The main reason is that they do not know how to make essays longer effectively.
Luckily, there’s a way you can learn how to do it while also keeping your sanity. Read on.
How to Make an Essay Longer: 21 ways
By Using Words
1. Increase your Sentence Length
One of the popular ways to increase your paper’s length is by increasing your sentence length. The number of words in one sentence determines the average sentence length for your paper as a whole.
So, by adding words to each sentence, you will increase your average sentence length and therefore increase your paper’s overall length.Do this as you consider the optimum word length for your content.
2. Add an Extra Page of Content
Additional pages add depth and breadth to a paper, making it much more complicated than a simple request for information or opinion.
3. Use Numerous Examples
The best way to make your essay longer is to include examples. You can also use adjectives, adverbs, and similes. Use some lengthy words, but don’t overdo it.
Do not make the sentences too long or complicated. Make the length of each sentence vary. Include lots of details about each example you give.
4. Replace Every Period with a Question Mark
This is among the simplest ways to lengthen your essay. Simply open up your word processor, do a find and replace, search for a period, and replace it with a question mark.
You will get amazed at how many of your grammatically correct sentences when you use this trick.
5. Use More Direct Quotations
One of the simplest ways to lengthen an essay is simply using more direct quotations from your sources.
In almost any case, you should use direct quotations only when you fear that paraphrasing would alter the effectiveness or meaning of the author’s words or when you are quoting a passage that contains special wording.
6. Use More Words in Your Headings
Making an essay longer is a good thing. Headings are an essential way to tell the reader what each section of your paper is about.
You can use longer words to make your essay sound more sophisticated and educated, which will impress the teacher or professor who reads your paper.
However, don’t get carried away with this technique.
7. Use More Adverbs and Adjectives
It is among the most useful ways of how to make essays longer. It is recommended that you add adverbs and adjectives in every sentence.
You can use the phrase “very” in front of an adjective.
You can also use it to compare two ideas or objects. It will increase your word count and lengthen your composition.
8. Expand Each Paragraph for Clarity
Try looking at each paragraph and asking yourself if there is anything else you could add to help explain your point or make the paragraph flow better. Besides, an optimal paragraph exhausts your point.
9. Add a Footer with Page Numbers
Adding a footer with page numbers can make your paper look longer. There’s not much to say here other than adding a footer and playing around with the font size until it looks like your paper is longer.
10. Rethink Your Word Choices
Choose longer words over shorter ones when you can, without making it too complicated for the reader to understand what you’re saying. For example, instead of saying “he sprinted,” say “He ran quickly” or “he darted.”
Also, use contractions to observe the grammar rules.
By Using Formatting Methods
11. Use a Larger Font Size
Making your essay longer can be as easy as increasing the font size on the paper. It may not sound that much, but using a 12-point font instead of a 10-point font will make your essay seem longer.
In addition to changing the font size from 10 to 12, you should also change the spacing from double to 2.15.
12. Remove the Space between Paragraphs
First, remove all double-spacing between paragraphs by changing them to single spacing.
This will add some length, and it will not be too noticeable because most people leave a space after each paragraph anyway.
If your paper is already single-spaced, then skip this step.
13. Increase the Spacing between Lines
The most obvious way to make your essay or paper longer is to just write more words.
A better idea may be to change the line spacing of your document from double-spacing to 2.5 or 3 spacing. Every character in your essay makes sense and spacing is treated as a character.
Using this trick can make a big difference in your paper’s length without having to add in any unnecessary filler just so that it meets the minimum requirement.
14. Increase Your Margin Sizes
Margins happen to be the space between your text and the edge of the page. So, if you have a one-inch margin on both sides of your text and increase it to 1.5 inches, you’ll be adding an extra quarter of an inch to each sentence in your paper.
If your paper has a lot of sentences, that’s some extra real estate you can add-in.
15. Add More Commas to Your Sentences
One of the popular ways is to add more commas to your sentences. But be careful not to change the meaning.
A longer sentence can be broken up into multiple sections with commas, or a single section can be expanded by adding more sentences between commas.
Each comma adds about the width of a letter, which can add up if you use them correctly.
16. Insert an Image into Your Essay
If your essay is already complete but still short of the required number of pages, inserting an image or two can be a nice way to pad your paper.
Just make sure the image has something to do with your topic. You wouldn’t want to insert a picture of a beach scene if your essay was about space travel!
Other Ways
17. Have Someone Proofread
Among the most valuable tools in learning to make an essay longer is having someone proofread your work.
If you’ve written a shorter paper and expanded it to the max, the second pair of eyes can be very helpful in pointing out places where you need to add additional information or where you can restructure sentences to make your writing more effective.
18. Expand Each Section of your Outline into Multiple Paragraphs
Add a whole new paragraph to introduce additional information about the characters, setting, plot, or theme as needed. Don’t just add a new topic without supporting it with evidence from the text.
19. Get New Ideas from Blogs
When you are working on your essay and need to find more ideas for making your essay longer, you will want to consider using the internet. You may find that the internet is a great place to get ideas and tips on making your essay longer.
20. Enhance Your Transitions
If you find that your essay is still too short for the word count, you can add transitional sentences. Furthermore, transitions help clarify what you are saying rather than taking away from it.
21. Make a Title Page
It can be with just your name and class; print it, take a picture of it, and add it to your essay as a photo with the caption “title page.”
Why Students Want to Make Essays Longer
Students want to make essays longer because they think it will give them more points on their scores. This is simply not true.
The essay is not graded based on length. Thus, there is no reason to write more than what is necessary to prove your point.
Another reason students want to make essays longer is because they don’t know how to summarize their main points without repeating themselves. This may seem okay, but it can be very easy to do when trying to write quickly.
The right way to avoid this problem is by creating an outline before writing your essay and following it closely once you start writing.
Students also want to make their papers longer when they want to show off in front of a teacher.
They think that if they provide more details in their writing, a teacher will be impressed and give them higher grades.
Risks Associated with Making an Essay Longer
- Boring your teacher: If you feel like you’ve reached the limit of what you want to say about a topic, don’t feel like you need to keep going just to add words. You might think a longer paper shows more depth and analysis, but it likely won’t impress your teacher if it’s just wordy and drawn out.
- Confusing your reader: Most teachers give essays specific instructions. If they ask for a four-to-five page paper, they expect exactly that. If you go off on tangents that aren’t related to the main point of your essay or add in extra examples when they’re not necessary, you run the risk of confusing your reader and losing points as a result.
- Losing credibility with your reader: There’s nothing worse than reading through an essay and realizing that key points have been left out because there wasn’t enough room in the word count.
- Redundancies: You may end up with a lot of repeats and redundancies. If you try to make an essay longer without adding anything new, your professor will probably notice that there isn’t much substance to what you added.
Joseph is a freelance journalist and a part-time writer with a particular interest in the gig economy. He writes about schooling, college life, and changing trends in education. When not writing, Joseph is hiking or playing chess.