10 Tricks to Reduce Your Word Count in Academic Writing


When I got cut from varsity cross country, I was at a crossroads. Should I audition for the play? Should I risk humiliationin front of new peers and a director I didn’t know? Should I subject myself to the slings and arrows of stage fright and start taking Pepto Bismol in the wings? Of course, I was assuming I’d make it that far—truth be told, maybe I wouldn’t even get past callbacks—but the reality was, I was no longer an athlete, I was an actor in waiting. I needed to redefine myself as a thespian.


When I got cut from cross country and had to face the fact I couldn’t do varsity, I had a crossroads to face. Should I audition for the school play? Should I risk humiliation and falling on my face in front of new peers and a theater director I really didn’t know? Should I subject myself to the slings and arrows of stage fright and start taking Pepto Bismol in the wings? Of course, I was assuming I’d make it that far—truth be told, maybe I wouldn’t even get past callbacks—but the reality was, I was no longer an athlete, I was an actor in waiting, and hoping to find a new identity. I needed to embrace a new set of skills and artistry and redefine myself as a thespian.

Hey friends, do you have trouble reducing the word count in your manuscripts? In this article, we will discuss 7 strategies for reducing the word count in an academic manuscript. I hope this will help you if you’re struggling with this.

Reduce Word Count Online - Psychology Writing

Zinsser proposes you can cut 50 percent of a draft to remove unnecessary words in writing and say the same thing. But if cutting 50 percent of a draft makes you want to hyperventilate, aim for 10 percent. You can almost always cut two words out of a 20-word sentence and not miss a thing. See?

While this won’t help you remove unnecessary words from writing, consulting a thesaurus can help you improve your content overall — as long as you don’t overdo it.

Reducing the word count in an academic paper can be valuable for students or researchers. It can help you make your ideas more concise, improve your arguments’ clarity, and simplify your papers. Additionally, it can help you adhere to word count restrictions set by your chosen publication venue, avoiding potential penalties.

When professionals cut, they rewrite, too. They find new, pithier words, phrases, and sentences to say it shorter, which is what admission officers want: more Hemingway, less Herman Melville. So this is a core skill that you will find yourself using to drop word count effectively.


Remove These 30 Words and Phrases from Your Writing Now

But when it comes to research papers and , word counts are used to level the playing field: Each student has the same number of words to get their point across. A strong writer can do this without using unnecessary words to reach the minimum word count, while also avoiding rambling and exceeding the maximum word count.

Reduce your word count with this one quick trick - YouTube

Your main priority is making sure your argument and writing are strong, and you may find that reaching your word count is made easier by doing just that.

Getting your word count reduced can be difficult

When trying to reduce word count it’s important to use a scalpel and not an axe—meaning you don’t want to delete large portions of your paper to ensure you’re below the maximum word count. Instead, you want to find small but significant ways to bring down your word count.

25+ words and phrases to remove from your writing - Medium

So in this guide, we’re going to talk about how to cut words from your college essay, and offer you a few clear, actionable strategies for how to cut words in your essay (which we’ll get to below), but before we get to those things, we want to set some context for when you should focus on word count and cutting, so you can write and cut more effectively.

25+ words and phrases to remove from your writing

When you’re writing your college essays, word count should be the last thing you worry about. Even if you’re feeling panicked at the sight of tiny spaces allowing only 150, 250, or 650 words, tell yourself during the drafting and revising phase that you’ll deal with it in due time. And by “due time,” we mean a few weeks before submitting your essays, which is ideally when you should get serious about deleting words.

How to reduce word count in your academic papers

What’s key early on (and really for most of the writing process) is getting interesting, immersive detail down on the (digital) page. Go ahead: get lost in the details. Trust your storytelling instincts. Forget about word count.