How to shorten an essay? Most of the English-second language authors and students find it difficult to write essays concisely and precisely, as they are unable to find appropriate phrases and words and do not even know which words should be skipped from the paper. In fact, many of them think that conforming to the given word count is more important than maintaining quality, and this is where they go wrong. The fact is that quality is more important than quantity. For example, if you stretch a topic to 1000 words by writing some stupid and silly sentences, then you may never be able to get any success in the academic career or professional life.
Travis Meade, an academic specialist at essay writing service, always says, “It is best to keep the general requirements in mind and try to shorten the essay so that the quality is maintained.” Some of the tips in this regard are as follows:
Eliminate the endless “that”
How to cut down an essay? It is a common observation that students use the word “that” excessively in their papers, and this is how the quality is compromised and the essay’s length is increased. If you want your paper or essay to look nice and great, then the excessive use of “that” has to be avoided. Ideally, you can place this word twice or thrice in every 500 to 1000 words, or else you can skip this word and find better alternatives so that your paper reads flawlessly.
Erase the auxiliary verbs “be,” “do,” “have.”
An auxiliary verb is a verb that is used to add grammatical or functional meaning to the clauses in which it appears. Some of the best examples are voice, aspect, emphasize and others. “Be” “do” and “have” are the most common auxiliary verbs used in essays or paper. How to cut words from an essay? If you are serious about maintaining quality throughout the essay, then you should avoid using these auxiliary words. There is nothing wrong with using them once or twice, but their excessive use can cause problems for you and the essay may look unnecessarily long.
Reduce the number of your favorite prepositions “of,” “at,” “in.”
It may not be possible for you to shorten a word, but you can definitely reduce the number of prepositions, especially “at” “of” and “in.” A preposition is a class of words used to express temporal or spatial relations. There is no set number of prepositions you should be using in an essay, but the best way to ensure quality is by using only a few prepositions.
Transform certain nouns into verbs
In order to reduce word count, you should be able to transform certain nouns into verbs through a technique known as verbing. Some of the examples are as follows:
She eyed great opportunities.
He tabled his proposal.
They accessed the lift easily.
He authored a novel.
You can friend someone on Facebook.
He messaged me last night.
You can see that some of these verbs begin as trade names, such as:
She googled new topics all the time.
He has cleaned the carpet.
Delete all the excessive adverbs
Another important step is to delete every adverb from the essay. An adverb is a specific word that is capable of modifying a particular adjective, clause, verb, sentence, determiner or proposition. These are used to express place, frequency, time, degree, manner, and level of certainty. If you are looking to get the answer to the question that who can shorten my essay, you should do it yourself by reducing the number of adverbs in your paper. Delete all adverbs from the essay that have been used excessively and unnecessarily, as this will make the essay look short, to the point, accurate and perfect.
Actively use contractions
How to lower the word count? An ideal way is to use contractions wisely and carefully. A contraction is a short yet impressive version of the written sentence. You should be able to write short versions of your sentences. For example:
You are supposed to go outside.
Its contraction can be written as.
You’re supposed to go outside.
Get parenthetical phrases
Parenthetical phrases are a list of qualified and great words and phrases. It is good to use them in your essay so that the text looks nice and flawless. If you are looking for a paragraph shortener, then you can try this technique, and we hope that you would get good results. An example of this phenomenon is as follows:
Billy-bob, a famous singer, could not dance properly.
Here the phrase is “a famous singer” which has been set off by commas. It acts as a parenthesis and an appositive.
Avoid “to be” constructions
Another effective and well-versed word shortening technique is that you should avoid using the “to be” construction. It is a common observation that students use “to be” in their papers or essays in a large number, and this not only lowers the quality but also increases the length of the essay unnecessarily. So you should avoid using “to be” in the essay in a large number. The best option is to use these constructions twice to thrice throughout the paper.
In conclusion, you should do some practice and write an essay or two every day, even when the teacher has not given any topic to write about. You should remember that practice makes a man perfect, and if you will continue working hard, then you will not have to hire an essay writing service for your writing projects.