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How to shorten an essay (2022 Top Expert Guide)

Table of Contents

 What comes to a naive mind when dwelling on “ how to shorten an essay ” is that, it is a tedious and meticulous task. 

How to shorten an essay

Shortening an essay is not difficult when you grab the right tips and tricks. These are the best common ways to make your assigned essay shorter in terms of pages. Some of these methods may reduce the essay by three or four pages. Some may cause more pages, and some may create a more elusive outcome. 

Experiment with your submission and find the ideal combination. Do not worry about the assignment due date; focus on the cat.

The five best ways to make an essay shorter include: 

1. Start with a thesis statement. A good thesis statement is the foundation of a well-rounded paper. When you begin your essay, make a clear statement. Be able to back that statement up if necessary, but be prepared to argue for it in a strong sense. Avoid the sentence “I believe that X.” Instead, state a thesis to help the reader understand exactly how you feel and why. 

2. Read your essay out loud. This will help you find areas that need improvement, and it will keep you aware of the pace of this activity. 

3. Take notes. It is easy to get caught up in this activity and lose sight of what else needs to be done. Make a note of the best ideas that come to you while doing this research activity. 

4. When writing the thesis, write down how you will prove or support it. Read your essay aloud again, and look for areas where you need more information. 

5. If your project is expository, the most commonly misunderstood aspect is the conclusion. You need to write the conclusion at the end of your project. Make sure it is clear, concise, and to the point. 

Paraphrasing

Can we shorten our essays through paraphrasing? Yes, we can. However, many students mistake rewording what they learn in the book. To create a properly-written paraphrase, you need to understand the original text and also be careful to maintain its organization. 

Paraphrasing language that is poor, vague, or missing essential details can have a significant impact on the audience. To write a good paraphrase, you need to practice and review it before publishing.

 The best way to write a good paraphrase is that the writer expresses his ideas in his own words. While paraphrasing, ensure your reader understands what you mean by your sentences and writing.

Write More Concisely – Tips to Shorten Your Essay

Need help on how to shorten an essay ? Shortening your essay is not a difficult thing to do, but it might require some effort. You will have a concise and engaging essay if you follow these steps!

Here are eight proven tips to shorten your essay:

1. Use simple, everyday words. Don’t try to conceal yourself behind big words. They will only exacerbate your flaws. 

2. Remove any unnecessary words.

Examine your adverbs (strongly, gratuitously), adjectives (large, great), and qualifiers (very, somewhat). The majority of the words you don’t need can be found here. Consider whether they are necessary. If not, get rid of them.

3. Avoid using nominalization.

How many times have you suffocated a verb by making it a noun? 

(delude – delusion, exclude – exclusion, contract – contraction) Stop it!

4. Avoid using these five words too close to a verb.

Desist from using the words’ take,’ ‘give, “make,’ ‘conduct,’ and ‘come’ too close to a verb or a nominalized verb phrase. They detract from the clarity of your sentences. 

Example: ‘The organization needs to take the defects into consideration.’  should be  ‘The organization needs to consider the defects.’ 

Other tips to shorten your essay include:

5. Make use of strong, specific verbs and nouns. This allows you to avoid using the passive voice, cut down on wordiness, and eliminate modifiers and qualifiers.

6. Make use of the active voice.

You must use the active voice if you follow plain language rules. It assists you in simplifying your message and saying precisely what you want to say. The active voice eliminates uncertainty. We are always aware of who is doing what. The Hemingway App assists you in identifying passive voice.

7. Avoid using jargon.

Overused phrases in a company or industry lose all meaning. Please refrain from using the terms’ like, ‘think outside the box,’ ‘win-win situation,’ ‘low-hanging fruit,’ and ‘pushing the envelope.’ Your readers will ignore you if you don’t say what you mean.

8. Avoid using verbs that require you to ‘tell.’

When used to describe something, these ten verbs will unnecessarily increase your word count. 

These ten verbs are appeared, mused, seemed, thought, wondered, seemed, felt, decided, heard, and realized. Stay away from them.

Shortening an essay requires a lot of focus, but the payoff is well worth the effort. Try out these tips, and soon you’ll be able to significantly shorten your essay without removing any significant content from the piece.

Think about your essay like a puzzle. You can add and subtract individual pieces to make the picture stronger. 

Pam is an expert grammarian with years of experience teaching English, writing and ESL Grammar courses at the university level. She is enamored with all things language and fascinated with how we use words to shape our world.

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Home ➔ Essay Length Questions ➔ How to Shorten an Essay Without Ruining It

How to Shorten an Essay Without Ruining It

High-school and college essays impose strict word limits to which students struggle to conform. It can be challenging to express your opinion, describe a historical event in full, or tell a good story within 500 words . When it comes to reducing the word count, most learners find it quite hard. “I struggle to shorten my essay without ruining it.” If your thoughts are similar to that, we will try to help you solve this problem.

To illustrate how you can reduce the word count in your paper without impairing its integrity, we will use sample sentences and go through a list of techniques you can apply. To shorten an essay, you can :

• Eliminate redundancy
• Combine sentences with similar meanings
• Avoid referring back
• Listen to your writing

Further, we will give examples of sentences that can be shrunk with their revisions.

Note: You can reverse some tips from our article about essay lengthening .

1. Edit out redundancies and reduce wordiness

What’s redundant? It’s something that exceeds what’s necessary or enough. Redundancy in linguistics implies the usage of words and phrases that repeat what has been already said or can be understood from the context. Although it can help the reader better understand emotions or situations in nonfiction, it’s unwelcome in academic writing. Hence, when trying to shorten your essay, start by eliminating redundancy. Wordy phrasing also falls under this section.

You can clutter your writing with repetitive phrases and needless words without even noticing it. You might want to make the text more detailed or get so inspired when writing that you can’t stop filling your sentences with adjectives and adverbs. That doesn’t mean you’re a terrible writer — you just need to do a bit of editing and reduce the essay’s word count a bit.

Eliminating redundancy

The best way to understand what can be cut out is to see if the meaning of the sentence stays the same when you do so.

Original: I was absolutely certain that each and every quote I provided in my essay about politics made my argument much more compelling.

Let’s edit and shorten the sentence above.

Edited: I was sure every fact in my essay made my argument compelling.

We removed 10 words, and the meaning hasn’t changed. Of course, we exaggerated our example for illustrative purposes.

As for what we deleted, the word “ certain ” doesn’t require a modifier because if you’re not completely certain, you are not certain anymore (if that makes sense). The words “ each ” and “ every ” mean the same, so we can remove one instance. You can remove “I provided” because you specify that the essay is yours, so it’s only logical that those quotes were provided by you. We removed “ about politics ” because this phrase doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the sentence. And “ much more ” also can be omitted without changing the context.

Below is a list of redundancies, removing which you can make your college essay shorter.

Eliminating wordiness

When revising your essay, make sure every word has its weight and role. Wordiness implies using phrases that can be replaced with one or two words without changing the meaning or choosing a sentence structure with too many articles and prepositions. Also, some words can be deleted without any harm to the text.

To eliminate wordiness, you can:

• Avoid using passive voice
• Replace heavy phrases
• Favor noun clusters
• Use verbs for action
• Stop the preposition train
• Use fewer fillers and qualifiers

Let’s look closer at each method.

Using the active voice

When you use the passive voice, the subject receives the action, and the action doer is often unknown. Instead, use the active voice whenever possible, especially if it’s critical to know who or what acts.

Original: The process of essay shortening is often found as a challenging task.

Edited: Students often find essay shortening challenging.

Simplifying long phrases

Writers might use longer equivalents of phrases in scientific papers or nonfiction, but you should simplify them in essays to reduce the word count.

Original: Due to the fact that the majority of papers have to fall in line with length limitations, students are necessitated to gain an understanding of how to put their thoughts into words clearly.

Edited: Because most papers must meet length requirements, students should learn how to express their thoughts clearly.

Below is a list of such phrases and their equivalents.

Use noun clusters

Prepositions are also counted as words, so by reducing them, you can make your essay shorter.

Original: There are many processes in the industry that must be considered first.

Edited: You must consider many industry processes first.

Express action through verbs

When choosing between using a noun formed from a verb (nominalization) or the verb, opt for the latter.

Original: The economic destabilization is the consequence of the government’s failure to implement effective economic policies.

Edited: The government’s failure to implement effective economic policies destabilized the economy.

Reduce the preposition and article count

Some grammar and readability checking tools call a preposition-riddled sentence sticky or bogged down .

Original: One of the most crucial events in the history of humanity was the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.

Edited: The fall of the Berlin Wall was a momentous event in human history.

Reduce the number of fillers and qualifiers

Fillers are words that add no meaning and value to the sentence. Qualifiers are words that usually come before adjectives and change their quality. Check the list below for the most common words and phrases of these types.

Original: It’s quite important to note that the study revealed rather interesting results.

Edited: The study revealed intriguing results.

You can use the essay shortening tips above as a way to improve your overall writing. If you learn to write without being wordy or using a lot of fillers, the quality of your text will rise a lot.

You can use these eliminating wordiness exercises by Purdue University to check yourself.

2. Combine sentences with similar meanings

When speaking, we use new sentences to elaborate on previous ideas and add a new meaning. Typically, we speak with longer sentences than in writing. If you write the same way you talk, it will take a toll on your essay’s word count.

Original: Many students find it difficult to write within the essay length limit imposed by schools. I also often struggle to fit my essays into the word count confines.

That sentence contains a lot of information that we can combine into a shorter passage.

Edited: Like many students, I find it hard to write essays within length requirements.

The sentence above conveys the same meaning but is much shorter. We got rid of 15 words, more than half of what we got first. Multiply this by all the instances you could compress, and the number could reach 100-150 words! Look for ideas that can be combined in one sentence.

Compress you examples

In your essay, the most specific parts are the examples, and contracting them is an excellent way of shortening your paper. When using someone’s story as an example, you might get carried away and start providing too many details spreading over five or six sentences. If your essay has such parts, “ zoom out ” and shrink them as much as possible.

If you can’t do that, think about replacing them with other examples.

3. Don’t refer to previous paragraphs

Avoid linking to previous information in an essay — it’s a waste of time. Phrases like “ as it was mentioned before ” or “ from the last paragraph, we can conclude ” are redundant. They disorient the readers and prevent them from moving forward.

Original: As it was mentioned earlier, we can improve our education system by…

Edited: We can improve our education system by…

Many students make this mistake when writing a conclusion . They give a mere summary of the body paragraphs when instead, you must tie them together and provide a broader context without sending the reader back.

4. Listen to your essay

Luckily, you don’t need to wait for thunder and get your essay struck by lightning to do that. Use Google Translate’s “ listen ” button or ask somebody to read it out loud for you. Once you hear your writing, you might identify the parts worth deleting. When listening to your essay being read out loud, pay attention to:

• Sentences that feel too long and hefty
• Awkward-sounding words and phrases
• Areas that stray off the topic

Each time you spot something from the list above, pause and reread that part to see if it can be fixed.

This recommendation puts you into the reader’s shoes and lets you cut out all the wordy and strange-sounding passages.

The best way to shorten an essay is by combining all our tips. After several revisions, you will shrink your text without destroying content.

Some online tools can also help you with that:

• Grammarly — its free version is enough to weed out all the fillers and qualifiers.
• OneLook reverse dictionary — can help you replace a wordy concept with one or two words and avoid repetition.
• ClicheFinder — get rid of cliche phrases or substitute them with shorter equivalents. “You can’t draw blood from a stone” can easily become “impossible” or “futile.”
• Smmry — it’s a tool that summarizes texts. Use it if you lack time, but don’t forget to proofread the result.

Schools impose word limits to make sure students do not stuff their writing with lengthy phrases and learn to write clearly. Another reason is to ensure equality so that everyone does the same amount of research. Also, a word limit acts as a guide forcing you to be more to the point and plan your writing.

There are a few things that can help you stick to the word limit from the very beginning. First, create a clear thesis statement that allows you to narrow your focus and stay on the subject. Second, prepare a detailed outline that will define the ideas you want to include. Third, monitor the word count every ten or twenty minutes to see how much space you have left.

Besides the things we cover in our article, you can also try to replace phrasal verbs with their one-word versions (e.g., “ get back ” -> “ return ”). Many phrases that are separated with a comma can be safely removed from your essay (e.g., “ to be honest ” or “ in fact ”).

It depends, but a 10% margin should be fine. If another 100 words will make a difference, add them. However, you should always try to stay under the limit indicated in the requirements, especially for a college application essay. You might get away with writing a bit less text, whereas more will just annoy the reader.

The list of references

• Writing Concisely — The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Effective Use of Language — University of Washington
• Writing Concise Sentences by the Capital Community College Foundation (with exercises)

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8 Proven Methods to Reduce Essay Word Count, AI Included

Table of contents

Yona Schnitzer

We all know how hard it is to write long essays with a minimum word count.

But sometimes, we're faced with the opposite challenge - keeping our essays under a maximum count.

How to Reduce Essay Word Count

1. Use an active voice instead of passive 2. Spot the fluff 3. Eliminate redundant words 4. Shorten wordy phrases 5. Stop using "What" and "There" as subjects 6. Drop the conjunctions 7. Forget the running starts 8. Use shorter words

Anyone who has ever tried covering complex topics with a maximum word ceiling can tell you that it can be challenging to reduce the word count without sacrificing the meaning or flow of your piece. 

In this article, I’ll give you 8 easy tips to help you reduce the word count in your essays without compromising the quality of your writing.

So, without further ado, here are 8 proven methods to reduce essay word count:

1. use an active voice instead of passive.

Using an active voice makes your writing more direct and concise. Passive voice often adds unnecessary words and can make your writing sound less engaging. For instance:

By switching to the passive voice, we’ve reduced our overall word count, while also making the sentence more engaging. 

Be sure to check out our full guide on how to nail the active voice .

2. Spot the fluff

One of the easiest ways to reduce word count is to identify any unnecessary or redundant information in your piece. Whether it’s drawn out introductions, or repetitive information, there’s always something that you can do without. Some tools, like Wordtune can actually help you identify areas where you can afford to shorten your writing, or even entire paragraphs that you can cut out.

3. Eliminate redundant words

Many sentences contain words that don't add any value to their meaning and can be easily removed. Very, for example, is a very common offender (see what I did there?). Instead of writing It was very cold outside, just write It was cold outside.

Here are some more examples of redundant words to help you get the idea:

4. Shorten wordy phrases

Another way to reduce word count is to identify and shorten wordy phrases. 

For example, instead of writing "due to the fact that, " you can write "because."  

Once you get in the habit of shortening your phrases, it will be like second nature. There are also some tools that can help you with that, like Wordtune's "shorten" feature, which can suggest shorter ways to write a sentence without sacrificing clarity.

5. Stop using "What" and "There" as subjects

Using "What" or "There" as the subject of a sentence will add unnecessary words to your writing. Instead, you can rephrase the sentence to make the subject more specific. 

For example: 

6. Drop the conjunctions

Conjunctions such as "and," "but," and "however" can be used to connect two independent statements, but they also add unnecessary words to your sentence. Instead of creating one, long sentence that is put together by conjunctions, try writing two separate sentences instead. Usually you’ll find that these end up using less words overall. 

For example:

This may seem like a small difference, but over the course of an entire paper, these small changes will really add up.

7. Forget the running starts

In writing, a "running start" refers to a sentence that begins with a word or phrase that does not provide any useful information and can be easily removed without affecting the meaning of the sentence. Common examples of running starts include words like "it," "there," "here," "this," and "that." These words often add unnecessary words to a sentence and can make the writing sound less direct and less engaging. Removing them can help to make your writing more concise and to the point.

Pro Tip: Wordtune's "Shorten" feature is great at eliminating running starts.

8. Use shorter words

Sometimes, an assignment has a page limit rather than a word count, in this instance, it can be worth it to identify words that can be replaced with shorter words of the same meaning. For example, instead of writing " utilize ," you can write " use ." 

Here are some other common words that can afford to lose a few letters:

Less is more

‍ If you’re looking for tips on how to INCREASE word count, check out this article . 

There are plenty of ways to reduce your word count without sacrificing the quality of your writing. Use these tips and tricks the next time you find yourself desperately trying to squeeze too many sentences onto one page. Keep in mind that whenever you shorten a text, you’re usually improving it by making it more readable and accessible to a larger audience. 

Remember, when it comes to writing - less, is usually more. 

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Home > Blog > 7 Best Ways to Shorten an Essay

7 Best Ways to Shorten an Essay

• Smodin Editorial Team
• Published: May 14, 2024
• General Guide About Content and Writing

Are you removing a lot of words and paragraphs from your essay but still not seeing the word count budge? Whether you’re meeting a strict word count or refining your message, reducing your essay’s length without sacrificing content quality can be challenging.

Luckily, besides just aiming for the minimum word count, there are some pretty simple solutions, like using artificial intelligence, conducting thorough research, and trimming unnecessary words. But there’s more.

In this guide, we’ll unpack some practical tips to help you make your essay concise and impactful. Time to make every word count!

7 Best Ways To Shorten an Essay

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the best ways you can shorten your essay:

1. Use Artificial intelligence

When we talk about academic writing, artificial intelligence (AI) can be a game changer, especially when it comes to reducing the length of your essays.

Tools like Smodin can help make your content more concise while enhancing overall quality. AI can help you shorten your essay through the following methods:

• Automated rewriting : AI rewriting tools can reformulate existing content to make it more straightforward while maintaining the original meaning.
• Sentence simplification : Algorithms can analyze your sentences and suggest simpler alternatives, helping eliminate redundant information and reduce word count.
• Research assistance : Certain platforms have AI-powered research tools that allow you to quickly gather the most relevant information. This ensures that every word in your essay contributes to your argument without unnecessary fillers.
• Plagiarism check : Ensuring your essay is plagiarism-free is crucial. For example, Smodin’s plagiarism detection tools help you identify and replace copied content with original, concise expressions.
• Instant feedback : Receive real-time suggestions on how to streamline your text, focusing on the essentials to effectively communicate your message.
• Reference generation : Automatically generate and insert citations in the correct format, which helps save you time while maintaining the academic integrity of your essay and keeping it short.

2. Identify Unnecessary Words and Remove Them

One of the simplest yet most effective ways to shorten your essay is by identifying and eliminating unnecessary words.

This approach helps decrease word count and sharpens your arguments, making your writing more compelling. You can identify and remove extra words by doing the following:

• Spot wordy phrases : Often, phrases can be condensed without losing meaning. For example, the phrase “due to the fact that” can be replaced with “because.” Be on the lookout for wordy phrases that increase word count needlessly.
• Remove unnecessary prepositional phrases : Prepositional phrases can be redundant or add unnecessary detail. Evaluate whether these phrases add value or just extra words. Cutting them can make sentences more direct.
• Avoid redundancies : Redundant pairs like “absolutely essential” or “future plans” can be reduced to one word without losing informational value.
• Trim excess adjectives and adverbs : Adjectives and adverbs can make writing better but can also lead to over-description. Use them sparingly, especially when they don’t contribute additional meaning to the nouns and verbs they modify.
• Fewer words; more impact : Aim for brevity by using fewer words to express the same idea. This will help to reduce the word count while making your writing more impactful and clear.

3. Tighten Sentence Structure

Tightening your sentence structure is crucial for making your essay more concise and readable. Use active voice to make your writing clearer and more dynamic. This is especially important in academic writing, where you have to get to the point quickly.

In academic essays, shifting from passive voice to active voice can shorten and strengthen your sentences. For example, instead of writing, “The experiment was conducted by the students,” you can say, “The students conducted the experiment.” This reduces the number of words and places the action directly with the subject, making your sentences more direct.

Combining two separate sentences into one can streamline your ideas and reduce redundancies. Look for opportunities where sentences can be merged without losing their significance. For example, “He wrote the book. It became a bestseller.” can be rephrased as “He wrote the book, which became a bestseller.”

Also, avoid unnecessary qualifiers and modifiers that don’t add substantial information. Sentences often become bogged down with these extras, making them cluttered and long.

4. Conduct Thorough Research

When writing essays, extensive research can make the final output a lot shorter. Effective research helps you gather precise information that’s relevant to your topic. This means you’ll write more directly and avoid needless elaboration. Here’s how you can conduct research effectively:

• Define the scope of your research : Determine what information is essential to the argument. This initial step will help you focus your research efforts and prevent irrelevant data.
• Identify key sources : Begin with scholarly databases and academic journals that offer peer-reviewed articles. These sources provide credible, authoritative information that can be crucial for academic writing.
• Use precise keywords : When searching for information, use specific keywords related to your essay topic. Precision here will help find the most relevant articles and studies, reducing time spent on unnecessary reading.
• Evaluate sources : Assess the relevance and reliability of each source. Check the publication date to ensure the information is current and relevant to your topic.
• Take notes efficiently : As you research, jot down important points, quotes, and references. Organize these notes according to the sections in your essay to make writing faster.
• Synthesize information : Combine information from multiple sources to build a strong argument. This will allow you to write comprehensively and with fewer words, as each sentence carries more weight.

5. Improve Your Paragraph Structure

Streamlining paragraphs can make your essay shorter and more digestible for the reader. With a well-structured paragraph, you can focus on a single idea supported by concise statements.

Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence that clearly states the main idea. This sentence sets the direction and tone, letting the reader know what to expect. It also helps ensure that every following sentence relates directly to the main idea.

Condense supporting information by merging ideas that logically coexist within a single sentence or phrase. After that, evaluate each sentence for its contribution to the paragraph’s main idea. Remove any information that is repeated or goes into too much detail.

Focus on providing evidence and explanations that directly support the main point. You should also end each paragraph with a sentence that reinforces the main idea and potentially links to the next paragraph. This creates smooth transitions and keeps the essay focused and cohesive.

6. Refine the Introduction and Conclusion

These sections frame your essay and influence how your arguments are perceived. Here are some ways to keep them concise yet effective.

Introduction

The introduction should be engaging and concise, clearly stating the purpose and scope of your essay. Begin with a hook that grabs the reader’s attention, followed by background information that sets the context. Incorporate your thesis statement early on, ideally at the end of the intro.

The conclusion needs to reinforce the thesis. Summarize key points in the essay and show how they support the thesis. Provide a final thought that leaves the reader with something to ponder.

Also, remember to keep it tight – the conclusion isn’t a place for introducing new ideas. It should wrap up the ones you presented and prompt the reader to pose their own questions.

7. Edit and Proofread

Keep your essay concise and error-free by allocating ample time for editing and proofreading. These processes scrutinize your work at different levels, from the overall structure to word choices and punctuation. Here’s how you can go about it:

Start by reading through your entire paper to get a feel for its flow and coherence. Check if all paragraphs support your thesis statement and if section transitions are smooth. This will help you spot areas where the argument might be weak, or wording could be clearer.

Focus next on paragraph structure. Ensure each paragraph sticks to one main idea and that all sentences directly support the idea. Remove any repetitive or irrelevant sentences that don’t add value.

Then, look for clarity and style. Replace complex words with simpler alternatives to maintain readability. Keep your tone consistent throughout the paper. Adjust the sentence length and structure to enhance the flow and make it more engaging.

Proofreading

Proofreading comes after editing. The focus here is catching typing errors, grammatical mistakes, and inconsistent formatting. It’s always best to proofread with fresh eyes, so consider taking a break before this step.

Use tools like spell checkers, but don’t rely solely on them. Read your essay aloud or have someone else review it. Hearing the words can help you catch errors you may have missed.

Lastly, check for punctuation errors and ensure all citations and references are formatted according to the required academic style. This and all of the above are areas in which AI can help get the job done with speed and precision.

Why You Might Need to Shorten Your Essay

Ever heard the expression “less is more”? When it comes to academic writing, it normally is. Keeping your essays concise offers several benefits:

• Enhances clarity : A shorter essay forces you to focus on the main points and critical arguments, reducing the risk of going off-topic. This clarity makes your writing more impactful and easier for the reader to follow.
• Meets word limits : Many academic assignments have a maximum word count. Learning to express your thoughts concisely helps you stay within these limits without sacrificing essential content.
• Saves time : For both the writer and the reader, shorter essays take less time to write, revise, and read. This efficiency is especially valuable in academic settings where time is usually limited.
• Increases engagement : Readers are more likely to stay engaged with a document that gets to the point quickly. Lengthy texts can deter readers, especially if the content has unnecessary words or redundant points.
• Improves writing skills : Shortening essays helps refine your writing skills. You become better at identifying and eliminating fluff, focusing instead on what really adds value to your paper.

Overall, adopting a more succinct writing style helps you meet academic requirements and polish your communication skills.

Why Use Smodin To Shorten an Essay

Using AI-powered platforms like Smodin to shorten your essay is both the simplest and the least time-consuming method available. Here’s why you should probably make Smodin your go-to essay shortener:

• Efficiency : Smodin eases the editing process, using advanced algorithms to quickly identify areas where content can be condensed without losing meaning.
• Accuracy : With its powerful AI, Smodin ensures that the essence of your essays stays intact while getting rid of unnecessary words, making your writing more precise.
• Ease of use : Smodin is user-friendly, making it accessible even to those who aren’t the most tech-savvy. Its easy-to-grasp interface allows for seamless navigation and operation.

Smodin’s offerings

• Rewriter : Available in over 50 languages, this tool helps rewrite text to be more concise.
• Article Writer : Assists in drafting articles that are crisp and to the point.
• Plagiarism and Auto Citation : Ensures your essay is original and correctly cited, which is crucial in academic writing.
• Language Detection : Identifies the language of the text, ensuring the right adjustments are made for clarity.

All these tools and more are what make Smodin an excellent choice for academics looking to reduce the length of their essays.

Final Thoughts

Word counts can be a real headache, especially when you need to say a lot with a little. Thankfully, by identifying unnecessary words, tightening your sentences, and using tools like Smodin, you can make your essay concise without losing its meaning. Remember, a shorter essay doesn’t just meet word limits; and it’s clear, more compelling, and more likely to keep your reader engaged.

Keep it short, keep it sweet, and make every word count! Get started for free right now with Smodin.

How to Shorten an Essay: 4 Techniques to Reduce Word Count

If you need to shorten your essay by 100-500 words, or even more, you can use one or more of four techniques. You can clean up your sentences, remove repetition, summarize your examples, and/or cut out an entire section.

One of my subscribers recently asked me, “ How do I compress an essay of 700-1000 words, or even more, to just 300 words? ”

In this tutorial I will show you four easy ways to shorten your essay by as much or as little as you wish. I am giving them to you in the order you should try them out.

Here are four techniques to shorten your essay:

Technique #1: Sentence Cleanup

When I taught essay writing in college, I noticed that students wrote sentences that were just too wordy. 

They used 20 words where 10 would have probably done the trick. If you examine your sentences, you’ll often find that you can say the same thing in much fewer words.

“In my opinion, there are many people who want to lose weight.”

This sentence contains 12 words. 

Here’s how we can shorten it by performing a Sentence Cleanup.

First, you never have to say, “ In my opinion, ” because if it were not your opinion, you wouldn’t be stating it. Okay? So, let’s cross out “ in my opinion. ”

“ In my opinion, there are many people who want to lose weight.”

We just cut out three words. 

Next, the phrase “ there are ” is usually unnecessary, and if you take it out, your sentence will become more elegant. So, let’s do it. Let’s just cross it out.

“ There are many people who want to lose weight.”

We also have to cross out the extra word “ who ” because it is only needed if you use “ there are. ”

We just got rid of three more words. 

And so our sentence becomes:

“Many people want to lose weight.”

How many words is that? That is now a six word sentence. Guess what – we just cut this sentence in half. 

Do this enough times in your essay, and it will get a lot shorter.

“How do I cut out 200 words from my essay to make it shorter?”

This sentence contains 14 words. Let’s perform a Sentence Cleanup.

Notice that it is pretty obvious that to cut out 200 words from an essay will make it shorter. Therefore, stating that you want to do it “ to make it shorter ” is unnecessary. 

If we get rid of that phrase, we’ll cut out 4 words from this sentence and make it a lot more elegant. 

“How do I cut out 200 words from my essay to make it shorter ?”

Technique #2: Removing Repetition

Repetition can be found on all levels – in a sentence, in a paragraph, or a section. When you reduce or eliminate repetition in your essay, you are making it less redundant. “Redundant” just means repetitive and therefore useless.

In the last example we just did, we eliminated a redundancy from a sentence. And that’s part of a Sentence Cleanup. But you can also find and eliminate entire redundant sentences.  

Look for repetitive phrases, sentences, and even passages in your content and remove them. 

Students often repeat things over and over, using different words, thinking that they’re writing great content. Those are your opportunities to significantly shorten your essay while improving it at the same time.

Here’s an example from a fictitious student essay. Let’s say the student writes about his trip to Paris and states:

“ I found that Parisians are very nice if you talk to them in French. ”

And then, in the same or even a different paragraph or section, the following sentence would appear:

“Parisians can be very nice people, but they really prefer that you speak French with them.”

Well, the two sentences say the same thing, just using different words. 

So, what do you do? 

Pick the longer sentence and just delete it.

Sometimes you will find a whole paragraph in your essay that is repetitive and can be removed without the essay losing any meaning. If you find such a paragraph, just delete it.

Technique #3: Zooming Out

Make sure that you go through your essay using the first two techniques before you employ this and the next one. 

The only case where you would do Zooming Out first would be if you had to shorten your essay drastically – by 30% or more. 

If you’ve cleaned up all your sentences and removed all repetitive content, and you still need to lose hundreds of words, the Zooming Out technique will really help. 

Here’s how it works. 

You may have heard that in essay writing, you are supposed to proceed from general to specific. Whether you stick to this rule really well in your essay or not, I want you to notice something. 

In your essay, you make statements that are:

• very general
• less general
• somewhat specific
• very specific

The most general statement in your essay is the thesis because it summarizes the entire essay. And the most specific parts of your essay are examples .

So, in order to shorten your essay, you can summarize your examples. I call this Zooming Out because you are taking something that was very specific (zoomed in) and making it more general (zoomed out). 

Let’s say you’re writing about the harms of second-hand smoking. And in one of the sections you provide an example of your friend or someone in the news who became seriously ill because she lived with a smoker for a long time:

“My friend Isabelle was married to a chain smoker. Her husband refused not only to give up his habit but even to reduce it. As years went by, Isabelle began to notice some respiratory symptoms. At first, she developed a light but persistent cough. Then, she started to feel out of breath more and more often. When she finally went to a pulmonologist, a test revealed that she had COPD, a serious lung disease.”

This example is 74 words long. And this is your opportunity to shorten your essay dramatically. 

You can simply contract this example into one short sentence and write something like this:

“A friend of mine developed lung disease after having lived with a chain smoker for twelve years.”

Now, this sentence contains only 17 words. We just cut out 57 words just by Zooming Out on one example. 

We are Zooming Out because we are no longer exploring this example in detail. We simply provide a fact without giving a lot of specific information. 

So, look for these detailed examples in your essay and just summarize each of them into one short sentence.

Technique #4: Cutting out a Section

This technique works very well to cut out a big chunk of your essay in one fell swoop.

Let’s say that you wrote an essay in which you have four supporting points to prove your main point, your thesis. 

If this is a 2,000-word essay, then each section is approximately 500 words long. But do you really need four reasons/sections to support your point?

Is it possible that if you provide only three supporting points, your essay will still work very well?

For example, if you argue that apples are a great food, you could have four supporting points, claiming that apples are:

But what if you simply took out one of these points? Let’s say that you eliminate the section about the portability of apples.

Will your essay still work? Sure it will. It will work just fine with the three remaining supporting points. And you just cut out 500 words (in a 2,000-word essay). 

After you have cut out a section, make sure to go back to your thesis statement and edit it to reflect the change.

I’ll leave you with one final tip. When trying to choose which sentence, paragraph, or section to cut out from your essay, go for the content that you know is not the best.

For example, you may have a section in your essay where you quote too much. Or, perhaps you were not very careful in paraphrasing, and your passage sounds too much like the original source. These would be great bits of content to get rid of.

I hope this was helpful. Now go ahead and shorten your essay to your heart’s desire!

How to Write a 300 Word Essay – Simple Tutorial

How to expand an essay – 4 tips to increase the word count, 10 solid essay writing tips to help you improve quickly, essay writing for beginners: 6-step guide with examples, 6 simple ways to improve sentence structure in your essays.

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

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5 Best ways to Make an Essay Shorter

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

Learn about our Editorial Process

If you are like me, you will find that you often struggle to stay within the word count in your essays.

In this article, I will show you exactly how to reduce your word count in your essay.

If you go over the word count in an essay, there are some strategies to make your essay shorter that make sure you keep your marks high and, sometimes, make them even higher.

The trick to going over the word count is seeing this as a positive: you now have the chance to only present your absolute best arguments.

This is a luxury other students in your class just don’t have. Reducing your word count is actually your chance to get even further ahead!

The best essays have no dull, irrelevant or sub-par content. Every paragraph is on-point and designed to win you more and more marks. When editing your work, keep this in mind.

Below, I introduce five important strategies that will help you to reduce your word count in a way that will actually increase your mark!

• Delete your three Worst Paragraphs. …
• Listen for Weaknesses using Google Translate or Microsoft Excel Read-out-Loud.
• Re-Read the Marking Criteria.
• Shorten Paragraphs over 7 Sentences Long.
• Delete Irrelevant Words.

1. Delete your three Worst Paragraphs

I usually aim to go over my word count intentionally so I can creatively make the essay shorter in a way that increases my marks.

If I go over the word count, I can look back over my piece and find my worst performing paragraphs and remove them.

This not only helps me to ensure I present my best work to the teacher, it also forces me to admit that some of my writing is better than others. It keeps me critical of myself and always aiming for improvement.

Removing the worst paragraphs of an essay also ensures there are less boring, pointless or unanalytical sections of an essay. It means that the paragraphs I submit are the best sections – and that the teacher will be impressed throughout the piece.

To assess which paragraphs are best and worst, I do the following things:

• Find the paragraphs with the least or worst references in them. Teachers will scan over a paragraph to assess the quality of the references in them. Paragraphs with minimal referencing, too much referencing of just one source, or only references to non-academic sources, instantly get marked down by the teacher before they’re even read. These are also often the paragraphs that provide the least depth of information. That is because finding sources to reference in a paragraph often leads to adding detail that the source has provided.
• Find the paragraphs that are least convincing. When I re-read my paragraphs, sometimes I just think ‘the argument here is my weakest’. These are the ones I want to cut: they’re ones that won’t get me top marks. Teachers will lower your marks for any paragraph that doesn’t shine – so you’re best removing it.
• Rate your paragraphs out of 10. I often tell my students to delete their three worst paragraphs and they say ‘I like all of them!’ In this case, you will have to get brutal with yourself: rate every paragraph out of 10. This will help you make the hard decisions about which to lose.
• Combine two paragraphs into one. Sometimes I really like one sentence from a paragraph but don’t like the rest. If this is the case for you, have a go at extracting those good sentences from one paragraph and placing them in another one. Then, you can delete the not-so-good sentences from the original paragraph. If you do this, make sure all paragraphs still cohere around one key point.

2. Listen for Weaknesses using Google Translate or Microsoft Excel Read-out-Loud

Google Translate and Microsoft Excel both have read-out-loud options. Google Translate’s option is the easiest.

For Google Translate, simply search for ‘Google Translate’ on your internet search engine (or just click here ) to access it. Then, copy and paste the text into the translate box and press the ‘listen’ button:

For Microsoft Excel, you will need paste the whole essay into any cell and then activate the read out loud option.

This procedure is somewhat more complicated than Google Translate, but if you want to give it a go, you can get instructions from the Microsoft help website and go from there

Hearing your paper read out loud back to you can help you to identify which paragraphs or sentences are worth removing.

Here are some things to keep in mind while listening to the computer read your paper out loud to you:

• If a sentence feels like it’s too long and exhausting to listen to, you can bet your teacher will be exhausted, too;
• If a phrase seems awkward to hear, it will be awkward to read;
• If the paper seems to have lost its focus on the topic area, you’ll need to remove that section or edit it to ensure it links to the essay question.

Pause the read-out-loud each time you find a sentence long or awkward and work on shortening it.

Too often, students think long, complicated sentences with fancy-sounding words will get them marks. In reality, it’s the opposite.

Being able to describe complex concepts in a very easy, understandable way is a skill all top students learn to master.

The read-out-loud option can help you to see your paper from your marker’s perspective. Use it to your advantage and listen out for anything that sounds complicated, confusing, awkward or exhausting. Delete it or shorten it immediately.

Remember, the goal is to have your paper sounding short and clear.

3. Re-Read the Marking Criteria

When editing your work, it is best to have the marking criteria by your side at all times.

The marking criteria is the list of things the teacher is looking for when marking your essay. Sometimes it’s also called:

• Marking Criteria;
• Indicative Content;
• Marking Rubric;
• Learning Outcomes

These should be easy to find. Go to your course webpage (usually on Blackboard, Canvas, or Moodle depending on your university) and find where your teacher has provided details about your assessment. If there are marking criteria, this is where it would be.

Sometimes, teachers don’t provide marking criteria.

If the teacher has simply provided an essay topic or question, that means the chances are they don’t have a list of outcomes they are marking your piece against. In these instances, you will have to simply rely on the essay question.

When you have your marking criteria or essay question by your side, read each paragraph then look back to your marking criteria.

You need to ask yourself:

• Does this paragraph directly answer the essay question or marking criteria?
• Does this paragraph add new information that helps me answer the essay question?

If your paragraph is not linked directly to the essay question or marking criteria, you’ve just identified the paragraph you need to remove to reduce your word count.

4. Shorten Paragraphs over 7 Sentences Long

Teachers hate long paragraphs. Teachers are just like you and me. They get bored very fast.

Chances are, any paragraph over 7 sentences isn’t being fully read. The teacher might have only read the first three sentences and made their judgement about your work based on those three sentences!

That’s why the ideal paragraph should be between 4 and 7 sentences long. This length helps to ensure:

• You haven’t gone off on a tangent;
• You have provided some explanatory or example sentences, but not too many;
• You have focused only on one key idea in the paragraph.

Your paragraphs that are more than 7 sentences long will be your low-hanging fruit for reducing your word count. Read through each of these paragraphs and try to find a way to reduce it to only 6 sentences. Find those sentences that seem to drag on or add nothing useful to your discussion and delete them.

By reducing all paragraphs over 7 sentences long, you won’t only bring your word count down. You will also make your essay much clearer and easy to read.

In this way, you’re both reducing your word count and increasing your mark.

5. Delete Irrelevant Words

Going through your paper and deleting irrelevant words can often save you several hundred words and could shorten your essay enough to get you back within the required word count.

Irrelevant words are words that are overly descriptive, redundant, too emotive, or in first-person. These words tend to get the same point across in far more words than necessary.

Furthermore, you will find that in removing overly descriptive, redundant, emotive and first-person words, your work will be much improved.

This is because academic writing is supposed to be formal and direct. Writing too many words can make your marker think you have poor communication skills and do not understand academic writing requirements.

Check below for examples of how to reduce your word count by removing overly descriptive, redundant, overly emotive and first-person language.

• Overly Descriptive: The amazing thing about the industrial revolution was that it brought about enormous changes to the ways people transported themselves and communicated across the globe in such a short amount of time.
• Alternative: The industrial revolution brought about rapid changes in transportation and communication globally.
• Redundant: The sum of five hundred dollars.
• Alternative: $500
• Redundant: It was quite unique.
• Alternative: It was unique.
• Redundant: It was triangular in shape.
• Alternative: It was triangular.
• Too Emotive: The disgusting thing about communism is that it refuses to allow poor everyday people to improve their lives by creating their own businesses that might flourish and really help our their communities, too!
• Alternative: Communism prevents citizens from starting businesses that can help bring people and their communities out of poverty.
• In first Person: In summary, I believe that the Industrial Revolution was good for the whole world.
• Alternative: In summary, the Industrial Revolution was good for the world.
• In first Person: This author argues that Thomas Edison was the greatest mind of his time.
• Alternative: Thomas Edison was the greatest mind of his time.

Making your essay shorter can sometimes be an absolute nightmare.

By following the above five steps, you can find easy ways to reduce your word count while also improving your work.

If you are an advanced or ambitious student, you might find that you always go over the word count. This isn’t necessarily a problem.

Try to look at going over the word count as a positive thing. Going over the word count means you have the freedom to only present your best work. You have the chance to delete anything that isn’t absolutely focused on gaining you marks.

In the end, your final submission will be cleaner, easier to read and easier to mark. Hopefully, this will see your marks growing even more!

Let’s review one more time the five top ways the best students reduce their word count in an essay:

Five Top Ways to Make an Essay Shorter

• Delete your three Worst Paragraphs
• Use Google Translate or Microsoft Excel to Read your Paper out Loud
• Re-Read the Marking Criteria
• Shorten Paragraphs over 6 Sentences Long
• Delete Irrelevant Words

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Number Games for Kids (Free and Easy)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Word Games for Kids (Free and Easy)
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 25 Outdoor Games for Kids
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd-2/ 50 Incentives to Give to Students

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How to Shorten a College Essay to Meet the Word Limit

The college application essay is one of the most important components of applying to college. Application essays require a lot of time and effort, so you want to make sure you don’t make easy-to-overlook mistakes such as going over your college application word count.

Unfortunately, many students leave their admissions essay as the last step of their application process after studying for the SAT and learning how to request letters of recommendation. High school students don’t have the time, energy, experience, or organizational skills to prioritize their essay word count and word limits when writing their draft and receiving personal statement editing , recommendation letter editing , or cover letter editing , depending on your admissions documents. 

The good news is that being over the word limit in your admissions essay is not the end of the world. You’ve managed to output a lot of writing for your college essay. That’s a good starting point for revisions. All quality and successful admissions essays  go through the revision process, and a big part of the revision process includes reducing word count.

This article will explore the following topics:

How flexible is the college essay word limit?

• Can you go over/under the college essay word count?
• Why staying under application essay word limits is so hard
• How to shorten the length of your admissions essay
• Get help to cut down your college essay word count
• FAQ about how to shorten your essay length: Advice from editing experts

Your essay must stay within the required word limit whether you’re applying directly to your university or through the Common Application, which has become synonymous with the college application process. 

The Common App specifies the word limit required for each essay. Even though this has changed over the years– from 650 to 500 words in the past –the current Common App essay word count is somewhere between 250 to 650 words. 

Can you go over the essay word limit?

You must be careful about staying within the word limit for each application. Look at the essay prompts closely. Unless specified,  never go over the word limit for a college application essay .

It might be impossible to go over the essay word limit

Some universities may allow you to mail in a copy of your admissions essay, but most will use online applications with text fields that may cut off your essay if it goes over the maximum word count.

Admissions officers may just stop reading or toss out your essay

Admissions officers are busier than Santa’s elves during the winter holiday season. They read dozens if not hundreds of essays per day, and most of those will be rejected. If you fail your application, make sure it’s due to the content or something else; failing due to a simple word limit mistake would be a waste!

Following directions is a key component of being a student

If you told someone to do something and you were in the position to enforce it, would you accept the wrong result if 100 other people were waiting and did it right? Of course not. Therefore, the least you can do is to follow any instructions regarding college essay word limits to show admissions officers you will be a competent student at their school.

Can you go under the essay word limit?

While going over the word limit is a clear and decisive issue, it’s a bit trickier to determine how short your college application essay should be. 

Pay attention to minimum word limits and word ranges 

Some essay prompts will have a suggested minimum– for example, 500 to 650 words. As mentioned above, online text input fields may cut you off at the maximum word count. Some may even have some red text reminding you to input at least 500 words. But you should always double-check these word count guidelines.

The essay is your opportunity to shine

Why would you be so lazy as to only write the minimum amount for your personal statement? This is a great opportunity for you to stand above and apart from other applicants, and choosing your words wisely while presenting your story fully is important.

Add some concrete examples

Examples of events and actions can help you meet the correct word count range. This also reduces redundancy in your writing while reinforcing and supporting your main points. College admissions officers love to hear about your unique experiences.

Why do students find essay word limits difficult?

Why staying under essay word limits is so hard

We now know several reasons why keeping your college essay length in the correct word range so you don’t violate any word limit is important. But  why is staying under essay word limits so hard? 

The essay has no structure or organization

The most effective things are stated simply. And the most effective college admissions essays organize, structure, and communicate efficiently. That doesn’t mean your personal statement will be short; it means that each point should be concise. 

For example, split your writing into clear paragraphs. Organize your essay into separate sections for your academic, leadership, volunteer, and personal experiences. Be sure to add a section on extracurricular activities. Make your structure clear to the reader so that word count will only be a minor consideration. 

The essay does not focus on the essay prompt

If you are having difficulty cutting your word count, look for sentences or even entire paragraphs that are not relevant to the essay prompt. Adding unnecessary information is an easy trap to fall into. Your anecdotes or stories might be interesting and funny, but do they help illustrate why you want to attend UC or Stanford? 

The essay lacks proper vocabulary and verb usage

This tip is more subtle but can really help you reduce essay length and word count. When writing, always use the most appropriate verb, preferably one verb only. It will drastically reduce your word count overall. This is because when you choose the wrong verb, you often must add more words to clarify. 

Average/Wordy:   “I hit the ball so hard it went over the fence.” 

Exceptional/Concise:  “I smashed the ball over the fence.”

The verb “hit” is a solely descriptive action verb. It provides no context about the degree to which you hit the ball, which is why “so hard” or other adverbs are naturally added to regular verbs to provide extra information. Changing the verb completely to something more engaging like “smashed” provides all the context you need. And you just saved 4 out of 11 words!

The essay uses a traditional introduction/conclusion structure

Many students applying to college fall into the trap of trying to fit their essay into a traditional structure consisting of an introduction, body, and conclusion.

With only 650 words, you can recover your word count by skipping the formal rigid essay structure. Instead, dive right into your essay. Your content and experiences are the most important components of your application essay, and you need every word.

Tips to reduce the length of your application essay

Here are some simple tips to cut down the length of your essay. Start with some broad admissions essay tips  first and move on to the easier grammar and proofreading-related steps below.

Remove adverbs

Here’s how to find if your admissions essay has a lot of adverbs: Look for “ly” words around your verbs. Often, these types of adverbs are just filler words and a reflection of spoken conversational English rather than accomplishing anything meaningful. Go through your essay and decide if each adverb is truly necessary. 

Unnecessary adverbs:   “ate quickly”, “ran quickly”

Stronger verbs:   “devoured”, “rushed”

Here is a list of common adverbs you can remove to reduce your essay’s word count:

Remove filler words

Filler words are another crutch or may just be used out of habit. Go through your essay right now with “ctrl + f” or “cmd + f” for Mac users and delete every instance of  actually  and  very.  We promise they add nothing important to your writing. 

Example 

Filler words:  “I found myself actually surprised about how much I learned”

No filler words:  “I was surprised at how much I learned”

The word “actually” is pretty much useless. You must clearly state that you were surprised. Further, “finding yourself” is a conversational filler that comes off as unprofessional.

Avoid using too many prepositional phrases

Prepositions are common linking words such as  of ,  to ,  for ,  by ,  from ,  in , and  on . These are highly dependent on the context of your personal statement, especially when you reference narrative elements in your past. Go through your essay carefully and make changes to reword your sentences and cut down your essay word count.

Too many prepositional phrases:  “I struggled to work in a team in order to get a good grade in the group project”

Fewer prepositional phrases:  “I struggled with the team aspect of the group project”

There’s no need to verbalize that you worked in a team or to mention the grad aspect. Furthermore, these prepositional phrases add extra length to your sentences, which will not help you meet the essay word count.

Be clear and concise. Cut down your word count.

Be direct and decisive in your writing

Students are often told to avoid overgeneralizing groups of people or ideas but that they should also be precise in their English writing. This can lead to the author failing to commit to a concept and coming off as unsure or weak.

An overreliance on modifier words such as adjectives and adverbs is often the culprit. 

Too many modifiers:  “Although my high school grades were  sometimes   slightly  less than average, I  was able to  outperform  many  of my classmates, who often struggled to improve.”

Stronger verbs and adjectives:  “Although my high school grades were inconsistent, I later outperformed my classmates, who struggled to improve.”

You can see how the improved version appears more matter-of-fact, consistent, and even confident despite the admission of lower grades. 

Don’t be a narrator 

Do not waste time restating the common app essay prompt or telling the reader what you will discuss next. This would be fine for an informative article (like the one you’re reading now), but not for an application essay. Eliminating these structural road markers will greatly cut down your word count.

Too much narration:  “I will start by discussing my leadership experiences…” or “The next important part of my academic background was my….”

Less narration:  “I gained leadership experience when…” or “One of my academic achievements was…”

Consider college essay editors for extra help

Get help from a professional college essay editor

The college admissions and application essay landscape is very competitive, and this has led students to seek an edge. One reason why application essay editing services are so popular is due to their speed and quality. They free up students to prepare more college applications and focus on the content of their personal statements instead of drilling down things like grammar and essay word limits.

One of the best things applicants can do is write as many college admissions essays as possible without worrying at all about grammar or word count. Organize your essays by the essay prompt category (e.g. “Why X university?” or “Tell us about an obstacle you overcame”).

Then, send ONE type of each essay to a reputable proofreading company that offers  college essay editing services . When you get your changes back, apply them to all essays of that category. This minimizes the cost but gets you the most benefits. 

FAQ: How to shorten your admissions essay

Advice from our editing experts , can a college essay be longer than 650 words.

• The standard word count for the Common app essay is 650 words. Rule 1) Follow any explicit word limit guidelines. Rule 2) Always go under the limit as opposed to over the word limit.

Can you use contractions and abbreviations in college essays?

• Yes. For college application essays, use contractions and abbreviations. 

Do citations count towards the college essay word limit?

• Every word in the text field or on your page counts towards the essay word limit. Avoid using citations in a college essay as it is not an academic paper.

Does the title count towards the college essay word limit?

• Do not restate the essay prompt or add a title to your essay. If you are submitting a separate MS Word document, add the title or essay prompt (along with your name) as the .doc name. 

How many pages is 650 words?

• A 650-word college application essay will be under 1 page.

How do you shorten long sentences?

• Start by 1) eliminating helper verbs and adverbs, 2) removing redundancy, 3) remove filler words such as “very” and “actually,” and 4) make sure every sentence supports the overall point of the paragraph.

How many paragraphs is a 650-word essay?

• A 500-word essay is 3 to 4 paragraphs. A 650-word essay is 4-5 paragraphs. Your essay should be less than 1 page single or double-spaced.

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Free online automatic text summarization tool.

Follow these simple steps to create a summary of your text.

Click the Summarize! button.

Read your summarized text. If you would like a different summary, repeat Step 2. When you are happy with the summary, copy and paste the text into a word processor, or text to speech program , or language translation tool

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How to Shorten an Essay: Reduce Word Count but keep Points

Shortening an Essay

When writing an essay, you may need to shorten it by reducing its word count to the number required by your instructor. In this case, you might have some words you need to eliminate in the essay. Also, you may have to shorten the paragraphs.

Read on for a comprehensive guide on 7 ways how you can shorten your essay but still make the points you intended to keep in the paper. If you need help to shorten your essay, just get in touch with our online essay writers, and the team will help you score an A

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How Do I Make My Essay Shorter

It is possible to shorten your essay or reduce the word count to meet the requirements during the editing process. The editing process should be the last step in writing your essay. The following are some of the most effective techniques to shorten your essay.

When it comes to writing essays, there are two types of students; those who write beyond the word count and those who write below the word count.

For those who write beyond the word count, you can use simple techniques to shorten an essay.

1. Rank your Arguments’ strengths and weakness 

The first technique for making your essay shorter is by ranking your arguments. If your essay is longer than the requirement, rank the points used to support your arguments.

A good essay should contain only the most vital and valid points.

If you find some of your weak supporting points, eliminate them while removing the unnecessary wording.

Students will often be tempted to present a multifaceted point of view to support a single point.

While this may demonstrate your knowledge of the subject, it will add unnecessary content to your essay.

To avoid this and reduce the essay’s length, carefully select the most relevant and vital points.

However, if you still want to include all the points, you can minimize the details, especially within weaker points. This will make your essay shorter.

2. Focus on the Main Point of your Essay

This is a very practical technique for making your essay shorter. When given an essay to complete, the instructor expects you to come up with a topic and support it throughout your essay.

Valid arguments within each paragraph of your essay should support the topic and the thesis statement.

Therefore, if your essay is longer than recommended, look for sentences or entire paragraphs that do not address or support your essay’s main point or topic.

Students may find themselves accidentally going off-topic and including other unnecessary wordings and arguments to make their essays appear “smarter” or well-written.

This can result in unnecessary words and sentences beyond the required word count.

If you identify such unnecessary arguments within your essay while editing, eliminate them to focus more on your main point and achieve the target word count.

3. Eliminate the use of Verbiage

You should eliminate the verbiage if you want to make your essay shorter. This is especially relevant when writing academic essays where you are required to present your arguments professionally and straightforwardly.

Eliminate any extra information or words that do not add value to your point or overall argument. Such verbiage is some of the weak words to avoid in writing essays and research papers.

You can eliminate unnecessary adjectives, adverbs, generalizations, clichés, and lengthy verb phrases here. You can do this while performing the first and second techniques mentioned above.

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4. Write Short Sentences using the Active Voice

As we have noted, academic essays will require you to present your arguments straightforwardly. Using the active voice while constructing your sentences will help you achieve this while keeping them brief.

While this may not apply to all sentences within your essay, try to begin most of your sentences using the subject.

In this case, the subject is the thing or person performing an action. This should be followed by the action the subject performs.

If you use the passive voice, where you describe how the object is acted upon, then your sentences will be longer and contribute to the unwanted length of the essay.

For example, take a simple sentence like, “John plays basketball regularly.”

This sentence is in the active voice because John (subject) performs the action of playing basketball (object).

Now take a sentence like, “basketball is regularly played by John.” The second sentence is in passive voice because it describes how the object (basketball) is acted upon.

The first sentence in the active voice comprises 4 words, while the second sentence in the passive voice comprises 6 words. Therefore, you can see that writing in an active voice shortens your essay.

5. Utilize the most Applicable Strong Verbs

This may seem obvious, but many students cannot find the most applicable verbs. They find those that are close instead of using the perfect verb.

If you want to shorten your essay, find the best verb that conveys a precise meaning.

This is because when you use an imperfect verb, you will end up using more words to clarify the meaning.

Here is an example to clarify what is meant by using the most applicable verb:

“John’s team defeated the opposing team by several points.”

Using “defeated” in the above sentence is not grammatically wrong. However, it is not the best verb to use because John’s team not only defeated the opposing team, they all defeated them by several points.

If you wish to reduce the word count while maintaining the same meaning, you can use the verb “trounce” in place of “defeat.” The new sentence will be:

“John’s team trounced the opposing team.”

6. Quote from the most Relevant Sources

In academic essays, you may be required to provide quotes from secondary sources to support your essay. The number of sources needed depends on the length of the paper. For instance, a 4-page paper may require more secondary sources than a 2-page one.

However, if you find that you have used several quotes that are lengthening your essay, retain quotes from secondary sources that are most related to your topic, and eliminate the rest. Again, only cite the sources that are most relevant to your topic.

7. Avoid Block Quotes

The best way to avoid longer essays is by avoiding direct quotations from other authors. This can be done by paraphrasing their content and just citing the sources without using many words.

Avoiding block quotes will make the paragraphs short and your arguments more captivating to the reader. Therefore, avoid using essay or sentence generators, as these will quote other sources.

However, note that using external sources to support your points and arguments is always advisable when writing an essay. Such supporting content is important for the grades and to back up your claims.

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Weak Words to Avoid in Writing an Essay

Now that we have explored the most applicable methods or techniques that can help make your essay shorter, it is important to identify the unnecessary things to avoid in an essay to avoid going beyond the word count.

1. The passive voice

As we have noted, the passive voice makes your sentences unnecessarily lengthy. On the other hand, the active voice makes the sentences more compelling and clear because they are straight to the point.

Consequently, the active voice uses lesser words compared to the passive voice. Therefore, it is important to avoid the passive voice in an essay.

2. Adverbs and Adjectives

While adjectives modify nouns while adverbs modify verbs, good and well-utilized words in a sentence do not require modifying.

In most cases, adjectives and adverbs weaken strong nouns and verbs, thus weakening your overall writing.

Such weak words add no value to your paragraphs; you must avoid them when writing an essay.

When editing your essay and you find adverbs with “ly” as their endings, you can eliminate them because they act as filler words that add no value to the point you are trying to communicate.

When it comes to adjectives, they do not add meaning to the sentence and are, therefore, unnecessary.

3. Conjunctions

Conjunctions such as and, or, however, but, and, e.g., connect two different sentences that can be written independently. They are unnecessary when you want to make an essay shorter.

These are some of the words that make an essay ridiculously long and create the need to be precise. Eliminating them reduces the word count and shortens the essay.

4. Running Starts and Needless Transitions

Running starts are commonly used phrases that act as an introduction to the sentence. They include “it is, “there is, “the fact that, “and so on. This is basically the opposite of what we discussed in our post on making an essay longer, as we outlined.

Those phrases add unnecessary words to your essay. Needless transitions can be “furthermore,” “then,” indeed,” “however,” and so on.

The bottom line is that when you are told to write a specific number of pages or meet a particular word count, it is imperative to meet the requirements because you will lose some points.

5. First-Person Language

This is a common thing in any essay writing task. It is always advisable that one should avoid using first-person language when writing an essay. This is because the first person is not formal and tends to be confrontational.

Instead of first-person or second-person language, always use a third-person approach. While this does not contribute i reducing the word count, it gives a lot of formality to your essay and puts a warm reading tone.

In addition, using the third person promotes the objectivity of your arguments by presenting them in a manner that can relate to any person, in this case, your readers. Read our guide on avoiding the first-person language in an essay and apply that in your future writing.

Following the above tips will make it easier to shorten your essays.

Watch this video to learn more about this.

With over 10 years in academia and academic assistance, Alicia Smart is the epitome of excellence in the writing industry. She is our managing editor and is in charge of the writing operations at Grade Bees.

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Free Text Shortener Tool

• 📖 Text Shortener
• 📜 When to Use It
• 🎉 Benefits of the Tool
• ✒️Writing a Summary
• ✍️Summary Examples
• 🎁 Bonus Tips

🔗 References

📖 text shortener guide.

Summarizing is an essential part of academic writing. It shows your ability to separate and present the main findings, plot elements, thoughts, etc. A good summary lets another person easily understand it without reading the original text.

Our free text shortener presents key takeaways of a text using AI technologies. To use it, you need to copy and paste the original text and choose the length of the expected summary. This is how you create a resume with zero stress in a couple of clicks.

In this article, we describe our tool and explain how to write top-scoring summaries.

📜 When to Use Text Shortener Tool

• When you need to write a concluding paragraph. It can be an essay, research paper, lab report, or other academic text. Paste your body paragraphs into the box to create a summary for your concluding part.
• When you need to shorten your essay. Use this tool if you exceed the word limit in your essay or a particular paragraph. It also works as a sentence shortener.
• When you need to read an extensive article. You will do it faster as summarizing tool makes the text shorter, preserving the main information. It is helpful when you need to read many articles and highlight the key points.
• When you need to shorten other researchers’ passages. Including lengthy quotes in your paper is not the best decision. Instead, you can use our tool to make them shorter without changing their sense.
• When you need to take notes. Create an overview of the studying materials with our online shortener. It is a fast and easy way to make notes without writing or typing them manually.
• When you need to refresh your knowledge. Instead of reading a full text or book, just use a summary generator. After a quick revision of the content, you can save and use these extracts later.

🎉 Shorten Sentence Generator Benefits

Below you will find reasons why students love our shortening tool.

✒️ How to Write an Outstanding Summary

If you want to write a summary yourself, this passage is for you. Follow these guidelines to shorten texts better and faster.

• Find only one core thought – this is the basis of the text. Then look for supporting points that revolve around this idea. At this stage, you can list the essential ideas in the text.
• Don’t use judgmental and emotional vocabulary while writing. Your goal is to be as objective as possible. You can also rewrite the informal style to formal. Remember that summarizing is not the same as paraphrasing .
• Keep your summary brief: it shouldn’t be longer than 15% of the initial text. But we still recommend using synonyms and synonymic expressions not to repeat the original passage. Don’t forget to reference the works you have included.
• Reread your summary . Make sure that its writing style corresponds with the rest of your work.
• Add transition words if you notice that there is no flow. Ask yourself: can a person understand the core meaning of your text just after reading the summary?

If yes, congratulations! You have just created a good summary. If not, find the details that you have missed. It can be a logical sequence, a particular argument, event, or evidence. Rewrite your summary till it fully represents the original text.

✍️ Text Shortening Examples

Now let’s take a look at two summary examples.

🎁 Bonus Tips for Students

• Make sure you know what kind of summary you need. For example, an executive summary has particular guidelines and writing formulas.
• Avoid complex terminology and long sentences. Your summary should be independent and straightforward. Imagine that a person unfamiliar with the topic needs to understand the text.
• To shorten a long text, make a one-sentence summary for each paragraph. It will help you control the size of the summary. It also will be easier to navigate the text if you decide to rewrite or adjust your summary.

What does summarize mean?

Summarizing means shortening a larger text without changing its meaning. You can usually see summaries at the end of essays and other academic papers. While shortening a text, you need to cover only the essential details mentioned in the text. In most summaries, you shouldn’t include your opinion on the matter and have to be objective.

How to summarize a story?

You need to retell a story briefly. Imagine that you have read a book and want to describe it to your friend. Highlight the main plot elements and characters that are crucial to the story. Omit the parts that are not essential for a person who wants to understand the plot.

How to summarize a quote?

Read the passage and find its key message. Briefly describe this thought in your own words. Make sure that the summarized piece fits your paper’s tone. If you leave more than three words unchanged, put them in quotation marks. Don’t forget to give credit to the author.

Note: short, clearly expressed quotes do not need shortening.

Updated: Aug 11th, 2022

• How to Write a Summary: 4 Tips for Writing a Good Summary | Masterclass
• Guidelines for Writing a Summary | Hunter College
• 10 Tips for Cutting Your Word Count | The University of Adelaide
• 8 Ways to Reduce the Word Count for Your Research Paper | How to Write a Journal Article

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• Knowledge Base
• Academic writing
• How to write more concisely

How to Write More Concisely | Tips to Shorten Your Sentences

Published on December 7, 2015 by Sarah Vinz . Revised on July 6, 2024.

Concise writing presents ideas clearly and does not use more words than are truly necessary. Conciseness is an important characteristic of academic writing , especially given how complex the subject matter frequently is.

Two of the biggest enemies of concise writing are inflated phrases and redundancies . It’s easy to think that using more complicated-sounding phrases will give your text a more academic feel, but mostly it just makes it harder to follow.

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Table of contents

Avoid inflated phrases, avoid redundancies, other interesting articles.

One of the simplest ways to make your writing more concise is to avoid “inflated” phrases that use several words where just one or two would be sufficient.

* If you replace a prepositional phrase with an adverb, that adverb may need to shift to another part of the sentence .

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Another easy way to make your writing more concise is to avoid redundancies, which occur when the same idea is being expressed twice. In most cases, the meaning of one word is clearly implied in another (for example, isn’t a summary by nature brief? Could collaboration be done in any other way but together? Isn’t an import by definition foreign?).

More about repetition and redundancy

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy
• Deep learning
• Generative AI
• Machine learning
• Reinforcement learning
• Supervised vs. unsupervised learning

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Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Vinz, S. (2024, July 05). How to Write More Concisely | Tips to Shorten Your Sentences. Scribbr. Retrieved July 17, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-writing/write-concisely/

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Sarah's academic background includes a Master of Arts in English, a Master of International Affairs degree, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. She loves the challenge of finding the perfect formulation or wording and derives much satisfaction from helping students take their academic writing up a notch.

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• Our Process

How to Shorten an Essay – Steps with Examples

Published by Ellie Cross at November 10th, 2021 , Revised On January 31, 2024

Do you need to shorten an essay because you stuffed it with too many unnecessary arguments and information? Did you use too many unwanted phrases to increase the wordiness? Worry not! This article provides the steps you need to shorten an essay and keep it focused.

With enhancing levels of education, the level of scrutiny also went up substantially. Teachers and graders do not appreciate wordy and lengthy essays that astray from topics or arguments. Deviation from the central argument can result in the deduction of marks and pose a neglectful impression of the author.

Essays make up a considerable part of academic curricula. The importance of essays keeps increasing with the increasing level of education. We now see students writing essays from kindergarten until graduation on several topics to showcase their knowledge on the subject.

By making logical and focused arguments in the essay, students can gain recognition by trying to persuade the audience with their writing skills.

To avoid losing marks, make sure to keep your essay captivating. Boring narratives can cause the readers to lose interest in your essay. So, it’s better to avoid using unrelated arguments to increase wordiness. Ideas that are not composed well will not get you the grades you desire.

The following recommendations will surely be helpful for you to shorten your essay and avoid the repercussions of a bland essay.

1. Your Essay Outline is the Key.

Before starting an essay, authors usually ponder about the essay and create a rough essay sketch in their minds. Creating a good outline is of fundamental importance. One must scribble down all the ideas and narratives that come to mind. The following steps involve research; the researched material must be penned alongside the initial outline.

Once you are done with the groundwork, the next step involves removing, rejecting, and crossing anything and everything that does not support the thesis statement . Almost every college, school, or application essay has a word limit. A good outline with to-the-point material can help you stick to the topic and create a concise, well-written essay.

2. Reduce Redundancy

Essays above the allowed word count limit are prone to mismanagement while writing. One such case is using redundant vocabulary while writing.

We are prone to overexplain a stance and forget that the sentence or word used previously offers enough explanation to the readers. There is no need to write an extra sentence. Reduce redundancy to make your writing appealing and concise. Let us consider the following example.

“Children were playing football in the park with the ball.”

The highlighted portion of the above sentence is unnecessary as football is played with the ball and, even if avoided, can provide enough knowledge about children’s activity. Scrapping the redundant phrase will remove four words from the sentence. This technique can be instrumental when shortening an essay before submission.

Also read: How to write an argumentative essay

3. Combine Sentences with Similar Meanings

Combining sentences that convey similar meanings can shorten the essay. This can be done by compressing similar sentences to eliminate undesirable words from the sentences. A little conscious effort can help you identify parts that can be merged, significantly reducing the word count. Consider the following example,

“Children were playing football in the park. My son was also playing football with them.”

“My son was playing football with the children in the park.”

The above two sentences reflect how you can compress different sentences together, and the new sentence delivers the same meaning but with a lesser word count. As in the example, the first sentence is composed of 15 words, whereas the combined sentence’s word count is 10. So, we can eliminate five words.

Extending this approach to seven to ten sentences can help us cut at least 50 words.

Also read: How to write a narrative essay

4. Avoid Overusing Prepositional Phrases.

Writing is an arduous task. A writer is prone to overuse wordy sentences repeatedly using prepositions. You will unconsciously increase the length of the sentence if you overuse prepositions. The example below will give you an idea of why you need to be vigilant about prepositions’ use.

“Here is the schedule of the work for today. (9 words)”

“Here is today’s work schedule. (5 Words)”

The first sentence uses several prepositions hence adding to the length, whereas the second sentence is concise and delivers the same message with increased efficiency. Review your essay for such errors before submission. You can quickly identify many instances where you can use relatively efficient sentences and avoid using excessive prepositions.

Reviewing requires a good focus. If you feel like you have done all you can, then you can seek help for your essay from your friend or tutor.

Also read: How to write a descriptive essay

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5. Using Concise Words

The English language is famous for its vast vocabulary. There are always words that you can use in place of wordy phrases. This practice will reduce the length and magnify the appeal of the essay. There are several dynamic words that you can use in place of wordy sentences.

The examples you are going to counter below can be used as a vanguard in your writing.

“It is raining very heavily (5 words)”

“It is pouring (3 words)”

Here, three words were alternated by a single word. The new sentence is concise, delivers the meaning with intensity, and supplements more appeal to the phrase. Similarly,

“He was very afraid. (4 words)”

This approach will not only make help you shorten your essay but also reduce verbosity.

Also read: How to write an SAT essay

6. Get Rid of Anything That Doesn’t Add Value.

Review your essay by keeping the central argument or topic in focus. If you find any points that do not add value to your main argument or are irrelevant to the main idea, it is advisable to omit those sentences from the essay to shorten the essay’s length.

Most students are used to over-expanding ideas by adding details. However, it would be best to abide by the word limit set by your college or school. If you are struggling to improve your essay, you can get professional help from our essay experts .

Here is a quick guide on how to buy an essay from EssaysUK.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to shorten an essay.

To shorten an essay, start by removing unnecessary words, phrases, or sentences that do not contribute to the main message. Ensure each paragraph serves a clear purpose and eliminate repetitive information. Use concise language, combine or rephrase sentences, and focus on the most relevant points while maintaining coherence and clarity.

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A large number of people still believe that essay writing is an innate ability, that a few people are born with the writing skill. For this reason, people give up on writing before trying or investing some time and energy in it. However, this concept is untrue.

An essay is a focused piece of academic writing that aims to persuade and convince readers of the author’s argument. While there are many types of essays, they can all be essentially grouped into the following four categories: Descriptive, Narrative, Argumentative & Expository.

You must make a logical point in your essay’s paragraphs, including introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. If you organize your ideas, it will help you make a clear argument.

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How to Shorten an Essay?

Essay writing can be very challenging. A student who’s writing an essay should come up with the right logical structure, figure out what types of evidence you’re going to use, choose an appropriate style, etc. Besides, all this hard work may lead to a moment of frustration.

You may put a lot of effort into writing your brilliant draft, and then you may realize that you need to get rid of something to meet the word count requirements. The more effort you invest in the writing process, the more difficult it can be to figure out what you should remove.

No matter how challenging this task can be, educators think that students must be able to write concisely and avoid redundancy. Therefore, word count requirements can be very strict. For instance, when writing a college application essay , you should be able to fit all your thoughts into a 500-word limit.

While making your essay shorter, you should also make sure that it will still be impressive. To shorten your essay properly, you should know what to focus on, and this simple guide will help you.

How to reduce essay word count

• Identify irrelevant content
• Cut down on prepositions
• Eliminate the sentences that don’t add value
• Remove unnecessary modifiers and qualifiers
• Remove weaker paragraphs
• Eliminate redundant words and phrases
• Merge sentences by combining their meaning

📌 Shorten your essay by removing irrelevant content

The key to shortening your essay without making it weaker is to make sure that everything that you write is perfectly relevant. However, it may not be easy to get rid of irrelevant content in your essay because if you didn’t consider it somewhat relevant, you wouldn’t include it, in the first place. If you want to get a good grade, you may add various details and explanations to make your essay more engaging.

Including some background information and details is actually a great solution if you want to impress your audience with an informative essay, but we recommend that you think twice before writing any additional information because you should also follow the word count requirements.

Ask yourself, do you really need to include this information? Is it perfectly relevant? Is it necessary to include when writing about your topic? Does it contribute to the overall meaning?

📌 Use prepositions moderately

Prepositions are very useful words because they can help you create a smooth flow of thoughts and put words together to communicate complex ideas. If you take a look at prepositional sentences in your essay, you may realize that many of such sentences won’t make any sense if you remove prepositions from them.

Although prepositional sentences can be very useful, they also have their flip side: they make your essay longer. Given that rewriting such sentences without prepositions can be impossible, a good solution is to remove such phrases completely.

📌 Apply the ‘zoom out’ technique

This approach can be very effective if you realize that you need to shorten your essay significantly. For instance, if you should shorten your essay by 200 or 300 words, this is the right approach. This method is quite simple.

The traditional college essay structure involves writing more general statements first and then adding more specific statements. By moving from general to specific, you can create a proper logical structure so there’s no surprise that many tutors and guides recommend this approach.

When editing your essay, you can see more or less specific information, and the most specific elements of your essay are examples. Although you may want to use more examples to make your essay more unique, if you need to shorten it, you can leave just a few vivid examples and get rid of all the other examples that are not really important.

Zoom out and paint the picture with broad strokes, focusing on the general information. This way, you might be able to shorten your essay considerably.

📌 Get rid of modifiers, qualifiers, adverbs and adjectives

Let’s face it, some verbs can be easily eliminated from your paper without ruining the context. It’s also important to keep in mind the importance of avoiding unnecessary generalization in essay writing. Unnecessary generalization makes your essay weaker. Qualifiers and modifiers can help you avoid generalizations by slightly changing the overall meaning of a sentence.

Words like “some,” “often,” “possibly,” “could,” “sometimes,” “completely,” and others can make your writing more nuanced. However, these words might also make your essay longer, and usually, you can remove them without changing the general meaning of the sentence. Therefore, we recommend that you don’t overuse such words when writing and remove some of them when editing.

📌 Remove the weakest paragraphs to reduce the word count

Another approach that can help you write a strong essay that meets strict word count requirements is to intentionally exceed the word limits when writing so that you can remove entire paragraphs when editing. This is especially helpful if you have to write a really short essay of 200 words .

A great thing about this approach is that you force yourself to admit that some things that you write are much better than others so you can consider your college essay from a teacher’s perspective.

You may want to remove paragraphs that lack references or have references to unreliable sources. You may also think of what paragraphs are the least convincing. Make sure to leave the strongest paragraphs that actually contribute to the topic and that can impress your audience.

📌 Remove redundant words to stay under a word limit

When writing your paper, you may use some unnecessary words that don’t add any meaning. For example, here is a sentence that can be shortened easily: “When writing essays, you should make your essays concise so they won’t be too long.” Here, you can remove the second word “essays,” as well as the end of the sentence because if your essay is concise, it means that it isn’t too long.

For instance, a shortened sentence may look like this: “When writing essays, you should make them concise.” Although the new sentence is just a little shorter, if you remove redundant words in the entire essay, the difference in length might surprise you.

📌 Merge sentences by combining their meaning

To shorten your essay without damaging it, you should make sure that you convey your thoughts concisely. Concise writing will not only help you meet all the requirements but also make your essay more straightforward and easy to read. When editing your essay, pay attention to consecutive sentences that focus on the same idea.

Try to say the same with fewer words by combining the meaning of two sentences and merging them into one. Just make sure that the final sentence isn’t too long because long complex sentences will make your essay difficult to read.

No matter if you’re a high school, college or university student, the writing process is difficult by itself, and it can be especially difficult when dealing with strict requirements regarding the word count. In this helpful guide, we considered a few effective methods that can help you shorten your essay without damaging its meaning.

There are many things you can get rid of while also keeping your academic paper informative and impressive. Moreover, shortening and eliminating unnecessary things can help you improve your essay, making it easier to read, straightforward, logically consistent and more digestible for a reader.

In case if shortening an essay seems like an unbearable task, you can turn to an essay writing company to get it written from scratch or copy-edited down to the required word count.

Text Compactor: Online Shorten Essay Tool

It cannot be easier to use our text compactor. Insert any text into the given window, choose the needed settings, and press the button. The results will appear in seconds!

For a person engaged in academic writing, it is crucial to save time wherever possible. There is nothing more crushing than realizing that a source you were using doesn’t fit your topic. This is especially true when it happens halfway through the text. The hours you've spent reading are lost forever, and you still have to look for new sources. This is exactly why we use essay compactors – to avoid situations such as these.

This isn’t the only reason for using summarizers. They can also be useful when you're working on your own texts. The main aims might be a) to create summaries to use as examples and b) to shorten your writing. Below, our team has discussed these points in further detail. We have also offered advice on how to effectively condense an essay on your own.

📈 Why Is a Text Compactor Useful?

👍 tips to make a text compact, 👌 online text compactor: the benefits, 🔗 references.

During your studies, you may encounter a very diverse set of tasks. You may have to write a synopsis , analyze an article, compose an essay, etc. Online tools like paragraph compactors are meant to help you with all kinds of assignments. They are free, quick, and ready to use whenever!

Besides, a text compactor has the following benefits:

• Reduces information to key ideas. When composing your papers or evaluating the work of others, you should be able to summarize the presented arguments and conclusions. Online tools automatically select and reveal all the critical elements from the given text.
• Helps to memorize and understand the data. Remembering hundreds or even thousands of sentences at a time is almost impossible. A single one can go on for an entire paragraph and have complicated jargon. Summarizing tools can shorten your sentences to a manageable length, helping you understand and memorize them better.
• Saves time. Summaries, in general, cut down the reading time. It is one of the reasons research papers typically include an abstract before the main text. In addition, digital summarizers will save you a lot of time writing and rewriting the summaries yourself.
• Assists in reviewing materials. When you study for your exams, you have tons of information to go through. If you insert the text of an article or a book chapter into the text compactor, you will immediately see its meaning. This way, you save precious revision time and keep your material organized.
• Creates abstracts, abridged texts, and more. As mentioned above, you will get many different assignments during your studies. Sometimes, you will have to write an abstract for a project. Or you might need to give a speech based on an academic paper. Online text summarization is an easy solution for these tasks and many others.

You may find it challenging to decide which elements of your work are essential. This becomes particularly worrying when your deadlines are approaching and your paper is still well above the word count. That’s why sentence compactors turn out to be life-saviors for many students.

If you insist on doing the work yourself, we have a couple of tips for you. Pay attention to them, and you won’t have any trouble shortening your writing.

Two short sentences are better than a single long one.

Lengthy sentences can be challenging to follow. They are usually packed with numerous prepositions and linking words that can be easily avoided. Breaking up drawn-out sentences into several parts will help reduce text complexity. Just pick a linking phrase or comma that you can replace with a dot and do so. But first, check what punctuation marks you should keep .

Cut down on filler words.

We are familiar with “parasite” words that appear in speech (such as “like,” “kind of,” “you know,” etc.). We may not even notice that we often use them in essay writing. Fillers are words and expressions that don’t contribute to the text’s meaning. For example, phrases like “as a matter of fact” don’t add any new information and only take up space. Try to delete them all from your writing.

Try not to sound redundant.

Like fillers, redundancies are pointless repetitions that can be removed without losing meaning. To illustrate, in the expression “final outcome,” the first word is unnecessary. That’s because both of them mean the same thing. Modifying text to get rid of the redundancies can significantly shorten it.

Stick with the active voice whenever possible.

It may seem that the passive voice sounds more professional and scholarly. However, it can also make sentences longer, more awkward, and harder to understand. Consider switching to the active voice wherever you can. It will improve readability and save space. Remember, you can always use an online sentence shortener. It will provide you with the results in seconds!

We hope that our tool will help you in your work and that you have found our text compactor useful. We have another option if you didn't like the summary you received or expected something different. Try our alternative summary generator , which is just as easy and quick to use!

How to Shorten an Essay

It is critical to make an essay more concise while maintaining its persuasiveness when shortening it. Keeping the vital arguments and evidence in the text is essential, while redundancies and complicated structures can be safely removed.

How to Shorten a Speech

Your presentation may serve various purposes. When you’re shortening it, the most important thing is not to lose the main message. Highlight the key points and use as simple and concise language as possible. This way, you can communicate your ideas effectively in less time.

How to Shorten a Paragraph

According to the rules of academic writing, one paragraph should convey one main idea. This idea is formulated in the topic sentence, and the rest sentences support and confirm it. Your task here is to preserve the meaning of the topic sentence and not lose key evidence and arguments; you can throw away unnecessary details.

• When to Summarize, Paraphrase, and Quote – The Writing Center, George Mason University
• Writing Concisely – The Writing Center, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Eliminating Wordiness – Writing Resources, Hamilton College

• Paragraph Shortener

Can exceeding the required word count be dangerous? Unfortunately, yes. Your academic paper can get rejected from a conference, and your essay's grade may suffer if the text's length goes beyond the limit. Even a blog post can be ineffective when your idea gets lost among thousands of words. But how can you shorten your text without losing its coherence and integrity? How do you dissect each piece of your work without spending the whole evening on this task? That's where our paragraph shortener comes to the rescue!

The size of your summary is: % ( words, characters)

To remove the excess text and hit the word limit can be pretty challenging, especially when you have already shortened the paragraphs as much as possible. Besides, as an author, you may consider every written phase as incredibly important. That's why our shorten paragraph tool will be helpful for you! It will provide you with an outside perspective and cut the text quickly and efficiently. Read the article below to learn more about the information that shouldn't be changed or removed from the paragraph neither by you or our tool.

⭐️ Paragraph & Essay Shortener: the Benefits

✂️ how to shorten a paragraph, 📑 how to shorten my essay.

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In actuality, you can shorten any paragraph manually without using an online tool. This process can be longer and more complicated if you have too much to say. Yet, it is achievable.

With our tips in this section, you will learn how to shorten a paragraph while writing it.

Numerous students are scared of dividing their text into smaller parts while writing. They are afraid that paragraphs of 3-4 sentences will be considered unprofessional by the instructors. However, to make your text more readable, you have to hit “Enter” regularly. Aim to express one single idea in one paragraph with one valid piece of evidence to support it.

Break down several points in a bulleted list if your paper format allows it. This method helps you shorten the paragraph by removing all the transition phrases. Besides, it makes you formulate your arguments and ideas as clearly and concisely as you can.

Cutting sentences and phrases is a great way to improve your text’s clarity and flow. To reduce the “wordiness,” eliminate the filler words and vague statements. These might sound good, but they do not bring anything to the content.

Implementing abbreviations is another excellent way to save space and avoid distracting the reader. Remember that you can use one when the corresponding term is stated more than once in a paragraph. The first mention should be written entirely and indicate an acronym in parenthesis.

A dangling modifier can be challenging to identify at times. For that, read each sentence carefully and locate introductory phrases that come before the main clause. If you found one, consider what noun it must be modifying. If there is none, fix this mistake by inserting a new subject of the sentence.

Passive voice can be too vague and unnecessary. Besides, in many cases, it also sounds wordy and indirect. Therefore, you try to avoid it, using active voice whenever you can.

You probably know the five-paragraph structure if you are writing an essay. According to this standard organization, an academic paper should contain several sections, each serving its own function. Every part should have sentences that shouldn’t be removed or even shortened. Below, we have explored them in detail.

Introduction Paragraph

You cannot shorten most of this paragraph because it briefly introduces the topic you’re examining. It also explains what question you will answer further in the essay. This paragraph is the first one that the reader sees, so it makes sense to focus some effort on writing it well.

• A hook is the first statement of the paragraph that should grab the reader’s attention. In an essay, it can be a fact, quote, declaration, an interesting question, or a short story. Upon seeing it, people become curious to read more; thus, you can’t avoid it when writing a paper.
• Essential context also should be included in the introduction. It informs the audience about the historical background, the topic scope, and essay definitions. Mention things that will help your audience to understand the problems you are trying to discuss in the paper.
• A thesis statement contains its key point of the paper and is located at the end of the paragraph. It states your position and the core message of the essay. Besides, it explains what the reader will encounter in the body below. So, this sentence can be shortened but never cut entirely. Our thesis generator will help you formulate one.

Body Paragraph

A body paragraph is any section in the middle of the paper. Generally, there are three of them in an academic essay. Each of these paragraphs should explore one respective argument and logically relate to one another.

• A topic sentence tells the idea that the writer will discuss in the paragraph. You can shorten it a bit. Yet, make sure that it sounds clear and conveys the intended message.
• Supporting evidence is the next step in writing your essay. It can be the facts, the data, and quotations from trustworthy nonfiction sources. List one piece of proof to support one argument you’re discussing, shortening it to your liking.
• A concluding sentence serves as a wrap-up of the paragraph. The main goal is to reinstate the main idea of the section. Your goal here is to make it concise yet detailed enough to leave an impression of completeness.

It is more than simply a long sentence at the end of the five-paragraph essay. A reasonable conclusion has to have several things:

• A developed thesis statement should come first in a concluding paragraph. Circle back to the beginning of your paper. See if you have resolved any contradictions and restate the thesis from the introduction accordingly. This sentence, evidently, can’t be cut from an essay but can be shortened to just a few words.
• A summary of your research should be presented next. Here you provide all the essential points from the body paragraphs in a single sentence. Make sure it lacks filler information like examples or your speculations.
• A concluding sentence is the last sentence in an essay. It ties together all the things mentioned in your paper. Your aim here is to leave a lasting impression on your reader, so paraphrase it until it sounds just right.

Thank you for reading the article! We hope you found it useful for your studies. If so, consider sharing it and our paragraph shortener with others.

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🔗 References

• Essay Structure – Elizabeth Abrams, Writing Center at Harvard University
• 10 Tips for Cutting Your Word Count – The University of Adelaide
• Organization of a Traditional Academic Paper – Writing Services, University of North Carolina Wilmington

By the river: youth homelessness in Tasmania

Young people aged 12–24 make up a quarter of Tasmania's growing homeless population. Chloe Hume and Trent Kiely are two of them.

The banks of the Tamar River, flowing through Launceston in Tasmania, are lush and green.

On one side sits Trevallyn, a hilltop suburb with some of Launceston's most beautiful views and houses dating back to the late 1800s.

On the opposite side, a cluster of homeless people sleeping in cars and caravans have taken over a stretch of land near a $25-million redevelopment, the Silo Hotel.

One of the caravans has been home to 20-year-old Chloe, 23-year-old Trent, their cat Dexter and dog Rocky since May last year.

It might seem like a rough way to live, but for Chloe and Trent, it's the most stability they've had in a long time.

"It's our healing chapter," Chloe says.

"Our whole lives, both of us have been through hell and back pretty much, both in our own ways," she says.

"And now it's just really recovering so we can have a good rest of our life and just be happy. We're going to take it easy and get our mental health better.

"This is our paradise."

Last year, Chloe and Trent became homeless when their rental was sold. The couple found themselves priced out of the rental market with nowhere else to go.

Trent is recovering from a motorbike accident, still needing surgery to walk properly.

Chloe, who grew up in and out of foster care, had become homeless when she ran away from a group home as a teenager.

"If no one wants you, you just get put into a home with lots of other kids that no one wants.

"I really hated it."

Finding the caravan meant Chloe and Trent could finally have their own space after being rejected for multiple rental units, a chance to get back on their feet.

They pay $200 a week in rent to the caravan's owner, and spend $12 a day on petrol for a generator and $20 a fortnight on diesel for heating.

The only support they can lean on is Trent's family, where help is exchanged back and forward between parents, children and siblings.

"It helps out very well. We do it for the whole family," Trent says.

For Chloe, living in the caravan has been a positive change from her past.

"I like my life now," she says.

"[Trent] is the only person I've ever felt comfortable around. I've never really felt like I could be myself with anyone."

The biggest worry now is whether the Tamar River will one day flood their sanctuary.

"The most unstable part of living here. Isn't that funny," Chloe says.

That anxiety was at its peak during the cold and rainy Tasmanian winter.

"Every time it was pouring down, cloudy, it was like, 'it's getting higher, I don't want it'. Oh, my heart was sinking a lot," Chloe says.

Because Chloe and Trent have had no luck with rental applications, they decided to focus on making the caravan as much of a home as possible.

At first, they had no way to store food and had to carry water to the caravan in buckets.

"We'd eat noodles every night, and packet pasta and stuff. Lost all our weight," Chloe says.

With a fridge and a garden hose extension to get water straight to the caravan, life is much more comfortable.

There's one addition that they are especially happy to have: a washing machine.

Before having their own washing machine, the pair had to haul their clothes to the laundromat in taxis, and sometimes the cab would drive off on them.

"I felt unhygienic as a chick being here," Chloe says.

Chloe feels there is a stigma attached to homelessness and people assume most homeless people must have substance abuse issues.

"We don't necessarily want to live in a caravan or next to a river, but this is what we have.

"It sucks because people probably think we're just, like everyone else, junkies or something, you know?

"It makes it hard, because people don't want to reach out. They're probably too scared.

"It's not even that bad down here. People actually have to give us a chance."

Words: Nelli Saarinen and Abigail Varney

Production: Nelli Saarinen

Photographer: Abigail Varney

The Great Crumbling Australian Dream

This photo essay is part of a larger photojournalism project examining Australia's housing crisis.

The Great Crumbling Australian Dream is a collaboration between Oculi photographers and ABC News, with support from National Shelter.

The series was made possible with a Meta Australian News Fund grant and the Walkley Foundation.

Oculi is a collective of Australian photographers that offers a visual narrative of contemporary life in Australia and beyond.

Delve further into the series

Coming home to Country

Photojournalist Rachel Mounsey follows Warumungu traditional owners in Jurnkkurakurr (Tennant Creek) as they tell stories of generational housing displacement — and their ambitious plan to reclaim their home.

Read the story

The Goode fight

Louise Goode's fight for the place of "emotional comfort" she called home lasted a quarter of a century, until it was demolished in front of her as she screamed for help.

A new way forward

Photographer Aishah Kenton looks at three households embracing communal living to see if Australians can adapt their way of life as housing becomes ever more unaffordable.

Pets in the park

Pets in the Park is a national charity focused on the health of companion animals whose owners are experiencing homelessness. Photographer Abigail Varney documented the volunteers and the animals and owners they encountered in Tasmania, Victoria and the ACT.

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• Community and Society
• Homelessness

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Book News & Features

Alice munro's daughter says her mother did nothing to stop abusive stepfather.

Jaclyn Diaz

Author Alice Munro in 2009. Her daughter, Andrea Skinner, has come forward with allegations her stepfather abused her as a child and that Munro was aware and stayed with him until his death. Peter Muhly/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The daughter of renowned Canadian author Alice Munro has revealed that she suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather and that her mother, a Nobel Prize winner, turned a blind eye to it.

In an op-ed published Sunday in the Toronto Star, Andrea Skinner wrote that Munro’s husband at the time, Gerald Fremlin, started abusing her in 1976 when she was 9 years old.

She wrote that she was visiting her mother that summer at her home in Clinton, Ontario, when, while Munro was away, Fremlin “climbed into the bed where I was sleeping and sexually assaulted me.”

Alice Munro, Nobel Prize-winning short story author, dies at 92

Munro died earlier this summer at the age of 92. The author was best known for her short stories , often placing her characters in rural Ontario — where Munro grew up. She was called the "master of the contemporary short story" by the Swedish Academy that awarded her the Nobel in 2013.

Since Skinner's op-ed was published, the literary world has expressed shock and sorrow, with authors publicly grappling with the formative work of Munro with the impact of her daughter's allegations.

Rebecca Makkai, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for The Great Believers , posted on X of Munro and the allegations, "I love her work so much that I don’t want to lose it, but am also horrified to see the meanings of many favorite (foundational, to me) stories shift under us."

Skinner said she is coming forward now because she wants her story “to become part of the stories people tell about my mother. I never wanted to see another interview, biography or event that didn’t wrestle with the reality of what had happened to me, and with the fact that my mother, confronted with the truth of what had happened, chose to stay with, and protect, my abuser.”

The Swedish Academy, which awarded Munro a Nobel Prize in 2013, called her a "master of the contemporary short story." Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Skinner said the abuse continued for years, with Fremlin often exposing himself to Skinner, telling the young girl about her mother's sexual needs and the “little girls in the neighborhood” that he told her he liked.

Skinner confided in her stepmother, who told James Munro, Skinner's father. James Munro did not confront his ex-wife about the abuse, and the assault continued with no adult intervention, Skinner wrote.

The abuse, and the heavy secret and silence she was forced to keep, took a drastic toll on Skinner, who developed debilitating migraines and bulimia as an adult. When she was 25, she wrote a letter to Munro, finally coming forward about the abuse.

Munro told her she felt betrayed and likened the abuse to an affair, a response that devastated Skinner, she wrote.

Canadian Alice Munro Wins Nobel's Literature Prize

In response, Fremlin wrote letters to Munro and the family, threatening to kill Skinner if she ever went to the police. He blamed Skinner for the abuse and described her as a child as a "home wrecker." He also threatened to expose photos he took of Skinner when she was a girl.

Munro went back to Fremlin and stayed with him until he died in 2013, Skinner wrote. Munro allegedly said “that she had been ‘told too late,’ she loved him too much, and that our misogynistic culture was to blame if I expected her to deny her own needs, sacrifice for her children, and make up for the failings of men. She was adamant that whatever had happened was between me and my stepfather. It had nothing to do with her," Skinner wrote in her essay.

In 2005, Skinner could stay quiet no longer. She reported Fremlin, who was 80 at the time, to police in Ontario, using letters he sent to the family as evidence. He pleaded guilty to one count of indecent assault and received a suspended sentence and probation for two years.

Skinner said she never reconciled with her mother, but has since rebuilt a relationship with her siblings.

Munro's Books, the company that Alice and James Munro started together when they were married, issued a statement of support for Skinner. The company has been independently owned since 2014 and wasn't speaking on behalf of the family.

The company said, "Learning the details of Andrea’s experience has been heartbreaking for all of us here at Munro’s Books. Along with so many readers and writers, we will need time to absorb this news and the impact it may have on the legacy of Alice Munro, whose work and ties to the store we have previously celebrated. It is important to respect Andrea’s choices over how her story is shared more widely."

The statement continued, "This story is Andrea’s to tell, and we will not be commenting further at this time."

Correction July 8, 2024

A previous version of this story misspelled Rebecca Makkai's last name.

• Alice Munro

Trump rally flag flew high above stage, not photoshopped in | Fact check

The claim: Image showing US flag behind Trump during shooting was doctored

A July 14 Threads post ( direct link , archive link ) questions the authenticity of an image showing an American flag flying behind former President Donald Trump after he survived an assassination attempt on July 13. 

“This has been bugging me since it happened,” reads the post, which is a response to another post with a collage of shooting pictures.

One of the photos in that collage shows Trump with blood on his face, pumping his fist as an American flag flies above him.

“The viral pic has a flag. There was no flag behind Trump and the SS. Who photoshopped in the flag?” the post says

The Threads post was reposted more than 80 times in two days. The original post also spread widely on Threads. 

More from the Fact-Check Team: How we pick and research claims | Email newsletter | Facebook page

Fact check roundup: False claims about Trump rally shooting spread online

Our rating: False

The image wasn’t doctored. The flag was positioned high above the stage, so it could only be seen from certain angles and distances.

Livestream, photos from various outlets show flag

The flag was present at the rally, though its position meant it wasn't visible in every photo from the event. It was hung between two cranes and positioned well above the stage at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, T he Washington Post reported . 

The flag can be seen in a post-shooting wide shot from Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci, who also took the photo included in the original Threads post. A photo by the London-based Daily Mirror also shows the flag flying between the cranes from a different angle. 

Fact check : Man pretended he was Trump rally shooter in a viral video

The flag can also be seen flying in the background of Right Side Broadcasting Network's livestream of the event.

USA TODAY has debunked an array of claims surrounding the shooting, including false assertions that a video shows the assassination attempt was “staged,” that an image authentically shows Trump with smiling Secret Service agents after the incident and that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas denied requests for additional security at the rally. 

USA TODAY reached out to users who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

Our fact-check sources:

• Associated Press, July 15, At the Trump rally, it was evening sun, songs and blue sky. Then came bullets, screams and blood 
• The Daily Mirror, July 15, EXCLUSIVE: American flag and spotlights only remnants of deadly Donald Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania
• CNN, July 14, Trump safe, two dead after assassination attempt at Pennsylvania rally 
• Right Side Broadcasting Network, July 13, BREAKING: ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT ON PRESIDENT TRUMP AT BUTLER, P.A. RALLY – 7/13/24
• The Washington Post, July 13, Pops, screams and then blood: On the scene at the Trump rally shooting 

Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or e-newspaper here .

USA TODAY is a verified signatory of the International Fact-Checking Network, which requires a demonstrated commitment to nonpartisanship, fairness and transparency. Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Meta .

Lessons from the Biggest Business Tax Cut in US History

We assess the business provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the biggest corporate tax cut in US history. We draw five lessons. First, corporate tax revenue fell by 40 percent due to the lower rate and more generous expensing. Second, firms with larger declines in their effective tax wedge increased investment relatively more. In aggregate, we suggest a loose consensus from the literature that total tangible corporate investment increased by 11 percent. Third, the business tax provisions increased economic growth and wages by less than advertised by the Act’s proponents, with long-run GDP higher by less than 1% and labor income by less than $1,000 per employee. Fourth, provisions that increase foreign investment by US-based multinationals also boost their domestic operations. Fifth, some of the expired and expiring provisions, such as accelerated depreciation, generate more investment per dollar of tax revenue than others.

Chodorow-Reich gratefully acknowledges support from the Ferrante Fund and Chae fund at Harvard University. Zwick gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. Zidar thanks the NSF for support under grant no. 1752431. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

MARC RIS BibTeΧ

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Unlikely Ed Allies Join Forces to Cut Chronic Absenteeism in Half by 2029

‘all hands on deck’: aei, ed trust and attendance works stake out a bold goal in the face of the pandemic’s most persistent problem..

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Was los angeles schools’ $6 million ai venture a disaster waiting to happen, l.a. schools probe charges its hyped, now-defunct ai chatbot misused student data, california teachers are using ai to grade papers. who’s grading the ai, benjamin riley: ai is another ed tech promise destined to fail, project 2025 would cut ed. dept., fulfill gop k-12 wish list under trump.

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Three high-profile education advocacy and research groups crossed political lines in Washington, D.C., Wednesday to announce an ambitious goal: cutting chronic absenteeism in half over the next five years. 

For the first time, the conservative American Enterprise Institute, the left-leaning Education Trust and the national nonprofit Attendance Works joined forces to confront an issue that continues to plague K-12 classrooms four years after the pandemic first hit. 

“This is not a problem for some schools. This is not a problem for some subset of students. This is a nationwide rising of a tide that’s going to harm [all] students,” said Nat Malkus, AEI’s deputy director of education policy studies. 

While felt most acutely by students of color and those in poorer districts, the spike in chronic absenteeism — students missing more than 10% of school days a year — cuts across districts regardless of size, racial breakdown or income. Chronic absenteeism surged from 13% in 2017 to 28% in 2022 and remained high in 2023. 

Research has shown that students with high rates of absenteeism are more likely to fall behind academically and are at a greater risk of dropping out of school. The three organizations are eyeing a return to those pre-pandemic percentages.

“The goal is to get us back to a baseline where we knew we needed to do a lot more work anyway, but at least we can work towards that and do so aggressively,” Lynn Jennings, The Education Trust’s senior director of national and state partnerships told The 74. 

The goal is doable, according to Topeka schools Superintendent Tiffany Anderson, who spoke at a panel discussion Ed Trust, AEI and Attendance Works held in D.C. this week to launch their initiative. The 12,858-student district was able to lower its chronic absenteeism by investing in families through home visits. In Topeka, if a student is absent for more than two days without parent contact, it warrants a visit.

“You cannot serve needs you don’t know. So the key is understanding … it works,” she added.

Numerous experts at the event discussed the importance of a tiered approach to confront an issue that has resisted various interventions. Schools, they said, must create trust and communication with families so they can learn why students are absent — as officials did in Topeka — but then, they must work to actually remove those barriers. 

Anderson said in speaking with her Kansas families she learned that chronic health issues, such as asthma, were impacting student attendance. So, she brought health care to the school, partnering with a local hospital. Now students and their families can see a pediatrician on site.

Some schools, panel experts noted, get stuck in that first tier: understanding families’ struggles in getting their children to school, but never implementing the solutions. Another remedy discussed at the panel, which included the vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, Caitlin Codella Low, was emphasizing career pathways so school feels more meaningful to students and necessary to their own futures.

At the event, Attendance Works presented a six-step roadmap to assist states in achieving a 50% reduction in chronic absenteeism and will develop resources to share with state leaders moving forward.

“Our work over the past 10 years shows us that state leaders are uniquely positioned to take on this challenge,” they wrote. And these three organizations, they believe, are uniquely positioned to help.

Attendance Works founder and executive director Hedy Chang said her organization brings the “how:” They’re able to provide states and districts with the advice, tips, and resources to take action. Education Trust brings the advocacy lens and helps keep school districts accountable through data. And The American Enterprise Institute brings a more conservative audience to the conversation, along with the data.

Malkus’s Return to Learn Tracker , where he compiles and analyzes district-level attendance data for over 14,700 school districts and charter schools nationwide, will serve as the hub to help states see if they are on track to meet the five-year benchmark. 

“We’ve got to take a long-term approach, and we’ve got to use our data to call everyone,” Chang said. “It needs all hands on deck.”

Denise Forte, president and CEO at Education Trust, noted the importance of the cross-organization partnership, saying that while she and Malkus haven’t historically always agreed on policy issues, this was one where they knew they could — and needed to — come together. 

The urgency of the issue created a shared sense of purpose, all three groups said.

“We’re in a pretty partisan world. People feel so divided on so many things,” Chang added. “But we can’t risk our children’s future by being divided on this one.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to The Education Trust and The 74.

Amanda Geduld is a staff reporter at The 74.

• American Enterprise Institute
• Attendance Works
• Chronic Absenteeism
• education policy
• learning loss
• post-pandemic
• The Education Trust

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J.D. Vance’s Opposition to U.S. Support for Ukraine: In His Own Words

“I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other,” Senator Vance has said.

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By Eve Sampson

• July 15, 2024

Donald J. Trump’s pick of Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, to be his running mate on Monday, amplified doubts about continued U.S. support for Ukraine should the former president be returned to the White House next year.

Mr. Vance has been one of Congress’s most vocal opponents of U.S. aid for Ukraine, admonishing the Biden administration for its continued monetary and material support and leading an unsuccessful campaign in the Senate to block a $60 billion package.

A conservative, Mr. Vance has argued that American support of Ukraine in its war against Russian invaders is needlessly costly and called a return to Ukraine’s preinvasion borders “fantastical.”

Mr. Vance contends that Ukraine should stop offensive maneuvers in its war with Russia and begin negotiating a settlement because the West will never be able to produce enough weapons to make victory feasible.

Ultimately, in a podcast interview in 2022, he told Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump adviser now serving a four-month prison term for contempt of Congress, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.”

Here’s a look at Mr. Vance’s past comments about U.S. support for Ukraine.

The ‘math’ makes Ukraine’s war unwinnable.

The Biden administration, he has said, failed to calculate just how much money and how many resources it would take to defeat Russia.

“The most fundamental question: How much does Ukraine need and how much can we actually provide? Mr. Biden suggests that a $60 billion supplemental means the difference between victory and defeat in a major war between Russia and Ukraine. That is also wrong … . Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.” — The New York Times, guest essay, April 12, 2024

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Watch CBS News

Trump shot at rally in failed assassination attempt. Here's what we know so far.

By Olivia Rinaldi , Scott MacFarlane , Jacob Rosen , Nicole Sganga

Updated on: July 16, 2024 / 4:45 PM EDT / CBS News

Former President Donald Trump was shot and injured in an assassination attempt on Saturday night that also killed a spectator and critically injured two others. Snipers killed the shooter, a 20-year-old man, after he fired eight rounds at the rally in Butler , Pennsylvania.

The former president could be seen touching his ear as the shooting unfolded  before he was shielded by Secret Service and whisked offstage — with blood on his face — and into an SUV to safety. Trump said in a social media post that a bullet pierced the upper part of his right ear.

"I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin," he said. "Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening."

The Secret Service later said Trump was safe, and that he went to a local hospital and left hours later. 

The gunman was fatally shot by a Secret Service sniper, authorities said. 

FBI officials said the shooter appeared to be a lone actor, and the incident was being investigated as an assassination attempt and as a potential case of domestic terrorism.

Who shot Donald Trump?

The FBI identified the shooter early Sunday as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. The town in Allegheny County, just outside Pittsburgh, is home to about 30,000 people.

Law enforcement officials say he was armed with a semiautomatic AR-style rifle.  Law enforcement sources say  the gun was legally purchased in 2013 and registered to the shooter's father, Matthew Crooks. 

Crooks was a 2022 graduate of Bethel Park High School  School officials pledged to work with law enforcement investigating the shooting, and offered condolences to those affected by the attack.

Former classmate  Jameson Myers, a member of the school's varsity rifle team, told CBS News that Crooks had tried out for the team freshman year but did not make the junior varsity roster and did not return to try out for the team in subsequent years.  

He called Crooks a "nice kid who never talked poorly of anyone," adding, "I never have thought him capable of anything I've seen him do in the last few days."  

Another classmate, Jason Koehler, had a somewhat different view, telling KDKA's Megan Schiller that Crooks was a loner who was bullied for his appearance and wore camo/hunting outfits in class. He said Crooks would often sit in the cafeteria alone before class. He also said Crooks was very COVID-conscious and wore a surgical mask long after they were required. 

But Mark Sigafoos, who graduated with Crooks and had two classes with him senior year, said he never saw him bullied. He described Crooks as super smart and approachable, engaged in class and always volunteering answers. 

"This is one of the things that is being misconstrued — he was not some type of loner trenchcoat wearer. And I will say he was definitely nerdy, for sure, but he never gave off that he was creepy or like a school shooter," Sigafoos said. "He seemed like he wouldn't hurt a fly."

Crooks' political leanings were not immediately clear. He was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania but Federal Election Commission records show he previously made a $15 donation to a Democratic-aligned group.

There was no indication that Crooks had a connection to any military branch, officials confirmed to CBS News. 

Crooks had a membership at a nearby gun club for at least a year. Bill Sellitto, the president of the Clairton Sportsmen's Club in Clairton, Pennsylvania, told CBS News that Crooks was a member.

A law enforcement official said early Sunday that the Secret Service and the FBI are investigating the suspect's background and speaking with his family. The FBI has secured his home and federal law enforcement is searching his family's residence in suburban Pittsburgh, the law enforcement official said. His family is cooperating with investigators, an FBI official said.

Law enforcement sources told CBS News on Sunday that suspicious devices were found in the gunman's vehicle. The gunman also had with him a piece of commercially available equipment that appeared capable of initiating the devices. Bomb technicians called to the scene were involved in securing and investigating the devices.

Do we know the motive for the assassination attempt?

In a news conference late Saturday night, Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI Pittsburgh office, refused to speculate on a possible motive.

"Right now, we're tracking down all leads, and doing all interviews, and tracking anything that we can regarding suspicious locations, vehicles ... that's all related to this event, but I can't confirm or deny anything beyond that," Rojek said.  

A law enforcement official said no foreign terrorism ties were known and the suspect was not on the radar of law enforcement.

The FBI says investigators are combing through his social media postings and emails, but that so far they have found nothing to lead them to a motive. They said are not seeing anything threatening in his postings so far. 

Investigators also have accessed his cellphone, which was sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis.

The FBI is leading the investigation, with assistance from the Secret Service and state and local agencies. 

How is Trump now?

The Trump campaign said in a statement Saturday night that the former president was 'fine." He was taken to a local hospital and left a few hours later.

In a post on Truth Social Saturday night, Trump described his injuries: "I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!"

He thanked the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies for their rapid response, and extended condolences to the family of the man who was killed.

He posted on Truth Social early Sunday that Americans need to "remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness."

"In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand United, and show our True Character as Americans, remaining Strong and Determined, and not allowing Evil to Win," Trump wrote. "I truly love our Country, and love you all, and look forward to speaking to our Great Nation this week from Wisconsin," where the Republican National Convention begins Monday.

Video  posted  by a Trump aide to social media early Sunday morning showed him walking down the steps of his plane unaided after landing at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.   

The following day, he made an appearance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, with his right ear bandaged, and was greeted with rousing cheers from the crowd.

Where was the Trump rally and how far away was the shooter?

The rally was in Butler, Pennsylvania, which is north of Pittsburgh and is the county seat of Butler County.

The gunman was on the roof of a building, outside the rally's security perimeter set up by the Secret Service, and opened fire from about 410 feet away from the stage where Trump was speaking, law enforcement sources said. 

Two law enforcement sources told CBS News that the shooter was spotted outside the security perimeter as people were filing into the rally, and he was reported by a bystander to the Butler County Sheriff's Office. He was identified as a suspicious person by police, the sources said. Multiple attendees also said they saw the gunman and alerted officers shortly before the shooting.

An armed municipal officer with Butler Township encountered the gunman before the shooting, Butler County Sheriff Michael Sloupe confirmed to CBS News. The officer and others had been previously alerted to a suspicious person and began searching for him right away, Sloupe told CBS Pittsburgh reporter Jen Borrasso.

At some point, the officer was hoisted by another officer onto the roof of the building where the shooter was in position. The shooter focused his rifle towards the officer, who let go and fell off the roof. Then the shooter began firing into the crowd, according to Sloupe.

The gunman fired 6 to 8 rounds using a semiautomatic AR-style rifle from his position approximately 400 feet from the podium, before he was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper team.

Rojek, with the FBI, called it "surprising" that the gunman was able to fire multiple shots. 

"It is incredibly difficult to have a venue open to the public, and to secure that against any possible threat, against a very determined attacker," Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said of the Secret Service. "That's a huge lift to try and do it." 

Who was the victim who was fatally shot?

The spectator who was killed has been identified as Corey Comperatore , a 50-year-old man who was shot while attempting to shield his family from the gunfire, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said at a news conference Sunday.

"Corey was the very best of us," Shapiro said. "Corey died a hero. Corey dove on his family to protect them last night. Corey was a 'girl dad.' Corey was a firefighter. Corey went to church every Sunday. Corey loved his community."

Pennsylvania State Rep. Marci Mustello called Comperatore "a devoted public servant, having served as the fire chief for Buffalo Township Fire Company, and he was a cherished member of our community in Butler County."

"His commitment to his wife and two daughters, and his unwavering dedication to his role as a fire chief exemplified his remarkable character," Mustello said. "My heart breaks for his loved ones during this incredibly difficult time, and I join the community in mourning his loss. A true American hero, Corey sacrificed his life to protect his family."

"May Corey Comperatore's memory be a blessing and a reminder of the selfless service he provided to us all."

The two spectators who were wounded have been identified as 57-year-old David Dutch, of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania. Both were listed in critical but stable condition Sunday.

What did Biden say about the shooting?

President Biden first responded to the shooting in a statement saying he was grateful to hear that Trump was safe and doing well. 

"Jill and I are grateful to the Secret Service for getting him to safety," he said. "There's no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it."

He then addressed the nation  shortly after 8 p.m. ET Saturday, saying "there is no place for this kind of violence in America."

"It's sick. It's sick," Mr. Biden said. "It's one of the reasons why we have to unite this country. We cannot allow for this to be happening. We cannot be like this. We cannot condone this."

On Sunday, Biden made  brief remarks  at the White House, saying he was "sincerely grateful" that Trump is doing well, adding that he spoke with the former president on Saturday night. He characterized the call as a "short, good" conversation.

The president has been getting briefed by top officials and said he has ordered an independent review of the security and events at the Pennsylvania rally to determine what went wrong. 

Mr. Biden also called for unity in the wake of the assassination attempt and denounced political violence.

"There's no place in America for this kind of violence, or any violence for that matter," the president said. "An assassination attempt is contrary to everything we stand for as a nation. It's not who we are as a nation."

The president said unity is the "most elusive goal of all" and added that "nothing is more important than that right now. Unity."

A Biden campaign official said Saturday that the campaign was pausing all outbound communications and working to take down their television ads as quickly as possible.

–Robert Costa, Pat Milton, Andy Triay, Arden Farhi, Fin Gomez, Aaron Navarro, Sara Cook   and other CBS News staff contributed reporting.

• Trump Rally
• Donald Trump
• Republican Party

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