How To Make An Essay Longer: 7 Tips

How to make an essay longer — Learning how to write an essay requires basic technical knowledge of research, citations, formatting, and word arranging

How To Make An Essay Longer 

How to make an essay longer? Learning how to write an essay requires some basic technical knowledge of research, citations, formatting, and word arrangement or structure. In this same stance, in order to make an essay longer, neater, and more structured, adherence to some of these basic technical rules of essay writing is usually required.

For instance, an essay topic was given by a university, and one of the submission guidelines is the requirement of 3,000 words or more, or you found yourself in a situation whereby you feel that you’ve written enough or have exhausted your points on an essay topic, but you still haven’t met the number of words requirement. What then do you do?

Do you continue to repeat and rephrase the same point over and over again in order to make an essay longer? The answer is NO.

One major mistake to avoid while writing—not exclusive to essay writing alone—is repetition. Repetition of phrases and points is a bad writing technique that can easily bore your readers and give them the subtle impression that you’re hardly conversant or well knowledgeable on the topic you wrote on. Thus, unless the repeated phrases or points are for significant emphasis, you should refrain from using them too much. 

Then, how do you make an essay longer?

In this blog post, we will be sharing some easy tips on how to make an essay longer and meet the word count requirement.

7 Tips on How to Make an Essay Longer With Words

Below are some of the tips you can follow in order to make your essay longer.

1. Make Research: Technically, research is like the fueling breath of any article or essay writing. Research gives you both a foundational understanding and knowledge about the topic and enhances your ability to express yourself and expand the subject matter even further. Hence, if you want to learn how to make an essay longer, research is the first tip you should jump on. 

Aside from giving you the opportunity to write more on the essay topic, it also gives you more credible and detailed information about the topic. It also stimulates you to be more creative in the formulation of words and structure and to recognize the significance of a proper outline.

2. Add Data And Statistics: Firstly, the essence of data and statistics in every research work is to give more practical and solid information about the topics. It gives an even more in-depth and practical approach to understanding the topic. It gives a good impression.

For instance, an essay on COVID-19 that doesn’t include the numbers of those infected by the virus, the number of deaths, and those that are cured would most definitely be considered less detailed.

In the same vein, adding essential and relevant data and statistics will make your essay longer and a much more interesting read compared to the others.

3. Add Quotes From Famous Authors, Researchers and Professionals: Another way on how to make an essay longer is by including quotes or statements from famous authors, people, researchers, and professionals.

Their statements are already considered authoritative and significant for referencing; hence, they are considered an added advantage for detailed, opinionated, or referencing works and for making an essay longer.

An example of the use of quotes is:

"Of course, it was argued in a similar vein but with more emphasis on the concept of male superiority over women under the African traditional system:

"Women were non-persons. When they were not making babies or performing domestic chores and tilling the soil, they faded into anonymity. They could not own land. They could not own titles in a society where titles were the ultimate testimony of self-actualization; they were merely pieces of property owned by men and thus subject to whatever use they were put to. Some of these traditions and customs permit the parents of a girl of very tender age to sell her into permanent servitude in the guise of marriage without the child’s consent, and there are still laws which deny a woman the right to share in her father’s estate and a host of other such discriminatory laws."

Ironically, the reason behind these discriminatory acts against women is because of a myth that can hardly be substantiated…"

This is an example of the usage of quote from an article titled "The Legal Perspective of the Protection of Women and Children In Edo State". The quoted words were from Carol Ajie’s "Introduction to Women’s Human Rights Law and Human Right Systems".

From the mere look of it, it is quite glaring that quoted words have taken up a notable amount of space and words. However, it is equally important to only use or add quotes that are relevant and significant to the topics you are writing about.

4. Reference Another Research Works and Books: The use of references to works and books by other authors could help to make an essay longer. An example of such referencing is used below:

"Furthermore, Neil Postman's work "Amusing Ourselves to Death" has provided a critical perspective on how television, as a medium, has equally shaped public discourse. According to Postman, the visual and entertainment-driven nature of television has often led to a decline in serious and thoughtful discussions that enhance human relationships. He compares the thoughtful, rational discourse of the printed word to the superficial, image-driven culture propagated by television, highlighting the impact of the medium on the quality of information exchange."

5. Use Introduction: The introduction of any written work is intended to acquaint the reader with the topic. Thus, making your introduction more creative could help you solve the problem of how to make an essay longer. However, the introduction should be short but should include a number of things to make it useful. First, acquaint the readers with the topic. Anything that can arouse the reader’s interest will suffice in this respect. Secondly, make the introduction direct.

Also, avoid going too in-depth in your essay introduction. Basically, deep dives into your topic should be saved for the body of the paper. The introduction should only give the sneek peak that is required to sustain your reader's interest.

6. Listing Out Points Before Writing: It is a nice practice while writing an essay to first list out your points in a more defined and structured way before writing expressly on each point. This gives you background information on how you want the points to be arranged. It can also make an essay longer.

7. Adding Your Opinions: Opinions are basically formulated from the information you gain from your research. Hence, including it in your essay work is a nice idea, especially when the essay topic requires you to.

8. Lastly, Take Your Time: To make your essay longer, you may need to patient to avoid using unnecessary words or irrelevant information in the article in desperation of meeting the word count requirements. So, review it all over again, make your research and follow the aforementioned steps on how to make an essay longer.

How To Make Your Essay Longer Than It Appears 

There are few tricks that can be applied in order to make your essay longer that it appears. Noteworthy, these tricks do not actually increase the word count, rather, it changes the essay appearance.

Thus, to make your essay longer that it appears, you can do the following:

1. Increasing the font size
2. Adding a lengthy header
3. Manipulating the spacing between lines 

It is however important that you avoid breaking the lecturer or teacher's guidelines while adopting these tricks to make an essay longer. If the lecturer or teacher has given guidelines about the font size and lime spaces, then strictly follow then. Failure to follow them may result in a lower grade

Conclusion

Basically, good research is considered essential to every article, essay, or technical writing. The key element is to allow the writer to convey his or her points in a more coherent and detailed manner. Hence, adopting this would equip you with the proper structure of essay writing and the relevant information that is needed in your essay.

As regards ways on how to make an essay longer, making use of the aforementioned tips would help you to lengthen an essay with words. However, as noted earlier, you should only include important and relevant information.