PrepScholar

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, getting college essay help: important do's and don’ts.

author image

College Essays

feature_help.jpg

If you grow up to be a professional writer, everything you write will first go through an editor before being published. This is because the process of writing is really a process of re-writing —of rethinking and reexamining your work, usually with the help of someone else. So what does this mean for your student writing? And in particular, what does it mean for very important, but nonprofessional writing like your college essay? Should you ask your parents to look at your essay? Pay for an essay service?

If you are wondering what kind of help you can, and should, get with your personal statement, you've come to the right place! In this article, I'll talk about what kind of writing help is useful, ethical, and even expected for your college admission essay . I'll also point out who would make a good editor, what the differences between editing and proofreading are, what to expect from a good editor, and how to spot and stay away from a bad one.

Table of Contents

What Kind of Help for Your Essay Can You Get?

What's Good Editing?

What should an editor do for you, what kind of editing should you avoid, proofreading, what's good proofreading, what kind of proofreading should you avoid.

What Do Colleges Think Of You Getting Help With Your Essay?

Who Can/Should Help You?

Advice for editors.

Should You Pay Money For Essay Editing?

The Bottom Line

What's next, what kind of help with your essay can you get.

Rather than talking in general terms about "help," let's first clarify the two different ways that someone else can improve your writing . There is editing, which is the more intensive kind of assistance that you can use throughout the whole process. And then there's proofreading, which is the last step of really polishing your final product.

Let me go into some more detail about editing and proofreading, and then explain how good editors and proofreaders can help you."

Editing is helping the author (in this case, you) go from a rough draft to a finished work . Editing is the process of asking questions about what you're saying, how you're saying it, and how you're organizing your ideas. But not all editing is good editing . In fact, it's very easy for an editor to cross the line from supportive to overbearing and over-involved.

Ability to clarify assignments. A good editor is usually a good writer, and certainly has to be a good reader. For example, in this case, a good editor should make sure you understand the actual essay prompt you're supposed to be answering.

Open-endedness. Good editing is all about asking questions about your ideas and work, but without providing answers. It's about letting you stick to your story and message, and doesn't alter your point of view.

body_landscape.jpg

Think of an editor as a great travel guide. It can show you the many different places your trip could take you. It should explain any parts of the trip that could derail your trip or confuse the traveler. But it never dictates your path, never forces you to go somewhere you don't want to go, and never ignores your interests so that the trip no longer seems like it's your own. So what should good editors do?

Help Brainstorm Topics

Sometimes it's easier to bounce thoughts off of someone else. This doesn't mean that your editor gets to come up with ideas, but they can certainly respond to the various topic options you've come up with. This way, you're less likely to write about the most boring of your ideas, or to write about something that isn't actually important to you.

If you're wondering how to come up with options for your editor to consider, check out our guide to brainstorming topics for your college essay .

Help Revise Your Drafts

Here, your editor can't upset the delicate balance of not intervening too much or too little. It's tricky, but a great way to think about it is to remember: editing is about asking questions, not giving answers .

Revision questions should point out:

  • Places where more detail or more description would help the reader connect with your essay
  • Places where structure and logic don't flow, losing the reader's attention
  • Places where there aren't transitions between paragraphs, confusing the reader
  • Moments where your narrative or the arguments you're making are unclear

But pointing to potential problems is not the same as actually rewriting—editors let authors fix the problems themselves.

Want to write the perfect college application essay?   We can help.   Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will help you craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay to proudly submit to colleges.   Don't leave your college application to chance. Find out more about PrepScholar Admissions now:

Bad editing is usually very heavy-handed editing. Instead of helping you find your best voice and ideas, a bad editor changes your writing into their own vision.

You may be dealing with a bad editor if they:

  • Add material (examples, descriptions) that doesn't come from you
  • Use a thesaurus to make your college essay sound "more mature"
  • Add meaning or insight to the essay that doesn't come from you
  • Tell you what to say and how to say it
  • Write sentences, phrases, and paragraphs for you
  • Change your voice in the essay so it no longer sounds like it was written by a teenager

Colleges can tell the difference between a 17-year-old's writing and a 50-year-old's writing. Not only that, they have access to your SAT or ACT Writing section, so they can compare your essay to something else you wrote. Writing that's a little more polished is great and expected. But a totally different voice and style will raise questions.

Where's the Line Between Helpful Editing and Unethical Over-Editing?

Sometimes it's hard to tell whether your college essay editor is doing the right thing. Here are some guidelines for staying on the ethical side of the line.

  • An editor should say that the opening paragraph is kind of boring, and explain what exactly is making it drag. But it's overstepping for an editor to tell you exactly how to change it.
  • An editor should point out where your prose is unclear or vague. But it's completely inappropriate for the editor to rewrite that section of your essay.
  • An editor should let you know that a section is light on detail or description. But giving you similes and metaphors to beef up that description is a no-go.

body_ideas.jpg

Proofreading (also called copy-editing) is checking for errors in the last draft of a written work. It happens at the end of the process and is meant as the final polishing touch. Proofreading is meticulous and detail-oriented, focusing on small corrections. It sands off all the surface rough spots that could alienate the reader.

Because proofreading is usually concerned with making fixes on the word or sentence level, this is the only process where someone else can actually add to or take away things from your essay . This is because what they are adding or taking away tends to be one or two misplaced letters.

Laser focus. Proofreading is all about the tiny details, so the ability to really concentrate on finding small slip-ups is a must.

Excellent grammar and spelling skills. Proofreaders need to dot every "i" and cross every "t." Good proofreaders should correct spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They should put foreign words in italics and surround quotations with quotation marks. They should check that you used the correct college's name, and that you adhered to any formatting requirements (name and date at the top of the page, uniform font and size, uniform spacing).

Limited interference. A proofreader needs to make sure that you followed any word limits. But if cuts need to be made to shorten the essay, that's your job and not the proofreader's.

body_detective-2.jpg

A bad proofreader either tries to turn into an editor, or just lacks the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job.

Some signs that you're working with a bad proofreader are:

  • If they suggest making major changes to the final draft of your essay. Proofreading happens when editing is already finished.
  • If they aren't particularly good at spelling, or don't know grammar, or aren't detail-oriented enough to find someone else's small mistakes.
  • If they start swapping out your words for fancier-sounding synonyms, or changing the voice and sound of your essay in other ways. A proofreader is there to check for errors, not to take the 17-year-old out of your writing.

body_spill-1.jpg

What Do Colleges Think of Your Getting Help With Your Essay?

Admissions officers agree: light editing and proofreading are good—even required ! But they also want to make sure you're the one doing the work on your essay. They want essays with stories, voice, and themes that come from you. They want to see work that reflects your actual writing ability, and that focuses on what you find important.

On the Importance of Editing

Get feedback. Have a fresh pair of eyes give you some feedback. Don't allow someone else to rewrite your essay, but do take advantage of others' edits and opinions when they seem helpful. ( Bates College )

Read your essay aloud to someone. Reading the essay out loud offers a chance to hear how your essay sounds outside your head. This exercise reveals flaws in the essay's flow, highlights grammatical errors and helps you ensure that you are communicating the exact message you intended. ( Dickinson College )

On the Value of Proofreading

Share your essays with at least one or two people who know you well—such as a parent, teacher, counselor, or friend—and ask for feedback. Remember that you ultimately have control over your essays, and your essays should retain your own voice, but others may be able to catch mistakes that you missed and help suggest areas to cut if you are over the word limit. ( Yale University )

Proofread and then ask someone else to proofread for you. Although we want substance, we also want to be able to see that you can write a paper for our professors and avoid careless mistakes that would drive them crazy. ( Oberlin College )

On Watching Out for Too Much Outside Influence

Limit the number of people who review your essay. Too much input usually means your voice is lost in the writing style. ( Carleton College )

Ask for input (but not too much). Your parents, friends, guidance counselors, coaches, and teachers are great people to bounce ideas off of for your essay. They know how unique and spectacular you are, and they can help you decide how to articulate it. Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. ( Vanderbilt University )

body_thumbsup-3.jpg

Now let's talk about some potential people to approach for your college essay editing and proofreading needs. It's best to start close to home and slowly expand outward. Not only are your family and friends more invested in your success than strangers, but they also have a better handle on your interests and personality. This knowledge is key for judging whether your essay is expressing your true self.

Parents or Close Relatives

Your family may be full of potentially excellent editors! Parents are deeply committed to your well-being, and family members know you and your life well enough to offer details or incidents that can be included in your essay. On the other hand, the rewriting process necessarily involves criticism, which is sometimes hard to hear from someone very close to you.

A parent or close family member is a great choice for an editor if you can answer "yes" to the following questions. Is your parent or close relative a good writer or reader? Do you have a relationship where editing your essay won't create conflict? Are you able to constructively listen to criticism and suggestion from the parent?

One suggestion for defusing face-to-face discussions is to try working on the essay over email. Send your parent a draft, have them write you back some comments, and then you can pick which of their suggestions you want to use and which to discard.

Teachers or Tutors

A humanities teacher that you have a good relationship with is a great choice. I am purposefully saying humanities, and not just English, because teachers of Philosophy, History, Anthropology, and any other classes where you do a lot of writing, are all used to reviewing student work.

Moreover, any teacher or tutor that has been working with you for some time, knows you very well and can vet the essay to make sure it "sounds like you."

If your teacher or tutor has some experience with what college essays are supposed to be like, ask them to be your editor. If not, then ask whether they have time to proofread your final draft.

Guidance or College Counselor at Your School

The best thing about asking your counselor to edit your work is that this is their job. This means that they have a very good sense of what colleges are looking for in an application essay.

At the same time, school counselors tend to have relationships with admissions officers in many colleges, which again gives them insight into what works and which college is focused on what aspect of the application.

Unfortunately, in many schools the guidance counselor tends to be way overextended. If your ratio is 300 students to 1 college counselor, you're unlikely to get that person's undivided attention and focus. It is still useful to ask them for general advice about your potential topics, but don't expect them to be able to stay with your essay from first draft to final version.

Friends, Siblings, or Classmates

Although they most likely don't have much experience with what colleges are hoping to see, your peers are excellent sources for checking that your essay is you .

Friends and siblings are perfect for the read-aloud edit. Read your essay to them so they can listen for words and phrases that are stilted, pompous, or phrases that just don't sound like you.

You can even trade essays and give helpful advice on each other's work.

body_goats.jpg

If your editor hasn't worked with college admissions essays very much, no worries! Any astute and attentive reader can still greatly help with your process. But, as in all things, beginners do better with some preparation.

First, your editor should read our advice about how to write a college essay introduction , how to spot and fix a bad college essay , and get a sense of what other students have written by going through some admissions essays that worked .

Then, as they read your essay, they can work through the following series of questions that will help them to guide you.

Introduction Questions

  • Is the first sentence a killer opening line? Why or why not?
  • Does the introduction hook the reader? Does it have a colorful, detailed, and interesting narrative? Or does it propose a compelling or surprising idea?
  • Can you feel the author's voice in the introduction, or is the tone dry, dull, or overly formal? Show the places where the voice comes through.

Essay Body Questions

  • Does the essay have a through-line? Is it built around a central argument, thought, idea, or focus? Can you put this idea into your own words?
  • How is the essay organized? By logical progression? Chronologically? Do you feel order when you read it, or are there moments where you are confused or lose the thread of the essay?
  • Does the essay have both narratives about the author's life and explanations and insight into what these stories reveal about the author's character, personality, goals, or dreams? If not, which is missing?
  • Does the essay flow? Are there smooth transitions/clever links between paragraphs? Between the narrative and moments of insight?

Reader Response Questions

  • Does the writer's personality come through? Do we know what the speaker cares about? Do we get a sense of "who he or she is"?
  • Where did you feel most connected to the essay? Which parts of the essay gave you a "you are there" sensation by invoking your senses? What moments could you picture in your head well?
  • Where are the details and examples vague and not specific enough?
  • Did you get an "a-ha!" feeling anywhere in the essay? Is there a moment of insight that connected all the dots for you? Is there a good reveal or "twist" anywhere in the essay?
  • What are the strengths of this essay? What needs the most improvement?

body_fixer.jpg

Should You Pay Money for Essay Editing?

One alternative to asking someone you know to help you with your college essay is the paid editor route. There are two different ways to pay for essay help: a private essay coach or a less personal editing service , like the many proliferating on the internet.

My advice is to think of these options as a last resort rather than your go-to first choice. I'll first go through the reasons why. Then, if you do decide to go with a paid editor, I'll help you decide between a coach and a service.

When to Consider a Paid Editor

In general, I think hiring someone to work on your essay makes a lot of sense if none of the people I discussed above are a possibility for you.

If you can't ask your parents. For example, if your parents aren't good writers, or if English isn't their first language. Or if you think getting your parents to help is going create unnecessary extra conflict in your relationship with them (applying to college is stressful as it is!)

If you can't ask your teacher or tutor. Maybe you don't have a trusted teacher or tutor that has time to look over your essay with focus. Or, for instance, your favorite humanities teacher has very limited experience with college essays and so won't know what admissions officers want to see.

If you can't ask your guidance counselor. This could be because your guidance counselor is way overwhelmed with other students.

If you can't share your essay with those who know you. It might be that your essay is on a very personal topic that you're unwilling to share with parents, teachers, or peers. Just make sure it doesn't fall into one of the bad-idea topics in our article on bad college essays .

If the cost isn't a consideration. Many of these services are quite expensive, and private coaches even more so. If you have finite resources, I'd say that hiring an SAT or ACT tutor (whether it's PrepScholar or someone else) is better way to spend your money . This is because there's no guarantee that a slightly better essay will sufficiently elevate the rest of your application, but a significantly higher SAT score will definitely raise your applicant profile much more.

Should You Hire an Essay Coach?

On the plus side, essay coaches have read dozens or even hundreds of college essays, so they have experience with the format. Also, because you'll be working closely with a specific person, it's more personal than sending your essay to a service, which will know even less about you.

But, on the minus side, you'll still be bouncing ideas off of someone who doesn't know that much about you . In general, if you can adequately get the help from someone you know, there is no advantage to paying someone to help you.

If you do decide to hire a coach, ask your school counselor, or older students that have used the service for recommendations. If you can't afford the coach's fees, ask whether they can work on a sliding scale —many do. And finally, beware those who guarantee admission to your school of choice—essay coaches don't have any special magic that can back up those promises.

Should You Send Your Essay to a Service?

On the plus side, essay editing services provide a similar product to essay coaches, and they cost significantly less . If you have some assurance that you'll be working with a good editor, the lack of face-to-face interaction won't prevent great results.

On the minus side, however, it can be difficult to gauge the quality of the service before working with them . If they are churning through many application essays without getting to know the students they are helping, you could end up with an over-edited essay that sounds just like everyone else's. In the worst case scenario, an unscrupulous service could send you back a plagiarized essay.

Getting recommendations from friends or a school counselor for reputable services is key to avoiding heavy-handed editing that writes essays for you or does too much to change your essay. Including a badly-edited essay like this in your application could cause problems if there are inconsistencies. For example, in interviews it might be clear you didn't write the essay, or the skill of the essay might not be reflected in your schoolwork and test scores.

Should You Buy an Essay Written by Someone Else?

Let me elaborate. There are super sketchy places on the internet where you can simply buy a pre-written essay. Don't do this!

For one thing, you'll be lying on an official, signed document. All college applications make you sign a statement saying something like this:

I certify that all information submitted in the admission process—including the application, the personal essay, any supplements, and any other supporting materials—is my own work, factually true, and honestly presented... I understand that I may be subject to a range of possible disciplinary actions, including admission revocation, expulsion, or revocation of course credit, grades, and degree, should the information I have certified be false. (From the Common Application )

For another thing, if your academic record doesn't match the essay's quality, the admissions officer will start thinking your whole application is riddled with lies.

Admission officers have full access to your writing portion of the SAT or ACT so that they can compare work that was done in proctored conditions with that done at home. They can tell if these were written by different people. Not only that, but there are now a number of search engines that faculty and admission officers can use to see if an essay contains strings of words that have appeared in other essays—you have no guarantee that the essay you bought wasn't also bought by 50 other students.

body_monalisa.jpg

  • You should get college essay help with both editing and proofreading
  • A good editor will ask questions about your idea, logic, and structure, and will point out places where clarity is needed
  • A good editor will absolutely not answer these questions, give you their own ideas, or write the essay or parts of the essay for you
  • A good proofreader will find typos and check your formatting
  • All of them agree that getting light editing and proofreading is necessary
  • Parents, teachers, guidance or college counselor, and peers or siblings
  • If you can't ask any of those, you can pay for college essay help, but watch out for services or coaches who over-edit you work
  • Don't buy a pre-written essay! Colleges can tell, and it'll make your whole application sound false.

Ready to start working on your essay? Check out our explanation of the point of the personal essay and the role it plays on your applications and then explore our step-by-step guide to writing a great college essay .

Using the Common Application for your college applications? We have an excellent guide to the Common App essay prompts and useful advice on how to pick the Common App prompt that's right for you . Wondering how other people tackled these prompts? Then work through our roundup of over 130 real college essay examples published by colleges .

Stressed about whether to take the SAT again before submitting your application? Let us help you decide how many times to take this test . If you choose to go for it, we have the ultimate guide to studying for the SAT to give you the ins and outs of the best ways to study.

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?   We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download them for free now:

Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

Student and Parent Forum

Our new student and parent forum, at ExpertHub.PrepScholar.com , allow you to interact with your peers and the PrepScholar staff. See how other students and parents are navigating high school, college, and the college admissions process. Ask questions; get answers.

Join the Conversation

Ask a Question Below

Have any questions about this article or other topics? Ask below and we'll reply!

Improve With Our Famous Guides

  • For All Students

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 160+ SAT Points

How to Get a Perfect 1600, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 800 on Each SAT Section:

Score 800 on SAT Math

Score 800 on SAT Reading

Score 800 on SAT Writing

Series: How to Get to 600 on Each SAT Section:

Score 600 on SAT Math

Score 600 on SAT Reading

Score 600 on SAT Writing

Free Complete Official SAT Practice Tests

What SAT Target Score Should You Be Aiming For?

15 Strategies to Improve Your SAT Essay

The 5 Strategies You Must Be Using to Improve 4+ ACT Points

How to Get a Perfect 36 ACT, by a Perfect Scorer

Series: How to Get 36 on Each ACT Section:

36 on ACT English

36 on ACT Math

36 on ACT Reading

36 on ACT Science

Series: How to Get to 24 on Each ACT Section:

24 on ACT English

24 on ACT Math

24 on ACT Reading

24 on ACT Science

What ACT target score should you be aiming for?

ACT Vocabulary You Must Know

ACT Writing: 15 Tips to Raise Your Essay Score

How to Get Into Harvard and the Ivy League

How to Get a Perfect 4.0 GPA

How to Write an Amazing College Essay

What Exactly Are Colleges Looking For?

Is the ACT easier than the SAT? A Comprehensive Guide

Should you retake your SAT or ACT?

When should you take the SAT or ACT?

Stay Informed

how much time to write an essay

Get the latest articles and test prep tips!

Looking for Graduate School Test Prep?

Check out our top-rated graduate blogs here:

GRE Online Prep Blog

GMAT Online Prep Blog

TOEFL Online Prep Blog

Holly R. "I am absolutely overjoyed and cannot thank you enough for helping me!”
  • PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
  • EDIT Edit this Article
  • EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
  • Browse Articles
  • Learn Something New
  • Quizzes Hot
  • This Or That Game New
  • Train Your Brain
  • Explore More
  • Support wikiHow
  • About wikiHow
  • Log in / Sign up
  • Education and Communications
  • College University and Postgraduate
  • Academic Writing

How to Write an Essay in Under 30 Minutes

Last Updated: December 19, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Arash Fayz . Arash Fayz is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of LA Tutors 123, an academic consulting and private tutoring company based in Los Angeles, California. Arash has over 10 years of educational consulting experience, managing the tutoring of students of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds to score higher on standardized tests and gain admission to their target schools. He has a BA in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. There are 12 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 601,381 times.

If you’re taking your SATs this year, you may be preparing to write a solid essay within the 30 minute time limit. Or you might be trying to improve your writing speed to complete essay exams faster and more efficiently. Writing a five paragraph essay in under 30 minutes can seem daunting, but with the right planning and time management, it is certainly achievable.

Sample Essays

how much time to write an essay

Planning the Essay

Step 1 Spend 10 minutes planning the essay.

  • For example, you may get a prompt in the form of quotation: “Time has a doomsday book, on whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names. But as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never to be effaced.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow [3] X Research source
  • You may then receive a question attached to the prompt: “Are there some heroes who will be remembered forever? Or are all heroes doomed to be forgotten one day?" Plan your response, and then write an essay to explain your views on this issue. Be sure to support your position with specific points and examples. You may use personal examples or examples from your reading, observations, or, knowledge of subjects such as history, literature, science. [4] X Research source

Step 3 Brainstorm your thesis...

  • For example, you may brainstorm the Longfellow quote/question by thinking of personal examples of heroes who are remembered or forgotten, such as family members, friends, teachers, or peers who have acted as heroes to you or to others. Or you may focus on a historical figure who seems to be a forgotten hero or a decorated hero.
  • This essay question is asking for two sides of the discussion, the forgotten hero and the remembered hero. Your thesis should discuss both sides and choose one side to argue for or against.
  • You may choose to spotlight a historical figure who encountered opposition and challenges in her life, such as the suffragette Susan B. Anthony. Anthony worked tirelessly for decades to get the government to recognize women’s right to vote, and was often derided by the government and by individuals within her own organization. She is a good example of a hero who was not recognized as a trailblazer until late in her life, though she is now remembered as a heroine in history. Try to refer back to the quotation in the essay prompt in your thesis, if possible, to show you have read the entire question.
  • A possible thesis statement could be: “Though Longfellow argues that names, or heroes, may be forgotten over time, one historical figure, Susan B. Anthony, was derided in her lifetime for her beliefs but is now remembered as a heroine of her time.”

Step 4 Create an outline.

  • Introduction: Your beginning paragraph should contain an engaging first sentence and your thesis statement. Some writers find it easier to write create a temporary introduction and revise it once they are finished with the essay. This will ensure the introduction is cohesive with the rest of the essay.
  • Conclusion: This paragraph should summarize your main argument and restate your thesis. You may also want to include last thoughts around the essay question.

Writing the Essay

Step 1 Take 15 minutes to write the essay.

  • Try to spend two to three minutes on each body paragraph. Then, take three minutes on your conclusion paragraph and go back to your introduction. Spend the last three minutes revising your introduction so it matches the tone and perspective of the rest of your essay.

Step 2 Use a hook in your introduction.

  • An interesting or surprising example: This could be a personal experience or a key moment in the life of the historical figure you are discussing in your essay. For example, you may discuss Anthony’s childhood as a Quaker and her later adoption of more casual dress and growing interest in social reform at the age of 26. [9] X Trustworthy Source University of North Carolina Writing Center UNC's on-campus and online instructional service that provides assistance to students, faculty, and others during the writing process Go to source
  • A provocative quotation: This could be from a source you used for your essay or one that feels relevant to your topic. For example, you may use a well known quote from Anthony, such as: “Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.” [10] X Research source
  • A vivid anecdote: An anecdote is a very short story that carries moral or symbolic weight. Think of an anecdote that might be a poetic or powerful way to start your essay.
  • A thought provoking question: create a question that will get your reader thinking and engaged in your topic. For example: “Did you ever wonder how women received the right to vote in the United States?”

Step 3 Write your three body paragraphs.

  • Body paragraph 1: You may start by discussing Anthony’s early successes. Look at the establishment of the Women’s Loyal National League in 1863 by Anthony and Stanton. As the first national women’s political organization in the United States, it had a membership of 5000 and provided a platform for women to speak out on issues like slavery and women’s right to vote. [11] X Research source
  • Body paragraph 2: You may discuss Anthony’s mid career struggles. Look at the split in the women’s movement in May 1869, with the establishment of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association (NWSA) by Anthony and Stanton, and the rival American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Note how after the Civil War, Anthony devoted her time and life to the suffrage movement, assuming leadership of the NWSA in 1890 and continuing to advocate for women’s rights. Anthony also remained unmarried, which gave her an advantage under the law, as married women at the time were not permitted to sign official documents and had to defer to their husbands. [12] X Research source
  • Body paragraph 3: You may discuss Anthony’s later life, including her many speaking engagements throughout the United States on the need for women’s suffrage and equal rights. Though Anthony died in 1906, and did not live to see the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution, affording women the right to vote in the United States in 1920, her forty years of tireless work paved the way for the legal precedent and gave women a strong sense of empowerment and equality. [13] X Research source

Step 4 Summarize your thoughts in your conclusion.

  • For example, you may restate your thesis: “Throughout her life, Susan B. Anthony’s sacrificed her time, energy, and personal livelihood to advocate for women’s rights, proving that though many heroes may be forgotten, their actions will live on in history.”

Editing the Essay

Step 1 Use the last five minutes to proofread your essay.

  • For example, an essay on Susan B. Anthony could have the title: “An Unsung Heroine” or “Susan B. Anthony: An Advocate for Change”.

Community Q&A

Community Answer

You Might Also Like

Write an Essay

  • ↑ Arash Fayz. Test Prep Tutor. Expert Interview. 1 November 2019.
  • ↑ https://libguides.newcastle.edu.au/essay_planning/essay-planning
  • ↑ https://resources.warburg.sas.ac.uk/pdf/emh823b2778298.pdf
  • ↑ https://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/thesis-statements/
  • ↑ https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/test-terror.html
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/introductions/
  • ↑ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/should-i-use-i/
  • ↑ https://www.rochester.edu/sba/
  • ↑ https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/553350/laCossJoanHarkin.pdf
  • ↑ https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/susan-b-anthony
  • ↑ https://www.britannica.com/biography/Susan-B-Anthony

About This Article

Arash Fayz

In order to successfully write an essay in under 30 minutes, you need to plan it out and work efficiently. Take a good 10 minutes to plan out the essay and come up with a thesis statement that will convey your argument and help guide your essay. It may seem like a large chunk of your time, but it will save you from having to rewrite or restructure your essay later on. Then, take 15 minutes to write your introductory paragraph, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Use the last 5 minutes to proofread your essay and look for spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors. Don’t worry about coming up with a title until you’re finished. It will be much easier then. For tips about how to edit an essay you write in under 30 minutes, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

  • Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

John Smythe

John Smythe

Apr 8, 2017

Did this article help you?

John Smythe

Luis Gudino

Nov 15, 2017

Kiriyana Chernishov

Kiriyana Chernishov

Jan 10, 2018

Ima Harbingerofdeath

Ima Harbingerofdeath

Jan 25, 2017

Bob George

Dec 5, 2017

Am I a Narcissist or an Empath Quiz

Featured Articles

Relive the 1970s (for Kids)

Trending Articles

How to Celebrate Passover: Rules, Rituals, Foods, & More

Watch Articles

Fold Boxer Briefs

  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Info
  • Not Selling Info

wikiHow Tech Help Pro:

Develop the tech skills you need for work and life

How Long Is an Essay? The Ultimate Essay Length Guide

It’s safe to say that most students struggle with the word limit within an essay. Sometimes, it’s hard to find ideas for a text and meet the word requirement for every part of the paper. With so many factors influencing essay length, it’s easy to get confused.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

The picture enumerates the factors influencing essay length.

Luckily, our custom-writing team has your back. In this article, our custom-writing experts will answer all your questions regarding essay length. We will also help you write papers with an ideal number of words!

📜 Is Essay Length Important?

📏 essay parts: recommended length.

  • 🤔 How to Make Essays Shorter or Longer
  • 📑 Essay Length & Formatting
  • ❓ Different Academic Levels FAQ
  • 📚 Essay Length: Different Types
  • ⭐ Other Aspects
  • 📝 Essay Examples

🔍 References

Often, the phrase “word limit” causes panic among students. After all, if an essay is too long or too short, your grade will be lowered. However, in reality, there’s nothing to worry about. When it comes to words, limitations are beneficial for both the students and the professors.

Let’s see what exactly it means.

Many people believe that the longer an essay is, the better. However, according to Frontiers, research shows that it’s a bias that couldn’t be further from the truth. A perfect-length paper is one that allows students to express their ideas and showcase their knowledge fully while keeping it clean and simple.

What Influences Essay Length

Various factors determine the length of an essay. Here are the most important ones:

Just in 1 hour! We will write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour

Let’s start with the essentials. Usually, assignment length is given as a number of words rather than pages. Unless your supervisor or instructor mentions any specific limitations, it’s acceptable to be 10% below or above the word limit.

It’s also worth knowing the 80/20 rule . According to it, the body should constitute 80% of the text, while the intro and the conclusion take up the remaining 20%.

Keep reading to learn more about the recommended length of each essay part. The main numbers are shown in the table below:

How Long Should an Introduction Be?

An introduction is the first section and the face of your essay. For that reason, it needs to be compelling and well-thought-out. Usually, it consists of 3 to 5 sentences or 50 to 80 words .

An introduction must have a hook, some background information, and a thesis statement. While the attention grabber and the thesis are usually brief, you may need 2 to 3 sentences for the background. To avoid going overboard, try to stay on topic and don’t add any filler.

Receive a plagiarism-free paper tailored to your instructions. Cut 20% off your first order!

How Long Is a Body Paragraph in an Essay?

The length of a body paragraph may vary. Sometimes, it can be limited to a single sentence. In other cases, it may take up a whole page. Usually, it’s recommended to have between 80 and 200 words (5-8 sentences) per body paragraph.

Since the paper’s body contains the most information, it’s necessary to explain and support your ideas properly. That’s why it’s no big deal if your body paragraphs go slightly over the word limit.

How Many Body Paragraphs Should Be in an Essay?

Like the word count, the number of paragraphs is determined by the type of paper and its topic. The minimum is 1. Generally, however, the body consists of 3-5 paragraphs , 1 for each argument.

To improve your paper’s structure, ensure that there are as many paragraphs as there are points in your thesis statement. Each one should have a purpose and support your arguments. If there’s any fluff, it’s better to get rid of it.

How Long Should a Conclusion Be?

Like the introduction, the conclusion consists of 50-80 words . It’s essential to keep it simple and only mention the central ideas. A weak concluding sentence may affect the reader’s understanding of the topic and spoil the overall impression of your paper.

Get an originally-written paper according to your instructions!

🤔 How to Make Essays Shorter or Longer: Best Tips

Undoubtedly the essay’s content is more important than the number of words you use. But there are times when students go more than 10-15% below or over the limit. Is there a solution to this problem?

Yes, there is! In this section, we will share the most useful tips to help you stay on point with your paper’s word count.

How to Make Essays Longer

Since having enough words is essential for a good grade, we’ve collected the best tips that can help you lengthen your essay without teachers noticing:

  • Use relevant quotations.  You don’t need to litter your essay with citations, but using them whenever appropriate is a great idea. For instance, if you’re working on a book analysis, referencing a couple of direct quotes from the source text will make your essay more credible and increase the word count.
  • Give examples.  Go through the claims in your paper and provide additional evidence where possible. It will make your essay longer and more informative.
  • Use transitional expressions.  Adding transition words and phrases is a natural way of increasing the number of words. It will also improve your essay’s readability. 
  • Add more references.  Providing references is always a good idea when writing a formal essay. That way, you will increase the number of words and make your paper more credible.
  • Work on your descriptions.  If you struggle to develop new ideas, go over what you’ve already written and consider adding some descriptive words. It’s a great idea for creative essays to include more imagery. 

How to Shorten an Essay

Another struggle of academic writing is cutting down the number of words in your essay to meet a set limit. We are here to tell you that it’s not that hard. Writing straightforwardly and keeping your sentences short is a key to concise content. Here are several strategies you may use to tighten a lengthy essay:

  • Choose the active voice.  It takes up less space than passive voice. Using it also makes your writing more professional and compelling.
  • Remove needless transitions.  Transitions can indeed maintain the flow of the paper. But some transitional phrases can be easily removed.
  • Get rid of unnecessary adverbs and adjectives.  Some students tend to overuse adjectives and adverbs. It adds wordiness to their writing.
  • Avoid running starts.  Some students like to start their sentences with long phrases like: “there are,” “it is believed,” or “the fact that.” Getting rid of them makes texts much more concise.
  • Delete “that.”  In most cases, the word “that” can often be easily removed from texts.

Another cool trick is to use our summarizing tool as essay shortener. Try it out!

📑 How Long Is an Essay Depending on Formatting?

As we mentioned earlier, the essay’s length is usually limited by the number of words. But sometimes, a teacher may ask you to write a specific number of pages. This is trickier because the amount of text you can place on the page depends on the formatting. By using the font size and spacing properly, it’s possible to make the paper visually longer or shorter. Let’s discuss it in more detail.

The picture describes how formatting affects essay length.

Essay Spacing: How Does It Affect the Length?

  • Adjusting the spacing between lines.  Try to make the changes as slight as possible. For instance, if you were asked to double-space the paper, use 2.1 or 2.2 spacing instead. Another option is to slightly extend spaces between paragraphs.
  • Extending the margin size.  You can increase the right and bottom margins by a quarter to make very subtle changes in length. For example, if the margins are 1 inch , you can set them at 1.25 inches instead. 
  • Increasing the spacing between characters.  It is less noticeable than the line spacing. Still, try not to overdo it and keep the numbers between 1.2 and 1.5 . 
  • Adjusting the footer.  Add a footer with page numbers to stretch the bottom margin even further.
  • Lengthening the header.  You can extend your header by adding your name, e-mail address, or other relevant information. Another option is double-spacing it.

Length of an Essay: Font and Size

  • Using the right type of font.  If your instructor didn’t specify which font you should use, go for the bigger ones. We suggest Arial, Bangla Sangam MN, Cambria, or Quicksand. They will make your text look longer without being too on the nose.  
  • Using a bigger font size.  This is another technique that can come in handy. However, be careful and don’t increase your font by more than 0.1-0.5 pt.  
  • Increasing the size of periods and commas.   This is one of the less noticeable tricks you can use. For instance, if your paper’s font is 12 pt. , increase it to 14 pt. only for punctuation marks. Italicizing periods and commas will also add several lines of length to your essay. 

What to Do if There Are No Length Guidelines

Sometimes a teacher sets no word limit for a written work. What to do in that case? Well, first, you can ask your professor to confirm if they have simply forgotten to mention it. But if that’s not the case, here are a couple of helpful solutions:

  • Think of the paragraph number.  Sometimes, you may be given the number of paragraphs instead of words. In that case, you can decide on the number of words depending on how many paragraphs you have. 
  • Think about the topic’s complexity.  The length of your paper is also directly dependent on the theme. If the topic is simple, 4-5 paragraphs will be enough. A more complex issue may require an in-depth explanation, so your essay can be 6-8 paragraphs long.

❓ Essay Length for Different Academic Levels FAQ

The length of the elementary school essay is usually short. Usually, a paper needs to have around 3-5 paragraphs, with 4-5 sentences per paragraph. Primary school essays can be 1-2 paragraphs long.

The word limit for a middle school essay is usually between 300 to 1000 words. The most common essay length is 500 words, which is about 5 paragraphs. However, it may differ from school to school.

The length of the high school essay may differ depending on the school and the complexity of the task itself. Usually, however, a paper can be between 300 to 1000 words long.

The length of the undergraduate college essay often falls within the range of 1500 to 2100 words. It translates into roughly 5-7 pages. 5 pages is the most common essay length at this level.

When it comes to the graduate school admission essay, the word limit is usually between 500 and 1000 words. It’s possible to go slightly over or below the set limit; however, it’s best to stick to the requirements as close as possible.

📚 How Long Should an Essay Be: Different Types

Now, let’s talk about different types of essays. How long should they be? Keep reading to learn about the length of college essays, short and extended ones, scholarship essays, and research papers.

How Long Is a College Essay?

When it comes to a college essay, it’s more important to stick to the word limit than with any other paper. Some teachers may refuse to read it unless it meets all the requirements.

The shortest limit for a college essay is about 250 words which is the shortest length of a Common App personal statement. It’s also rare to see a good college essay with over 650 words . So, an average piece usually has between 150 and 650 words ; you can go over or below the limit by 50.

How Long Is a Paragraph in College Essays?

A college essay usually consists of 4-5 paragraphs . One paragraph takes about 1/3 of the page, which is roughly 5 sentences . Each sentence corresponds with one of the following components:

  • Topic sentence.
  • Explanation.
  • Transitions.

College Essay Length Requirements: Top 5 Schools

To understand the requirements for a college application essay even better, take a look at the table below. It showcases the top 5 schools and their length criteria for personal statements. Keep it in mind when writing your college essay:

How Long Is a Short Essay?

A short essay is usually 500 words long. Using 12pt Times New Roman font with standard margins and double spacing should result in about 2 pages of text.

Extended Essay Length

An extended essay is different from a short or a standard one. It requires extensive research and thorough explanation. That’s why the upper limit for this kind of essay is 4000 words . In this case, a typical essay length is 3500 words or 18 paragraphs .

Scholarship Essay Length

Generally, scholarship papers have a limit of 500 words , which is 1 page in length. Most scholarship programs provide additional requirements that indicate the minimum number of words or pages. If there are no set limitations, you can stick to the limit.

How Long Is a Research Paper?

Typically, a research paper is between 4000 and 6000 words long. Sometimes, there are shorter papers, which have around 2000 words, or in-depth ones with over 10000 words.

⭐ Other Aspects of Essay Length

When it comes to essay length, many different aspects come into play. Here, we’ve gathered all the essential information regarding an essay’s number of pages, paragraphs, words, and references.

How Many Paragraphs Are in an Essay?

Sometimes, it is more convenient to count paragraphs rather than words. Let’s now figure out how many paragraphs are in essays of different lengths. You may also check out the examples to see what such an essay looks like:

How to Count Paragraphs in an Essay Based on Word Count

You can also count the number of body paragraphs for your essay using the formula below:

Number of body paragraphs (average) = (TWC – TWC*0.16)/100

  • TWC – total word count
  • 0.16 – an average percentage of total word count for introduction and conclusion
  • 100 – an average number of words per paragraph

How Many Pages Are in an Essay?

The number of pages in your essay may vary from subject to subject. But it’s still possible to determine the number of pages based on word count. Check out the numbers below to see the conversions with bonus examples:

You can also use a specialized calculator such as Word Counter to determine a number of pages in your essay.

What Does an Essay Look Like when Typed?

You might be wondering: what do essays of different lengths look like when typed? Well, here’s the table where you can find out the metrics for single- and double-spaced papers.

How Many Pages Are in a Handwritten Essay?

In case you need to turn in a handwritten paper, you should check out the table below.

Counting Words in a Handwritten Essay

If you don’t have enough time to count the words in your handwritten essay one by one, here’s what you can do:

  • Count how many words there are in one line. Take the first and last lines and a line in the middle of a page. Let’s say there are 15, 14, and 15 words in them. Then, the average number of words per line is 15.
  • Next, count how many lines there are on one page. Let’s say there are 17 lines on a page.
  • Take the number of words per line and multiply it by the number of lines per page. In our case, we multiply 15 by 17. So, there are 255 words per page on average.
  • Finally, multiply the number of words per page by the number of pages. If your essay has 3 pages, it is approximately 765 words long.

How Long Does it Take to Write an Essay?

It is crucial to know how long writing will take you, especially if you are working on an exam essay or just short on time. Note that you need to consider the time for typing and researching necessary to complete a piece. Research time may vary. Usually, it’s 1-2 hours for 200-250 words .

The picture shows the fact about the average speed of writing.

Below, we’ve gathered the average writing time for average and slower writing speed:

And here are the results in pages:

How Many References Does an Essay Need?

Another essential part of any composition is the reference list. Different academic levels require different references. You’ll find out how many of them should be in your paper in the table below!

📝 Essay Examples: Different Length

Finally, we’ve gathered some excellent sample essays of different lengths. Make sure to check them out!

We also recommend you check out our free essay samples sorted by pages:

  • 1-Page Essay Examples
  • 2-Page Essay Examples
  • 3-Page Essay Examples
  • 4-Page Essay Examples
  • 5-Page Essay Examples
  • 10-Page Essay Examples
  • 20-Page Essay Examples
  • 30-Page Essay Examples
  • 40-Page Essay Examples
  • 50-Page Essay Examples

Now you know all about essay length, word limits, and ways to lengthen or shorten your text. If you know other interesting tricks, make sure to share them in a comment! Good luck with your writing assignments!

You may also like:

  • How to Write a Process Analysis Essay: Examples & Outline
  • How to Write a Precis: Definition, Guide, & Examples 
  • How to Write a Critical Analysis Essay: Examples & Guide
  • How to Write a Narrative Essay Outline: Template & Examples
  • How to Write a Formal Essay: Format, Rules, & Example
  • Word Limits and Assignment Length: Massey University
  • The Paragraph in the College Essay: California State University, Long Beach
  • Introductions & Conclusions: The University of Arizona Global Campus
  • How Long Should a Paragraph Be?: Daily Writing Tips
  • Paragraphing (Length Consistency): Purdue University
  • Hitting the Target Word Count in Your College Admission Essay: Dummies.com
  • How Long Should Your College Essay Be? What is the Ideal Length?: College Vine
  • Writing Personal Statements Online: Issues of Length and Form: Penn State University
  • Pen Admissions: Essays: University of Pennsylvania
  • Essay Questions: University of Michigan
  • Essay Structure: Harvard University
  • Components of a Good Essay: University of Evansville
  • Write Your Essay: UNSW Sydney
  • College Writing: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • 21 Helpful and Easy Tips to Make an Essay Longer: Seventeen
  • How to Make a College Paper Longer: ThoughtCo
  • Share to Facebook
  • Share to Twitter
  • Share to LinkedIn
  • Share to email

How to Get Perfect Letters of Recommendation for College [Guide]

Do you dream of being successfully admitted to college? Well, you probably know that admission is a long process that includes many challenging steps. One of them is a recommendation letter: a document written on your behalf that describes your characteristics as a student. If done well, such a letter...

Building a Job-Winning Resume

Almost everyone feels insecure when they start working on their first resume. Suddenly there are lots of questions that need to be answered. What should I write? How should I write it? What should I include in my resume to make it more appealing? If you’re looking for answers to...

How to Search the Web Effectively [For Students]

What’s the first thing we do when facing the unknown? We Google it, of course! Google is fundamental to our experience of the Internet. According to the statistics, more than 100 000 people press “search” on Google every second! At first glance, the process is straightforward. You type in what...

Top 25 Gadgets You Need to Study Smarter [from $20]

Ever heard of a smart egg tray? Welcome to 2024! Today, there are gadgets for everything, and the variety of intelligent devices available increases every day. Some of them can improve your life. Others seem a bit useless. Will a smart egg tray actually add value to your life, or...

24 Tips for Dorm Living

Dorms become like a second home to many students during their university experience. And while dorm life can mean making new friends and having exciting adventures, adjusting to new routines is not always easy. Since most students who come to the dorms have no prior experience living outside their parents’...

Fact-Checking Your Writing: Tips & Helpful Websites

Imagine you’ve just written a paper. You’re going to proofread it, right? But is proofreading enough to ensure the absence of any factual errors or unfounded conclusions? Can you say with 100% certainty that you cited every reference correctly? If you want to learn how to fact-check like a pro,...

Everything You Need to Know about College Rankings

Every year, millions of U.S. students decide which university they want to attend. Around 20% of students rely on college rankings to make their final decision. Over the last two decades, such rankings have significantly grown in popularity. But are these lists reliable? Which criteria can be trusted? And which...

Why Developing a Growth Mindset is Vital to Your Academic Success

Have you ever seen someone else’s success and thought to yourself: “Why can’t I do the same?” What was your thought process like? Perhaps you believed you lacked some innate quality. Or did you think you could have achieved the same thing if you had put in enough effort? The difference in these attitudes is defined by two distinct mindsets—growth or fixed. You will read all about them in this article by Custom-Writing.org. You’ll also...

7 Affordable Hobbies You Can Monetize

Are you interested in having a side hustle? If you have a hobby you are passionate about, look no further. A hobby-based side hustle is a great way to spend time doing something you love, a great source of income, and a way to boost your resume! In this article by Custom-Writing.org, you will find: a list of 7 inexpensive hobbies available to anyone; ways to monetize them; their benefits for...

Online Degrees: Ultimate List & Tips for Studying

In 2024, online education remains one of the most searched terms. Not only can you undertake short courses, but it is now commonplace to get Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees online. Is this the right fit for you? Keep reading to find out! In this article, our custom writing team will:...

Becoming a Volunteer: Diverse Benefits of Volunteering

What is the number one reason for becoming a volunteer? You may already know that charitable organizations help people in need and allow everyone to make a difference. However, there are some material benefits as well. Volunteer experience can boost your career prospects: it increases your chances of getting into...

Crossword Puzzles in Learning: Role, History, & 29 Resources

Are you excited about grammar? Have you ever read the dictionary for fun? Do you become enthralled by your textbooks? Whether you are a language nerd or not, crossword puzzles are here to help. In this article, you will find dozens of exciting puzzle resources to support your learning. You...

Article type icon

How to Write an Academic Essay in 6 Simple Steps

#scribendiinc

Written by  Scribendi

Are you wondering how to write an academic essay successfully? There are so many steps to writing an academic essay that it can be difficult to know where to start.

Here, we outline how to write an academic essay in 6 simple steps, from how to research for an academic essay to how to revise an essay and everything in between. 

Our essay writing tips are designed to help you learn how to write an academic essay that is ready for publication (after academic editing and academic proofreading , of course!).

Your paper isn't complete until you've done all the needed proofreading. Make sure you leave time for it after the writing process!

Download Our Pocket Checklist for Academic Papers. Just input your email below!

Types of academic writing.

With academic essay writing, there are certain conventions that writers are expected to follow. As such, it's important to know the basics of academic writing before you begin writing your essay.

Read More: What Is Academic Writing?

Before you begin writing your essay, you need to know what type of essay you are writing. This will help you follow the correct structure, which will make academic paper editing a faster and simpler process. 

Will you be writing a descriptive essay, an analytical essay, a persuasive essay, or a critical essay?

Read More: How to Master the 4 Types of Academic Writing

You can learn how to write academic essays by first mastering the four types of academic writing and then applying the correct rules to the appropriate type of essay writing.

Regardless of the type of essay you will be writing, all essays will include:

An introduction

At least three body paragraphs

A conclusion

A bibliography/reference list

To strengthen your essay writing skills, it can also help to learn how to research for an academic essay.

How to Research for an Academic Essay

Step 1: Preparing to Write Your Essay

The essay writing process involves a few main stages:

Researching

As such, in learning how to write an academic essay, it is also important to learn how to research for an academic essay and how to revise an essay.

Read More: Online Research Tips for Students and Scholars

To beef up your research skills, remember these essay writing tips from the above article: 

Learn how to identify reliable sources.

Understand the nuances of open access.

Discover free academic journals and research databases.

Manage your references. 

Provide evidence for every claim so you can avoid plagiarism .

Read More: 17 Research Databases for Free Articles

You will want to do the research for your academic essay points, of course, but you will also want to research various journals for the publication of your paper.

Different journals have different guidelines and thus different requirements for writers. These can be related to style, formatting, and more. 

Knowing these before you begin writing can save you a lot of time if you also want to learn how to revise an essay. If you ensure your paper meets the guidelines of the journal you want to publish in, you will not have to revise it again later for this purpose. 

After the research stage, you can draft your thesis and introduction as well as outline the rest of your essay. This will put you in a good position to draft your body paragraphs and conclusion, craft your bibliography, and edit and proofread your paper.

Step 2: Writing the Essay Introduction and Thesis Statement

When learning how to write academic essays , learning how to write an introduction is key alongside learning how to research for an academic essay.

Your introduction should broadly introduce your topic. It will give an overview of your essay and the points that will be discussed. It is typically about 10% of the final word count of the text.

All introductions follow a general structure:

Topic statement

Thesis statement

Read More: How to Write an Introduction

Your topic statement should hook your reader, making them curious about your topic. They should want to learn more after reading this statement. To best hook your reader in academic essay writing, consider providing a fact, a bold statement, or an intriguing question. 

The discussion about your topic in the middle of your introduction should include some background information about your topic in the academic sphere. Your scope should be limited enough that you can address the topic within the length of your paper but broad enough that the content is understood by the reader.

Your thesis statement should be incredibly specific and only one to two sentences long. Here is another essay writing tip: if you are able to locate an effective thesis early on, it will save you time during the academic editing process.

Read More: How to Write a Great Thesis Statement

Step 3: Writing the Essay Body

When learning how to write academic essays, you must learn how to write a good body paragraph. That's because your essay will be primarily made up of them!

The body paragraphs of your essay will develop the argument you outlined in your thesis. They will do this by providing your ideas on a topic backed up by evidence of specific points.

These paragraphs will typically take up about 80% of your essay. As a result, a good essay writing tip is to learn how to properly structure a paragraph.

Each paragraph consists of the following:

A topic sentence

Supporting sentences

A transition

Read More: How to Write a Paragraph

In learning how to revise an essay, you should keep in mind the organization of your paragraphs.

Your first paragraph should contain your strongest argument.

The secondary paragraphs should contain supporting arguments.

The last paragraph should contain your second-strongest argument. 

Step 4: Writing the Essay Conclusion

Your essay conclusion is the final paragraph of your essay and primarily reminds your reader of your thesis. It also wraps up your essay and discusses your findings more generally.

The conclusion typically makes up about 10% of the text, like the introduction. It shows the reader that you have accomplished what you intended to at the outset of your essay.

Here are a couple more good essay writing tips for your conclusion:

Don't introduce any new ideas into your conclusion.

Don't undermine your argument with opposing ideas.

Read More: How to Write a Conclusion Paragraph in 3 Easy Steps

Now that you know how to write an academic essay, it's time to learn how to write a bibliography along with some academic editing and proofreading advice.

Step 5: Writing the Bibliography or Works Cited

The bibliography of your paper lists all the references you cited. It is typically alphabetized or numbered (depending on the style guide).

Read More: How to Write an Academic Essay with References

When learning how to write academic essays, you may notice that there are various style guides you may be required to use by a professor or journal, including unique or custom styles. 

Some of the most common style guides include:

Chicago style

For help organizing your references for academic essay writing, consider a software manager. They can help you collect and format your references correctly and consistently, both quickly and with minimal effort.

Read More: 6 Reference Manager Software Solutions for Your Research

As you learn how to research for an academic essay most effectively, you may notice that a reference manager can also help make academic paper editing easier.

How to Revise an Essay

Step 6: Revising Your Essay

Once you've finally drafted your entire essay . . . you're still not done! 

That's because editing and proofreading are the essential final steps of any writing process . 

An academic editor can help you identify core issues with your writing , including its structure, its flow, its clarity, and its overall readability. They can give you substantive feedback and essay writing tips to improve your document. Therefore, it's a good idea to have an editor review your first draft so you can improve it prior to proofreading.

A specialized academic editor can assess the content of your writing. As a subject-matter expert in your subject, they can offer field-specific insight and critical commentary. Specialized academic editors can also provide services that others may not, including:

Academic document formatting

Academic figure formatting

Academic reference formatting

An academic proofreader can help you perfect the final draft of your paper to ensure it is completely error free in terms of spelling and grammar. They can also identify any inconsistencies in your work but will not look for any issues in the content of your writing, only its mechanics. This is why you should have a proofreader revise your final draft so that it is ready to be seen by an audience. 

Read More: How to Find the Right Academic Paper Editor or Proofreader

When learning how to research and write an academic essay, it is important to remember that editing is a required step. Don ' t forget to allot time for editing after you ' ve written your paper.

Set yourself up for success with this guide on how to write an academic essay. With a solid draft, you'll have better chances of getting published and read in any journal of your choosing.

Our academic essay writing tips are sure to help you learn how to research an academic essay, how to write an academic essay, and how to revise an academic essay.

If your academic paper looks sloppy, your readers may assume your research is sloppy. Download our Pocket Proofreading Checklist for Academic Papers before you take that one last crucial look at your paper.

About the Author

Scribendi Editing and Proofreading

Scribendi's in-house editors work with writers from all over the globe to perfect their writing. They know that no piece of writing is complete without a professional edit, and they love to see a good piece of writing transformed into a great one. Scribendi's in-house editors are unrivaled in both experience and education, having collectively edited millions of words and obtained numerous degrees. They love consuming caffeinated beverages, reading books of various genres, and relaxing in quiet, dimly lit spaces.

Have You Read?

"The Complete Beginner's Guide to Academic Writing"

Related Posts

21 Legit Research Databases for Free Journal Articles in 2024

21 Legit Research Databases for Free Journal Articles in 2024

How to Find the Right Academic Paper Editor or Proofreader

How to Find the Right Academic Paper Editor or Proofreader

How to Master the 4 Types of Academic Writing

How to Master the 4 Types of Academic Writing

Upload your file(s) so we can calculate your word count, or enter your word count manually.

We will also recommend a service based on the file(s) you upload.

English is not my first language. I need English editing and proofreading so that I sound like a native speaker.

I need to have my journal article, dissertation, or term paper edited and proofread, or I need help with an admissions essay or proposal.

I have a novel, manuscript, play, or ebook. I need editing, copy editing, proofreading, a critique of my work, or a query package.

I need editing and proofreading for my white papers, reports, manuals, press releases, marketing materials, and other business documents.

I need to have my essay, project, assignment, or term paper edited and proofread.

I want to sound professional and to get hired. I have a resume, letter, email, or personal document that I need to have edited and proofread.

 Prices include your personal % discount.

 Prices include % sales tax ( ).

how much time to write an essay

Savvy Calculator

Essay Time Calculator

Introduction.

Writing essays is a common task for students, professionals, and writers, but it can be challenging to estimate how much time it will take to complete a specific essay. The “Essay Time Calculator” is a practical tool that helps you plan and manage your time effectively when tackling essay assignments. Whether you’re a student working on an academic paper or a writer with a tight deadline, this calculator simplifies the process of determining how much time you need to complete your essay.

The “Essay Time Calculator” estimates the time required to write an essay based on several factors, including word count, complexity, and your writing speed. While there isn’t a precise formula, the calculator uses a straightforward calculation:

Time (in minutes) = Word Count ÷ Words Per Minute

  • “Time” represents the estimated time required to write the essay in minutes.
  • “Word Count” is the total number of words in the essay.
  • “Words Per Minute” is your average writing speed, typically expressed in words written per minute.

The calculator uses these values to provide a reasonable estimate of the time you’ll need to complete your essay.

How to Use?

Using the “Essay Time Calculator” is a simple and practical process. Follow these steps to make the most of it:

  • Input : Start by entering the total word count for your essay in the provided field.
  • Adjust Complexity : Select the complexity level of your essay from the dropdown menu (e.g., simple, moderate, complex).
  • Enter Writing Speed : Specify your average writing speed in words per minute. If you’re unsure, a common average is around 200 words per minute for casual writing.
  • Calculate : Click the “Calculate” button, and the tool will provide an estimated time for completing your essay.

Suppose you need to write a 1,000-word essay with a moderate level of complexity, and you type at an average speed of 250 words per minute. Here’s how to use the calculator:

  • Input : Enter 1,000 in the word count field.
  • Adjust Complexity : Select “Moderate” from the complexity dropdown menu.
  • Enter Writing Speed : Input 250 as your words per minute.
  • Calculate : Click the “Calculate” button.

The calculator may estimate that you’ll need approximately 4 minutes to complete this essay.

1. Can this calculator provide an exact time estimate?

The calculator provides an estimate based on the input parameters, but actual writing times may vary depending on individual writing speed, research, and revision.

2. What if my essay is very complex or technical?

For highly complex or technical essays, you might want to adjust the complexity setting to “Complex” to provide a more accurate estimate.

3. How can I improve my writing speed?

Improving writing speed requires practice and familiarity with the topic. Consider pre-writing tasks, like outlining, to streamline the writing process.

4. Can I use this calculator for any type of writing, not just essays?

While it’s primarily designed for essays, you can adapt it for other writing tasks like reports, articles, or creative writing by adjusting the complexity and content type to fit your needs.

Conclusion:

The “Essay Time Calculator” is a valuable tool for anyone who needs to estimate the time required to complete essay assignments. By taking into account factors such as word count, complexity, and writing speed, this calculator offers a practical guideline for planning and managing your time effectively. While it provides estimates, individual writing processes may differ, so it’s important to adapt the results to your specific circumstances. This tool simplifies the task of gauging the time commitment for your writing projects, helping you stay organized and meet your deadlines with greater ease.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

  • Have your assignments done by seasoned writers. 24/7
  • Contact us:
  • +1 (213) 221-0069
  • [email protected]

Grade Bees Logo

How Long to Write an Essay or Paper: Both in Pages and Words

How long should you take to write that essay or paper

How long should you take to write that essay or paper

Writing an essay is a process that involves preparation, research, drafting, and polishing your content. All these steps take time and need to be done well if the essay is to score a good grade. The question of how long it takes to write an essay lingers on every writer.

Producing a good essay needs patience, even as you develop your ideas from the introduction to the conclusion. Each part takes time. However, knowing the total time it will take you to write the entire essay is good. While this is not certain, we can estimate the optimal time.

The time it takes to write an essay or a paper varies with its length, technicalities of the content, research needed, and your skills, among other factors. While a simple 600-word essay may take 2 hours for an average writer, a technical task of the same length may take 5 hours.

how much time to write an essay

A 1200-word essay can take as short as 4 hours to write and as long as a day, depending on the technicalities and skills of the writer.

Estimating the right amount of time you will take to write a basic essay, you should consider writing time, research, and many other factors like;

  • How much do you know about the topic you are about to write
  • Is your instructor strict when giving grades?
  • Will you require a bibliography, a title page, or an outline?
  • How much research are you required to do?
  • Is writing an essay natural to you, or perhaps you struggle?
  • Are all the resources required for me to write an essay available?
  • Are citations needed, or do I share my opinions and thoughts?

Need Help with your Homework or Essays?

How long should it take to write an essay.

If the essay you are writing is simple and doesn’t require much research, it will take very little time.

However, if you include citations, research, life disruptions, and a lack of understanding, the time you take to complete the essay writing steps will be much longer. If possible, pick a topic that you are familiar with; this will help you to start your writing quickly.

However, this is not to say that you will not take any notes or do research, but rather it means you will find good resources easily and be in a position to present good arguments for your essay.

This will make the writing process of your essay move faster. However, if you have no doubt about whether an essay writing service works, you can hire some of the best writers to speed up your writing process.

How Long does it Take to Write a 10-page paper?

A 10-page paper is the most regular assignment that students get during their coursework. It appears to be a good length in many topics that professors want students to write and research about.

Again, it doesn’t seem discouraging; regarding the number of words in a double-spaced 10-page paper, it will range between 2500 and 2750 words.

lengthy Research for 10-page paper

Researching from sources and reading through them takes more time.

The amount of time you will take to write a 10-page paper depends on how long you will take to go through the steps in the process of essay writing a ten-page paper.

From our essay writing guide, the essay writing steps are as follows;

  • Choosing a topic
  • Finding that research
  • Identifying sub-topics
  • Writing two drafts; the rough and the final one
  • Editing and polishing the paper.

It is possible to write a ten-page paper in a day if you use a professional paper writing service like GradeBees.com.

This is because the website has several expert writers who are always on standby, ready for action after your order. Since they have done this for a long time, their experience makes the task a piece of cake, and with excellent grades.

How long does it take to write a 5-page paper-spaced

Before drafting an essay, most students ask how long it will take them to write a five-page essay. How much time you will take depends on various factors.

Such factors include the number of materials you have to read, the complexity of your topic, and the depth of the research. These factors determine the amount of time you will spend when writing a five-page essay or paper.

However, it is not possible to approximate the time required to write a five-page double-spaced spaced-paper. All the requirements of essays differ.

Some papers that have simple topics need little research, while a complicated assignment requires you to study many materials and read many books. Some students say they take 2 hours, others five hours, while some say they can take a day or two.

Let our team take short time on your paper

We have a pool of writers ready to handle the hard task and deliver great grades for all your essays and papers. Get an ORIGINAL paper today!

Can I write a 1000-word essay in 2 hours?

A 1000-word essay is about four pages, typed and double-spaced. In case you can type 50 words per hour, it should take you 20 minutes to type 1000 words.

However, this doesn’t mean that the quicker you can write your essay, the better it shall be. Note that a good essay takes more time than that one written carelessly.

For example, our professional essay writers can write 1000 words in one to three hours. If you are starting your writing career, writing a 1000-word paper can take you up to ten hours.

The subject you want to write on could be very complicated, and research can take much time. Moreover, sometimes, it is very hard to comprehend the gathered data.

 Nevertheless, a 1000-word article can take one to two hours if you know the topic you want to write about, and you don’t have to give evidence for each statement.

How long will it take to write a 5000-word paper or essay

Some students say it is impossible to write 5000 words in a day, while others say they can write it in a day. The simplest way of writing 5,000 words is by writing from existing notes or write a long paper outline if you do not have it already made.

First of all, you need to have read your source materials and digested them mentally, bookmarked them, and highlighted them where necessary. If you are yet to read your essay readings, then add a minimum of four to six hours to the essay you intend to write.

However, analysis and technical content makes the paper take longer than a normal essay or simple research papers

Time to write 5000-word paper

It’s possible to write 5000 words in 24 hours; however, it is not easy.

Generally, the complexity of writing is determined by the topic of your essay.

To determine how long it will take you to finish a 5000-word essay, add to your writing time the time to correct mistakes, check plagiarism, add something new, or change a paragraph’s structure.

An effective way to write fast is to plan your work and research your topic in detail. All in all, know that Research and data analysis determines how long you will take to write a paper.

How long to write a 20-page Research Paper

A 20-page paper can take from 2 days to write for a fast writer to a week for a slow writers. However, the time depends on the complexity of the past or the technicality of the essay you are writing. Also, your writing skills determine how long you will take to write a 20-page essay, it also depends on how much information you have on the subject and what you are using to write either.

Such equipment could be a typewriter, handwriting, or computer. Also, the number of grammatical errors enforces how interested you are in the subject making a big contribution to the time you will take.

However, to write 20 pages, you will need to gather much information, which takes much longer than writing the paper.

When you start your research and take quality notes, you could take one to two days to write the whole paper, not forgetting the time you will need to proofread.

How Long does it Take you to Write a 10-page Paper

Research and learn more than what your teacher has not asked. You need to be an expert, draft an outline, and then write the paper. You will not have to research more.

For less than a week, you’ll write smoothly; make sure you write it in one piece, then let it rest for a few days, and then get back to it and improve it while editing. 

Within two weeks, you should have your ten-page paper ready. How fast you write depends on the subject, how well you know it, how much time you want to spend on it, and how much of the paper is graphs and data.

How long does it take to write a 6-page research paper

Writing a six-page research paper depends on how helpful your sources are. If you are familiar with the topic and you have organized your research sources well, you won’t have to spend a lot of time gathering information, and you can get the actual writing over in a few hours.

However, everyone has the pace with which they do their work, but the more time you spend doing your research, the better your paper will be.

While writing is important in college , completing a paper or an essay is not easy or fun for most students. Most of them leave their assignments until the last few hours for submission.

The longer time you take with your paper, the better the quality of your work will be. Research takes the most time in paper writing.

Therefore, always choose subjects that interest you and topics that you know well, and the actual writing will take little time. However, if you are stuck with your assignment, you can reach out to our custom essay writers for help with your essay or research paper. 

Jessica Kasen

Jessica Kasen is experienced in academic writing and academic assistance. She is well versed in academia and has a master’s degree in education. Kasen consults with us in helping students improve their grades. She also oversights the quality of work done by our writers.

Related posts

Overcoming the feeling and fear of writing essays

Overcoming the feeling and fear of writing essays

Overcoming the Feeling and Fear of Writing Essays

Spaces between Paragraphs in an Essay

Spaces between Paragraphs in an Essay

How Many Spaces between Paragraphs in an Essay

Double Space an Essay

Double Space an Essay

Should You Double Space an Essay: When and When Not To

Word Counter Blog

How Long Does It Take to Write a 1000 Word Essay?

How long does it take to write an essay?

How long does it take to research an essay?

If you’re writing an opinion piece on something you already have some knowledge about, you may not have to do any research at all. It may just be a matter of organizing your existing thoughts into a coherent essay. If you need to find out about a topic before you begin to write, you can easily get information on certain topics, whilst others will be more obscure and therefore more difficult to research. Clearly, the easier it is to find information, the faster you can write.

How good are your reading comprehension skills?

Some of us can just skim a piece and pick up all the salient points. Others will have to read with more attention, and even re-read a piece several times to extract the information we need. Having good reading and comprehension skills makes writing much faster since you’re able to “get” the facts faster and organize them better. Now you know why you had to do so many reading comprehension tests at school.

How well did you plan?

Throwing yourself headlong at a 1,000-word essay and writing till you reach the word count may seem like the easy option, but it isn’t. Planning your essay so that it begins with an introduction, highlights the most important points you want to make and then wraps everything up into a conclusion actually saves you time. Sometimes, essay instructions will tell you how to structure the piece, so read them carefully and extract any information you can use to guide your essay’s structure.

How fast do you type?

Have you ever gotten lost halfway through a sentence? You know what you wanted to say, but halfway through, the thought slips away from you. The faster you can type , the more easily you can capture thoughts before your mind moves onto the next thing and you forget what you were trying to say. Typing skills are essential in the modern world. Consider using typing games to improve your speed.

How long does it take me to write a 1,000-word essay?

Faster isn’t always better. The more in-depth your report is meant to be, the longer you should spend on it. I can usually research and write a fairly technical magazine article of 1,000 words in three hours, but do remember that I’m a professional writer. I’m fast because I write all day, every day.

The longest I’ve ever spent on a 1,000-word article was 12 hours. It was absolutely brutal! The information I needed to gather was very technical, hard to find, and even more difficult to understand, and you can’t write something until you really understand the subject matter. I also had to contact experts for their opinions, but I couldn’t even ask about their opinions until I could target them with the right questions. As a result, I actually had to write most of the article before slotting in the expert comment.

The quickest I’ve ever written a 1,000-word article is one hour. In this case, I already knew the subject matter well and didn’t have to back up every fact in the essay with references.

Reviewing your work also matters

If you’re writing for grades and want a good one, you need a really good essay. Don’t start writing it the day before you have to hand it in. Try and get your first draft down at least a day or two before you have to submit your work. Then return to it and do your editing. Read your essay aloud to yourself, since this will help you pick up any careless errors you wouldn’t otherwise spot. Check to see if your information flows logically from one point to the next and make sure that you’ve presented your information clearly.

Remember, teachers get tired. They have to read the same kind of essay over and over again when they grade. If they struggle to understand what you’re saying, you might not get as good a grade as you would if you stuck to using short sentences and relatively simple language.

Your reviewing process shouldn’t take all that long. If you don’t have to make a lot of changes, you should be able to do your final edit in under half an hour.

Take your time. Whatever you do, don’t rush. You might want your essay to be written quickly, but if it’s an important essay, taking your time will give you a better finished product. Budget your time conservatively. It’s better to find that you’ve still got time left over than to run out of time and end up dashing things off with a looming deadline.

Below are some basic guidelines if you need a rough estimate on how long it will take to write an essay. It’s important to remember that there are a plethora of mitigating factors that can increase or decrease the time it takes to write. The below numbers are using an estimate that it takes about 3 hours 20 minutes to write a 1000 word essay:

How long does it take to write a 100 word essay? It takes about 20 minutes to write a 100 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 200 word essay? It takes about 40 minutes to write a 200 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 250 word essay? It takes about 50 minutes to write a 250 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 300 word essay? It takes about 1 hour to write a 300 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 400 word essay? It takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes to write a 400 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 500 word essay? It takes about 1 hour and 40 minutes to write a 500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 600 word essay? It takes about 2 hours to write a 600 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 700 word essay? It takes about 2 hours and 20 minutes to write a 700 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 800 word essay? It takes about 2 hours and 40 minutes to write a 800 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 900 word essay? It takes about 3 hours to write a 900 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,000 word essay? It takes about 3 hours and 20 minutes to write a 1,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,250 word essay? It takes about 4 hours and 10 minutes to write a 1,250 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,500 word essay? It takes about 5 hours to write a 1,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 1,750 word essay? It takes about 5 hours and 50 minutes to write a 1,750 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 2,000 word essay? It takes about 6 hours and 40 minutes to write a 2,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 2,500 word essay? It takes about 8 hours and 20 minutes to write a 2,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 3,000 word essay? It takes about 10 hours to write a 3,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 3,500 word essay? It takes about 11 hours and 40 minutes to write a 3,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 4,000 word essay? It takes about 13 hours and 20 minutes to write a 4,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 4,500 word essay? It takes about 15 hours to write a 4,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 5,000 word essay? It takes about 16 hours and 40 minutes to write a 5,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 6,000 word essay? It takes about 20 hours to write a 6,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 7,000 word essay? It takes about 23 hours and 20 minutes to write a 7,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 7,500 word essay? It takes about 25 hours to write a 7,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write an 8,000 word essay? It takes about 26 hours and 40 minutes to write an 8,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 9,000 word essay? It takes about 30 hours to write a 9,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 10,000 word essay? It takes about 33 hours and 20 minutes to write a 10,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 12,500 word essay? It takes about 41 hours and 40 minutes to write a 12,500 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 15,000 word essay? It takes about 50 hours to write a 15,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 20,000 word essay? It takes about 66 hours and 40 minutes to write a 20,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 25,000 word essay? It takes about 83 hours and 20 minutes to write a 25,000 word essay.

How long does it take to write a 50,000 word essay? It takes about 166 hours and 40 minutes to write a 50,000 word essay.

(Image courtesy of Miguel )

This isn’t accurate. I wrote my 1000 word essay in an hour, not three hours. You should change the times you have listed to reflect how long it actually takes to write. Obviously you don’t know since the mes you listed are not the same as what I can do!

Did you even read the article? The writer says that it’s based on what she writes and is just a general approximation. How long it takes you or anybody else to write an essay will obviously be different because you’re not the same as everybody else. Nobody writes at the same speed so how long it takes you to write an essay will be different for every person.

Someone doesn’t understand the meaning of “rough estimate”

Well then you must be superhuman or some shit I don’t care, I came here for a question not your butthurt comments. Also, if your so good at writing I wouldn’t have found 2 typos in 2 sentences 🙂

*you’re

If you already have all the research done and know what you want to say, then a 1000 word essay shouldn’t take more than an hour to write. In fact, it probably can be done in 30 minutes or less. The time-consuming part of an essay is the research and how long that takes depends on how much you have to do. But the actual writing of the essay shouldn’t take too long at all.

But research is part of the writing process. If a person writes a book, they don’t only count the time it took them at the typewriter writing. They count all the time it took to research the book as well. Trying to separate the two doesn’t make sense.

I think an important thing to point out here is that there’s a huge difference between writing a 1000 word essay and writing a good 1000 word essay. You can write an essay in hardly any time at all if you don’t do the proper research and don’t spend time editing what you wrote. If you’re going to write a good essay, it’s going to take more time. You should always give yourself more time than you think you’re going to need to get it done.

This applies to all writing. Writing and writing something something well will have a huge time discrepancy even if both writings are the same length. Just because you are able to finish something quickly doesn’t mean that’s the best way to do it.

Exactly! Actually, it can take hours or days to come up with the right line – or it can come in seconds. There’s no real counting in terms of the creative process.

Days to come up with the right line? 😀

It does. Sometimes, no matter how hard you look at something, you won’t be satisfied with it. It may take you days to figure it out. And then, one fine day, you suddenly stand up right in the middle of breakfast and then run upstairs and then type out the right line. Source: personal experience

I just spent 8 hours on a 500-word monologue… This comment made me feel better.

Wow, your advice is excellent it motivated me to do a lot better in my essay.

In my opinion, hours that are presented here a partially true. It may take about an hor to write 300 word essay but editing also takes some time. So on averege, I count the time to write the piece itself + time edit everything.

Research, first draft writing, editing, and rewriting are all part of the writing process. I think the time it takes to do all of them should be counted in the time it takes.

It takes way too long! Teachers should not be allowed to assign essays more than 250 words. They always complain they don’t have enough time and work too hard. It’s only because they make their students do too much work!!

This comment just makes you look lazy. 250 words is nothing. Any topic that needs to be explored will take many more words than this. If you don’t want to write, just admit it and don’t try to project that on others.

If you do your research, use annotations for resources and understand to whom and what you have to transfer than the fewer words the better. Remember that you are demonstrating deep knowledge of the topic by making it accessible to the audience without them doing the research. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Contrary to what academia self-righteously preach, its imperative for any writing and explanation of thought to be simplified. If you cant explain it in short time/short essay you don’t understand it enough.

I disagree, I feel 250 words is way too less to explain any topic. In my opinion, the maximum word count for an essay should be 1500.

It should take long enough that you get all the points you want across in the writing, but not too long as to bore the reader. Writing should be engaging, not boring.

Nice philosophy, but completely unhelpful if you have a paper due tomorrow and limited amount of time to write. The real world doesn’t work that way.

If someone has an essay due tomorrow and they waste time reading this, then they are a bit of an idiot for giving themselves even less time to work with. If they’re leaving work to the last minute like that, then the only thing they should be doing is jumping right in and writing (or planning the essay, but that should be done much sooner).

This is so arbitrary and will depend on the individual. It’s like asking the question, “how long does it take to write a book?” For some, it will only take a couple of months while for others it will take a lifetime. it also depends on the type of writing you’re doing. Some writing is easy and quick and other writing is difficult and requires huge amounts of research.

The uphill task of writing an essay is doing thorough research. Once you have completed the research, you can deliver a 1000 word paper per hour

I completely agree with you on that one. I recently worked on a 4000 word essay, and while the research did take me three hours to conduct, I completed the essay itself in a bit less than four hours and scored a total of 32/34 points.

So happy to read that! That’s because I just realised, that that is what I needed to read. I’ve got two months to write six 2500 word essays. I’ve been procrastinating because I’m simply in fear of doing a bad job. I’ve done lots of research; made lots of notes; collected citations and written nothing. It’s time. I can do this!

I’m writing a 1600 word essay right now as I type this lol

Then show me after you have finished.

Im writing a 2500 word essay, almost done, I can’t even imagine writing a 10000 word essay in university, that sounds EXTREMELY painful 🙁

I found these estimations quite accurate, thank you.

I’m writing a narrative for my English class right this moment and the word requirements are 800-1000. I’ve only been working for two hours and I’m at 1,157. I’m nowhere near done…

your word requirements are 800-1000 and u have 1157? You’ve been done for a while I would say

Wow i have to write a 1 500 word essay in 4 days and I have about 1050 words left Dono how long thats gonna take me 😂😭😭😭

I am writing a dissertation and those estimations made me positive because just 41 hour to write 12,000 essay seems nothing. But at the moment I just finished literature review(though the hardest part yet) without editing I am already at over 35 hours of work. And that’s not even a half! But I am aiming for a good grade though…

I’ve found these estimates incredibly accurate in my years in college. I’m about to graduate next week and have one more 3500 word paper to write. We’ll see if the estimates hold true. However, the estimates (for me at least) don’t include the time it takes to edit so I usually add a little time depending on how long the essay/paper has to be.

Wow, these tips are helpful, Thank You to the creator of this website. These tips helped me a lot in my essay for school.

Popular Posts

  • The Top 10 Most Difficult-to-Spot Writing Mistakes
  • 4 Simple Tips for Great Writing
  • Avoiding Wordiness: 330 Examples & What to Use Instead
  • The Oxford Comma: The Splice of Life
  • Who vs. Whom
  • Affect vs. Effect
  • How to Take Notes: The 10-Step Guide to Note-Taking (Infographic)
  • CMOS vs. AP – Recent Changes & Comparison (Updated 1. Nov. 2021)
  • The Daily Word Counts of 19 Famous Writers
  • The Ideal Length of Everything You Write Online ( Infographic)

Recent Comments

  • Trilby on Avoiding Wordiness: 330 Examples & What to Use Instead
  • Trilby on Words Everyone Seems to Hate
  • Julie Retallack on Words Everyone Seems to Hate
  • Cat on Who vs. Whom
  • Cat on The Oxford Comma: The Splice of Life

Check Word Count

Session expired

Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.

essaymaniacs logo

  • Place order

How to write a 2000-word Essay: What works Best?

author

Writing a remarkable 2000-word essay is an overwhelming task for students. This type of essay requires an overwhelming amount of knowledge, time to write, and the ability to organize your thoughts concisely. This guide will explain everything you need to complete a 2000-word essay.

How long is a 2000-word essay?

In academic writing, a 2000-word essay is the same as four pages of a single-spaced document or eight pages double-spaced one . Double spacing means there should be blank lines between each line of text that prevent them from blurring together. Your instructor may ask you to double-space the essay to make it easier to read and to allow reviewers to make comments or suggestions about the assignment.

Each page of single-spaced content has 500-550 words, while a double-spaced page has 250-275. If you are using MLA or APA formatting style, the formatting standard for an essay should be (1) double-spaced, (2) Times New Roman font, and (3) one-inch margins all around. If you use Ariel font pages

How Many Paragraphs is a 2000 Words Essay

A 2000-word essay consists of between 7 and 9 paragraphs, each having between 3 and 5 or more full and coherent sentences. Please note that there are no proper rules on how many sentences your paragraph should have since each paragraph discusses different ideas relating to the main topic of your essay.

Some paragraphs could be shorter and others longer. Some paragraphs could be a sentence shorter, and others about half a page long. What matters more is how you structure and complete the paragraphs.

However, you should not concern yourself with the length of your paragraph that you forget what matters most: the content of the paragraphs. Communicate effectively the quality of the message to ensure you answer the topic.

Can I Write 2000 Words in Two Hours?

Writing a 2000-word article in two hours is challenging but not impossible. Typically, a good essay requires in-depth research, a clear structure for the paper, and an organization of your ideas, which requires adequate time.

However, quickly completing an essay depends on your familiarity with the topic and typing speed. Most adults have an average typing speed of 40 words per minute (WPM). However, for experienced typists, the average typing speed is about 76 words per minute. Many college students trying to finish their assignments on time usually type 60-70 words per minute.

If you are having an essay crisis and can’t seem to figure out how to write a 2000-word essay in two hours, use the following tips;

Plan your essay

Take 10 – 15 minutes to organize your thoughts by identifying your essay's main topics and ideas. Focus only on key ideas and avoid unnecessary details to save time. Then, decide how you will organize them in your paper. A great tip is to have a logical order, ensuring a link between all ideas.

Research Efficiently and effectively

All academic papers, especially long-form essays like a 2000-word essay, require in-depth research to gather supporting information for your topic. You need to dedicate a few minutes to gather sources before writing.

Write the Introduction

Use 5-10 minutes to write a compelling introduction, beginning with a hook to grab readers' attention. Then, provide some context about the topic and state your thesis statement.

Write the Body Paragraphs

Allocate 10- 15 minutes to discuss each idea supporting your main topic. If you have 5 ideas, it will take you about 50 minutes to finish writing the body of your essay.

Write Your Conclusion

Use 10-15 minutes to finalize your essay by restating your thesis statement, summarizing the main points, reminding the readers why they should care, and providing recommendations/ suggestions for the main topic.

Revise Your Essay

Use 20 minutes to review your draft to correct any mistakes you made while writing. The final draft should be free of any errors (punctuation, grammar, and spelling) and be plagiarism-free. You must also ensure that all ideas are clearly and concisely written.

Please note that writing a 2000-word essay under time constraints will likely affect the quality of your work; however, following the above tips ensures you finish a well-structured 2000-word essay quickly.

What is the Format for a 2000 Word Essay?

A 2000-word essay is an academic paper with the same format as others. This means it has an introduction, a body paragraph, and a conclusion. Your introduction and conclusion should comprise approximately 25% of the total word count of the essay, while the rest of 75% should be dedicated to the body.

Introductions

An introduction of a 2000-word essay is 5-10% of the total word count. It should be between 100 – 150 words of concisely written content. If you have no idea what to include in the introduction, the following tips will offer a starting point.

  • Set the scene
  • Introduce the topic or problem under discussion.
  • If needed, provide definitions of complex concepts.
  • An explanation of why the topic or problem matters. (provide the size or the scope of the matter).
  • The purpose of the essay.
  • Introduce the thesis statement, which is the central idea of the essay.
  • Briefly provide the outline you will use to explain the paper's logic.

Your introduction should be a paragraph or two long since a paragraph is made of 100 words.

The Main Body

A body of a 2000-word essay will make up about 75% of the total word count. It should be divided into 5-7 paragraphs, each discussing one central idea that identifies the main topic. These paragraphs should be 150- 250 words, each supported by 2 or more references. Note that the longer the assignments, the more important it is to provide links that refer to earlier points, thus connecting ideas.

When you begin writing the body, your ideas will likely flow randomly from the mind. Since you are writing for readers with different backgrounds and viewpoints, you must organize these ideas to make it easier for them to process and understand. Use the following format to organize the body of your essay;

  • Write a topic sentence that identifies the paragraph topic you will discuss.
  • Supporting information , such as examples, details, and evidence, contributes to the main topic. When you provide evidence, ensure you explain why it is relevant to the topic.
  • A concluding sentence also acts as a transition to the next paragraph. Provide a conclusion that reminds readers of what they have read and shows the topic's significance.

Use the above format to organize the rest of the body paragraphs. Consider writing this plan on paper and pinning it on your desk to remind yourself whenever you write an essay. 

Additionally, consider using the following writing techniques and tools to help finish your essay in under two hours.

Technique 1: The Pomodoro technique

The Pomodoro Technique. This technique involves working continuously for 25 minutes and then taking a 5-minute break. The Pomodoro technique is effective because it allows you to focus while avoiding burnout. Research shows that taking regular breaks can increase well-being and performance.

Technique 2: Write in Batches

Writing in batches is an effective method to finish a 2000-word essay in two hours. It involves dividing your essay into sections and working on them before taking a break.

Use tools such as Grammarly and Hemingway Editor to help edit your work and ensure no errors before submission.

This is the final paragraph of your essay. Like an introduction, a conclusion makes up about 5-10% of a 2000-word essay. This means that a conclusion for a 2000-word essay has approximately 100-150 words.

If you follow the above format, the total word count will 2050.

How Long Will It Take to Write a 2000 Words Essay?

Finishing a 2000-word essay will take 6-8 hours on average. However, if you are just typing the essay without doing any in-depth research, outlining the work, or adding citations and references, it will take about 50 minutes. For a handwritten essay, it takes about 1.7 hours to finish a 2000-word essay.

Please note that some students can finish a 2000-word essay in just under two hours, while others can take at least five days (2 for in-depth research, 2 for writing the essay, and one for revising and editing) to finish. All this will depend on the complexities of the topic. A complex topic will probably require more time for research, especially if getting the sources for the topic is challenging.

The assignment deadline will also influence whether someone can finish the essay quickly or not. Many students often find themselves swamped with assignments, wondering which to prioritize. If you have a 1000-word essay and another for 2200 words, prioritize the latter and focus on finishing the shorter one later.  

If you want to finish your essay quickly, avoid distractions such as social media, TV, friends, etc.

How Many References Are in a 2000 Words Essay

A 2000-word essay should have between 10 and 20 high-quality references. Please take note that these are just suggestions. Logically, there should be a source in every paragraph. Each argument supported by credible evidence must have a reference. Some factors that will determine how many references each of your paragraphs will have include:

The Type of Research

If you are conducting empirical research, you will need more references compared to doing research for a theoretical paper. This is because the latter focuses on synthesizing existing concepts.

Depth of the Research

If your 2000-word essay is about a complex topic, you must do more thorough research to locate all the evidence supporting or refuting your claims. This means your essay will have more references than one that does not need much research.

Assignment’s Requirements

Your instructors will specify the number of references to use in your essay; they might verbally communicate this in class or highlight it on the assignment prompt. Thus, it's essential to always read and understand your prompt before working on the assignment.

If there are no specifications about essay references, check with your instructor how many are appropriate for the type of essay you are writing.

Writing Time by Word Counts

The following table outlines how long it takes to complete an essay, depending on the number of words.

From the above table, it's clear that a person's typing speed will dictate whether they can finish an assignment quickly or not.

Writing Time by Page Counts

Wondering how long it takes to complete a page? The table below will let you know how long it will take to finish an essay based on page counts.

This rough estimate is based on slow, average, and fast writers.

Tips to Help You Finish a 2000 Words Essay

So, you left your 2000-word essay until the last minute and can't seem to figure out how to finish it on time? No worries. The following tips can help.

Eat a Good Breakfast

A study published in the National Library of Medicine has shown that eating a good breakfast is associated with positive outcomes for learners and professionals. Breakfast gives you energy after fasting overnight for more than 7 hours. Take some brain food fuel, such as yogurts topped with berries, to give you steady energy as you write your essay. This will prevent you from feeling hungry, which could be a distraction.

Pick Your Equipment and Workstation

When you sit down to write, everything must be within reach. So, pick a conducive environment away from distractions and collect all materials like your laptops, pens, notebooks, etc.

Set Time Management Goals

When you have an urgent assignment that is 2000 words long, time management is key to success. Good time management skills will help you finish the task quickly while avoiding distractions. You can break up your tasks into chunks and work on them individually.

Use Online Tools to Speed Up the Research Process

Research can take an awful amount of time, especially for a complex topic. So, speed up the process by using online tools like Google Scholar to find sources for your essay.

Also, check if your instructor has published a list of sources on your module's online platform. Most of them are kind enough to put them online.

Write Your Notes directly on Your Laptop.

Normally, when researching a topic, you will write ideas in a notebook and then use it later when typing on your laptop. However, since you are in a hurry, skip this step and directly type the ideas and their sources on our computer. Once you are done, you can drag and drop paragraphs in the correct order.

An essay that is 2000 words long is a common type of essay you will encounter in school. You must be well prepared by understanding what it takes to complete this type of essay. Whether you are a seasoned writer or a beginner, the above guide will be helpful when writing a 2000-word essay.

If you are struggling with writing a paper or essay that is 2000 or 2200 words long, we can help. EssayManiacs has a team of professional writers who can write such an essay in under a day or between 7 and 8 hours or less. Therefore, if you want help with your assignments , we are online and ready to help. Please place an order, and we will assign your paper to a writer within the next few minutes. In terms of cost, it should cost you around $18-25/page, depending on the urgency. Engage us for a discount.

Need a Discount to Order?

15% off first order, what you get from us.

scan

Plagiarism-free papers

Our papers are 100% original and unique to pass online plagiarism checkers.

research

Well-researched academic papers

Even when we say essays for sale, they meet academic writing conventions.

24/7 support

24/7 online support

Hit us up on live chat or Messenger for continuous help with your essays.

communication

Easy communication with writers

Order essays and begin communicating with your writer directly and anonymously.

9 Tips to Ace That Timed Essay

Exams are almost upon us, and a familiar sense of foreboding has settled over the campus. One exam element that can be particularly intimidating for some students is the timed essay: an exam question which demands a full essay on a topic that is typically revealed for the first time during the test. While these kinds of questions may seem scary, there are plenty of ways to make them easy for yourself. Read on for tips about how to prepare in advance of the exam and how to approach timed essays before, during, and after the writing process.

While Preparing for the Exam: Become familiar with the course content. If the professor hasn’t told you in advance what a timed essay prompt will be, it can be intimidating to think that you will have to write about a subject you’ve never seen before. However, this thinking process does not reflect the reality of the situation. In fact, even if your teacher hasn’t given you any hints about the essay question, you do know what it will be about: the concepts and ideas you’ve discussed in the course. Therefore, if you take the time to review your notes and ensure you understand everything that was discussed, it should be difficult for the essay question to catch you off guard. As soon as you read the question, relevant course concepts will start popping into your head, and you’ll just have to organize them into a coherent essay. Start planning if you can. Although the situation described above sometimes occurs, it’s also very common for professors to give their students a fairly detailed idea of what an essay question will involve in advance of the test day. (After all, professors want to mark high-quality essays written by well-prepared students!) This heads-up gives you a great chance to prepare for the exam. If you have the time, consider mapping out a possible essay in point form before the day of the exam arrives. Consider practicing writing under time pressure. You’ve probably written dozens of essays before--the only thing that sets a timed essay apart is that it’s timed. Students often struggle to complete the full essay within the time constraints, particularly if they have to write longhand when they’re accustomed to working on the computer. For this reason, it can be helpful to simulate the conditions of a timed exam before the actual day: pick a practice question, find some lined paper, set a stopwatch, and see how you do! Before You Start Writing: Read the question carefully. The most critical part of the essay-writing process actually happens before you write your first word. When you flip to the essay question, make sure you read it as carefully as you can, noting the difference between words such as ‘contrast’ and ‘analyze’ and highlighting any details which the professor specifically instructs you to include. It’s not uncommon for excellent essays to receive low marks because the student answered a question other than the one that was asked. Make a clear and specific plan. Some students react to the time pressure of essay exams by scribbling down their introduction as soon as they’ve read the question and figuring out their points as they go. While it might seem counter-intuitive, taking five or ten minutes before you start writing in order to draw up a plan will be an enormous time saver. Decide on your thesis, the topic of each paragraph, and the arguments which you intend to cover, then jot down some quick point-form notes. This process won’t take long, and, once you complete it, all that’s left will be to expand those notes into a well-organized essay. Without a clear plan, you run the risk of realizing partway through that you’ve drifted off topic or written yourself into a corner, and fixing these mistakes will consume a ton of extra time. Schedule a set time for each paragraph. On the topic of planning, it’s important to sketch out an idea of how long you want to spend on each section of your essay. (If you know the number of paragraphs you’ll need to write ahead of time, you can do this before the exam even starts!) Take note of the amount of time allotted for the exam and split it into reasonably-sized segments, leaving some time at the end for revision if possible. Without a schedule to follow, it’s easy to become too focused on a single paragraph and run out of time to finish the essay. While You’re Writing: Write clearly and double-space. This tip may seem basic, but it’s easy to forget and it can make a big difference. Both these measures won’t just make it easier for the marker to read your paper; they'll also help you write it. If you have time left at the end of the exam for review, having the ability to skim quickly through your work and write revisions in blank spaces will be incredibly helpful.

Keep yourself on schedule.  Remember the paragraph-based schedule we discussed above? It’ll be useless if you don’t do regular check-ins during the exam. Keep an eye on the clock to ensure you’re always on track. If you realize that you’re falling dangerously behind schedule, it might be necessary to cut some arguments or examples you planned to include. Although making these omissions can be painful, it’s better to leave out a few points from one section than to leave out an entire paragraph because you ran out of time. Don’t worry too much about editing and revision before you finish. When composing essays, many students stop and read over each paragraph once they finish it, making sure that it’s well-written and free of errors before advancing to the next one. This approach is entirely logical when there’s no time pressure involved, but it can actually work against you during an exam. Perfecting paragraphs is a time-consuming process, and, if you spend too much time editing before the essay is finished, you might have to rush through the last few sections or leave them out entirely. For this reason, it’s best to focus on producing a complete first draft before you worry about edits and revisions.

After You’ve Finished Writing: Re-read the question and ensure you’ve addressed all parts. The most important part of writing an essay exam is ensuring that you’re answering the question was posed. Even if you made sure you were interpreting everything correctly before you began, you may have forgotten to address a subquestion or integrate an example as you were writing. Before you submit, read the prompt again and make sure your completed essay matches up! Edit if you have time. If you have enough time left over, read your essay again and make corrections. When you’re working under time pressure, it’s easy to make grammar mistakes or produce hard-to-follow sentences; the final few minutes are your chance to clean up those errors. Unless if you finished way ahead of schedule, don’t worry about major revisions like reorganizing the structure of the essay--it’s better to hand in an essay with an imperfect structure than a paper that’s impossible to follow because you had to stop halfway through the revision process.

Remember to have the right perspective. Once you hand your exam to the professor, relax! It’s easy to work yourself up after an essay exam when you didn’t get the chance to read your work over or you feel like your arguments were weak. However, it’s important to keep in mind that your professor understands the circumstances under which the essay was written. They’re fully aware of the time pressure you were dealing with, and they will judge your work far differently than they would judge a typical essay with a deadline set weeks after the assignment date. If you did your best to write a complete, clear, and insightful essay within the time allotted, you should have nothing to worry about. Best of luck during the upcoming exam season!

Source: Quick Meme  

  • outlining ,
  • preparation ,
  • writing process
  • Link to facebook
  • Link to linkedin
  • Link to twitter
  • Link to youtube
  • Writing Tips

7 Top Tips on Writing the Time

7 Top Tips on Writing the Time

  • 7-minute read
  • 25th July 2019

As anyone who has turned up for a midday meeting at midnight will tell you, clarity is vital when writing the time of day. But there are many ways to write the time, and the best approach isn’t always obvious. We have a few tips to help, though.

1. Words or Numerals?

You can write the time of day using either words or numerals. If you are using numerals, you would usually include both hours and minutes, although you can omit the minutes in less formal writing .

For instance, all the following would be acceptable:

She gets up at six in the morning every day.

She gets up at 6:00 in the morning every day.

She gets up at 6 o’clock in the morning every day.

As a rule, though, you would only write out the time as words when:

  • It is part of a full sentence, particularly in descriptive or literary writing.
  • Using a 12-hour clock (never with a 24-hour clock ).
  • You’re referring to an approximate or round time (e.g., saying “ten thirty” is fine, but you would not usually write “twenty-four minutes after eight”).

In most other cases, numerals are the clearer option for writing the time, especially in scientific and technical writing, where precision is vital.

2. AM and PM

The abbreviations AM and PM can be used when writing the time as numerals. Each applies to a different time of day:

  • AM is short for ante meridiem , meaning “before noon.”
  • PM is short for post meridiem , meaning “after noon.”

As such, we use AM and PM to indicate the time of day when we are using a 12-hour clock. We can see how this works more clearly if we write out various times of day in both 12-hour and 24-hour formats:

You can see here that we need AM and PM with the twelve-hour clock for clarity. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between, e.g., midday and midnight. Likewise, though, you do not need to include AM or PM with a 24-hour time because it is already clear.

There are also several ways to write AM and PM, including:

  • ALL CAPS, small caps , or lower case (e.g., 12 AM, 12 AM , or 12 am)
  • With or without periods between the letters (e.g., 8 PM or 8 P.M.)
  • With or without a space after the number (e.g., 1 AM or 1AM)

Consistency is key here, so make sure to apply one style throughout your document. You may also want to check your style guide if you have one, as some organizations will have their own rules for how to write AM and PM.

3. When to Use O’clock

You’ll have noticed we use “o’clock ” in one of the examples above. This term means “of the clock,” so we can use it to show that a number refers to a time.

However, you should only use “o’clock” with exact hours:

It is precisely 5 o’clock . ✔

I’m leaving at seven o’clock . ✔

It arrived at 7:34 o’clock . ✘

The gig starts at half past seven o’clock . ✘

We’ll save a discussion of when wine o’clock is for another blog post.

Find this useful?

Subscribe to our newsletter and get writing tips from our editors straight to your inbox.

4. Past, After, Till, and To

When writing the time as words, use “after,” “past,” and “to” for intervals between hours. You can combine these terms with either numbers or the words “half” and “quarter” depending on the time in question:

  • Use after or past for intervals up to half an hour past the hour.
  • Use to for any interval after the half hour up to the hour.
  • Use half past to indicate 30 minutes past the hour.
  • Use quarter past   or  quarter after for 15 minutes after the hour.
  • Use quarter to for 15 minutes up to the hour.

For example, we would use the above accordingly in the following times:

7:05 → Five after seven

7:15 → Quarter past seven

7:30 → Half past seven

7:45 → Quarter to eight

7:55 → Five to eight

Keep in mind that using “after” for times is only standard in American English. In other English dialects, “past” is far more common.

5. Punctuating the Time

When writing the time as numerals, you can use either a colon or a period between the hour and the minutes. In some cases, such as in the military , you can even write out a 24-hour time without any punctuation.

For instance, the following are all acceptable ways of punctuating a time:

We need to leave by 6:45 pm at the latest. ✔

We need to leave by 6.45 pm at the latest. ✔

We need to leave by 1845 at the latest. ✔

The colon is the most common option here, but it is a matter of preference. Unless you’re in the military, in which case we suggest sticking to protocol.

6. Time Zones

For the contiguous states in the USA, we have four standard time zones:

  • Pacific Time (PT) [UTC-08:00]
  • Mountain Time (MT) [UTC-07:00]
  • Central Time (CT) [UTC-06:00]
  • Eastern Time (ET) [UTC-5:00]

We also have regional time zones for Alaska, Hawaii, and 5 US dependencies, plus daylight saving time in some places during the warmer months of the year. And people in other countries use different time zones entirely!

Basically, we’re saying geography can make time complicated.

This is why we sometimes include a time zone when writing the time. The initials UTC above, for instance, stand for Coordinated Universal Time . We can use this to compare times in different places. So, “UTC-8:00” means Pacific Time is 8 hours behind UTC. And since we know Pacific Time is 8 hours behind UTC and Eastern Time is 5 hours behind UTC, we can work out that ET is 3 hours ahead of PT.

In other words, by including a time zone when we write a time, we can help people in other places “translate” it into their own time zone.

This is important if you are writing for an international audience, since not everyone will be in the same time zone. You thus need to include a set of time zone initials so your reader can calculate the equivalent time where they are. For example, if we were writing a time for an international audience, we might say:

The live broadcast will begin at 9:00 pm UTC .

Someone in Bolivia could then look up the difference between UTC and BOT (Bolivia Time) and know the broadcast begins at 5:00 pm where they are.

7. Avoiding Redundancy when Writing the Time

In writing, redundancy means using a word unnecessarily. We mentioned above, for example, that you do not need to use AM or PM with 24-hour times because we already know whether a time is the morning or afternoon/evening when using a 24-hour clock.

Other cases of temporal redundancy you may want to avoid include:

  • Using “in the morning,” “in the afternoon,” etc., alongside AM/PM.
  • Combining “in the morning,” “in the afternoon,” etc., with a 24-hour time.
  • Using “midday,” “noon,” or “midnight” alongside a time in numbers.

We’ll end this post with a few examples of redundancies so you know what to watch out for. Check out the table below, good luck writing the time, and let us know if you need any help proofreading your work.

Share this article:

' src=

Post A New Comment

Got content that needs a quick turnaround? Let us polish your work. Explore our editorial business services.

3-minute read

How to Insert a Text Box in a Google Doc

Google Docs is a powerful collaborative tool, and mastering its features can significantly enhance your...

2-minute read

How to Cite the CDC in APA

If you’re writing about health issues, you might need to reference the Centers for Disease...

5-minute read

Six Product Description Generator Tools for Your Product Copy

Introduction If you’re involved with ecommerce, you’re likely familiar with the often painstaking process of...

What Is a Content Editor?

Are you interested in learning more about the role of a content editor and the...

4-minute read

The Benefits of Using an Online Proofreading Service

Proofreading is important to ensure your writing is clear and concise for your readers. Whether...

6 Online AI Presentation Maker Tools

Creating presentations can be time-consuming and frustrating. Trying to construct a visually appealing and informative...

Logo Harvard University

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing.

Words&Paper: Instant Writer 4+

Essay ai writing assistant, aleksei zinchenko, designed for iphone.

  • 5.0 • 2 Ratings
  • Offers In-App Purchases

iPhone Screenshots

Description.

Easy start on your essay with Words & Paper * Beat AI detectors * Co-Write with AI to nail the task * Factual sources * Start on anything in one minute Terms Of Service: https://shorturl.at/jmCDO

Version 2.1.2

Show sources used to write each paragraph. Add sources to the exported essay

Ratings and Reviews

Saves so much time.

Helps me to do the research and write papers way faster

Super fun and informative!

Great at unleashing curiosity

App Privacy

The developer, Aleksei Zinchenko , indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

  • Identifiers
  • Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

  • Unlimited Words&Paper Access $9.99
  • App Support
  • Privacy Policy

More By This Developer

Formats – Image Converter

Precious Pixels: Blur Face

You Might Also Like

Essay Writer AI Grammar Helper

SmartEssay AI - writer assay

Chat AI & Content Writer

Chinese Pronunciation

Math AI : Tutor & Math Helper

IMAGES

  1. How long to Write a 3-Page Essay? A Guide how to write one

    how much time to write an essay

  2. How Long Does It Take To Write An Extended Essay? (Answered)

    how much time to write an essay

  3. How to Write an Essay in English (Essay Writing in 9 Simple Steps)

    how much time to write an essay

  4. How To Write An Essay Fast: Ultimate Guide To Last Minute Essay Writing

    how much time to write an essay

  5. How to Write an Essay

    how much time to write an essay

  6. How To Write an Essay

    how much time to write an essay

VIDEO

  1. How to find time to finish writing the book

  2. Essay Writing

  3. Value of Time Essay in English 10 Lines || Short Essay on Value of Time

  4. Value Of Time Essay In English

  5. XAT 2024 Essay Writing

  6. Finding Time to Write

COMMENTS

  1. Getting College Essay Help: Important Do's and Don'ts

    Keep in mind, however, that a 45-year-old lawyer writes quite differently from an 18-year-old student, so if your dad ends up writing the bulk of your essay, we're probably going to notice. (Vanderbilt University) So, basically, a big old thumbs up on the whole "get someone to look at your essay" situation, as far as colleges are concerned.

  2. PDF Strategies for Essay Writing

    Harvard College Writing Center 5 Asking Analytical Questions When you write an essay for a course you are taking, you are being asked not only to create a product (the essay) but, more importantly, to go through a process of thinking more deeply about a question or problem related to the course. By writing about a

  3. How Long is an Essay? Guidelines for Different Types of Essay

    Essay length guidelines. Type of essay. Average word count range. Essay content. High school essay. 300-1000 words. In high school you are often asked to write a 5-paragraph essay, composed of an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. College admission essay. 200-650 words.

  4. The Beginner's Guide to Writing an Essay

    Essay writing process. The writing process of preparation, writing, and revisions applies to every essay or paper, but the time and effort spent on each stage depends on the type of essay.. For example, if you've been assigned a five-paragraph expository essay for a high school class, you'll probably spend the most time on the writing stage; for a college-level argumentative essay, on the ...

  5. How to Write an Essay in Under 30 Minutes: 10 Steps

    1. Take 15 minutes to write the essay. Now that you have your thesis statement and your outline, focus on composing content for each part of the essay. [7] Try to spend two to three minutes on each body paragraph. Then, take three minutes on your conclusion paragraph and go back to your introduction.

  6. How Long Is an Essay? The Ultimate Essay Length Guide

    Increasing the size of periods and commas. This is one of the less noticeable tricks you can use. For instance, if your paper's font is 12 pt., increase it to 14 pt. only for punctuation marks. Italicizing periods and commas will also add several lines of length to your essay.

  7. How to Write an Academic Essay in 6 Simple Steps

    Here is another essay writing tip: if you are able to locate an effective thesis early on, it will save you time during the academic editing process. Read More: How to Write a Great Thesis Statement. Step 3: Writing the Essay Body. When learning how to write academic essays, you must learn how to write a good body paragraph.

  8. How to Write a College Essay

    This will give you ample time for essay brainstorming, writing, revision, and feedback. While timelines will vary for each student, aim to spend at least 1-3 weeks brainstorming and writing your first draft and at least 2-4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Remember to leave enough time for breaks in between each writing and editing stage.

  9. Essay Time Calculator

    Writing essays is a common task for students, professionals, and writers, but it can be challenging to estimate how much time it will take to complete a specific essay. The "Essay Time Calculator" is a practical tool that helps you plan and manage your time effectively when tackling essay assignments.

  10. How Long to Write an Essay or Paper: Both in Pages and Words

    The time it takes to write an essay or a paper varies with its length, technicalities of the content, research needed, and your skills, among other factors. While a simple 600-word essay may take 2 hours for an average writer, a technical task of the same length may take 5 hours. A 1200-word essay can take as short as 4 hours to write and as ...

  11. How Long Does It Take to Write a 1000 Word Essay?

    Oh wow! That's a tough question. It depends on a whole lot of things. At the same time, you shouldn't be intimidated. 1,000 words is actually a relatively short piece. A dissertation would usually be in the region of 12,000 words, and university assignments can stretch to essays of 5,000 words. No matter what your assigned word count may be, some of the things that will influence the time it ...

  12. Writing a 2000-word Essay: Length, Time-to-Write, and Tips

    Finishing a 2000-word essay will take 6-8 hours on average. However, if you are just typing the essay without doing any in-depth research, outlining the work, or adding citations and references, it will take about 50 minutes. For a handwritten essay, it takes about 1.7 hours to finish a 2000-word essay.

  13. How to write a 3,000 word essay in a day

    1.45pm - 6pm: Write the body of the essay. 6pm - 6.45pm: Dinner break. 6.45pm - 10.30pm: Edit, improve and meet the word count. 10.30pm - 11pm: Print (if needed) and get everything ready for the morning. Remember to schedule a few short 10-minute breaks (one every 45-60 minutes should do the trick).

  14. 9 Tips to Ace That Timed Essay

    Take note of the amount of time allotted for the exam and split it into reasonably-sized segments, leaving some time at the end for revision if possible. Without a schedule to follow, it's easy to become too focused on a single paragraph and run out of time to finish the essay. Write clearly and double-space.

  15. How long does it take to write a college essay?

    While timelines will differ depending on the student, plan on spending at least 1-3 weeks brainstorming and writing the first draft of your college admissions essay, and at least 2-4 weeks revising across multiple drafts. Don't forget to save enough time for breaks between each writing and editing stage. You should already begin thinking ...

  16. How to Write a Timed Essay: 13 Steps (with Pictures)

    2. Organize your time for a 30-minute timed essay. For a longer or shorter essay, use this same time ratio for each step. Read and understand the prompt = 1.5 minutes. Pick a position = 1.5 minutes. Jot down an outline = 2 minutes. Write = 21 minutes. Revise = 3 minutes.

  17. 7 Top Tips on Writing the Time

    4. Past, After, Till, and To. When writing the time as words, use "after," "past," and "to" for intervals between hours. You can combine these terms with either numbers or the words "half" and "quarter" depending on the time in question: Use after or past for intervals up to half an hour past the hour. Use to for any ...

  18. How long does it take you to write an essay? : r/college

    A ten page research paper would take me about 3-4 days to write. One or two days for research, one day to outline, and one day to write and edit. Takes me a page an hour (double spaced). I always write an outline and operate from that. at least 2 hours per page.

  19. How long does it take you on average to write an essay? : r/UniUK

    Probably an average of 15-20 hours. Although I'm not exactly the most efficient worker, so it's probably still a solid 10-15 hours of actual work. Reply reply. greew46783445987. •. Assuming it's 4-5000 words. I'll spend a while (week or two on research) getting the planning sorted and a week to write, long but needed.

  20. Words&Paper: Instant Writer 4+

    ‎Easy start on your essay with Words & Paper * Beat AI detectors * Co-Write with AI to nail the task * Factual sources * Start on anything in one minute Terms Of Service: https://shorturl.at/jmCDO ... Saves so much time Helps me to do the research and write papers way faster. Mlover1111 , 02/10/2023. Super fun and informative!