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quotations could trivialize them. But there's no real reason to cut-and-paste unwieldy paragraphs from average sources into your essay if they would fit better when paraphrased.

Overall Length
"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
-- Mark Twain

What Twain meant is that it takes effort to write something concise, but it's fairly easy to babble on endlessly.

Most essay assignments come with a specific word count in mind: some a minimum, some a maximum, some both. I have found that most essays tend to easily fall within the required word count range naturally. The exceptions have been, frankly, on essay assignments that were poorly constructed by the assigning teacher or professor, or on open-topic assignments where the topic chosen was too broad or too narrow to properly fit the assignment. If in doubt about your topic, you should consult your teacher/professor.

Some assignments are given page count requirements instead of word count. A normal, typed, double-spaced essay without footnotes is said to yield approximately 250 words per page. Page count requirements are open to cheating by doing things like extending the line height, widening all four margins, increasing the font size or using a wider-style font, using footnotes, and other style elements that help spread the content over the pages. While this may satisfy the requirement, keep in mind that your instructor is expecting a certain level of content in the essay, and an incomplete essay stretched over the required amount of pages is still an incomplete essay. Conversely, an essay that blathers on will still seem to blather even if the student creatively crams more words into a smaller space.

If your essay is thoroughly researched, it should be difficult to fall below a word count target. In fact, if your research was very good, you may have more difficulty staying below a maximum word count. You have to find a balance between fitting in the information you deem essential and not making the essay sound disjointed and choppy. Too often, students write the same points over and over again, wasting space and making the essay boring. Consider the following paragraphs:

CHOPPY, DISJOINTED, REPETITIVE:

Smith invented the widgetiscope. He invented it in 1891 (Bogus 16). It was an important invention. "By far, Joe Smith's most important contribution to the field of widget watching was the widgetiscope" (Bogus 93). The invention was completed in New York. The New York Widget Watchers helped pay for it. The widgetiscope works by placing the widget on the slide, adjusting the focus, and then monitoring the behaviour of the widget (Bogus 93).

The sentences are choppy and jarring to the reader, and facts are repeated for no reason. The bit explaining what the widgetiscope does should probably be in a separate paragraph from the historical information about it.

GOOD:

"By far, Joe Smith's most important contribution to the field of widget watching was the widgetiscope" (Bogus 93). Smith invented the widgetiscope in 1891 in New York, thanks in part to the financing by the New York Widget Watchers (Bogus 16).

The widgetiscope works by placing the widget on the slide, adjusting the focus, and then monitoring the behaviour of the widget (Bogus 93). [insert more about the relevance and workings of the widgetiscope to flesh this out]

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