How to Ditch Your Word Limit

We always thought of word limits as a gift from on high, but amaryllismoon couldn't disagree more.—Sparkitors

Word limit: the phrase is enough to send any aspiring writer into seizures of terror. Sure, we can deal with page limits or paragraph limits, but word limits?  The only thing worse would be a character limit, but thankfully no teacher has imposed that dreadful restriction upon essays—yet. Word limits force you to choose between a lengthy, detailed version of your idea and a brief, non-descriptive, garbled summary of what your idea should have been. For example, if this post had a tight word limit, I probably couldn't have written the words “garbled summary”—and what a shame that would have been!

Despite the obvious faults of word limits, teachers and other assigners of essays seem addicted to them. What happened to the freedom of speech?  If you’re just as insulted as I am by this limitation upon your own words, I recommend you use these tips:

1. Increase your font size. By at least 20. This is what teachers get for not setting a page limit!  Write under the word limit, but  make sure that your essay of 300 words takes up 10 pages.

2. Write your essay as if the word limit did not exist—but then when you reach the limit, stop writing, even if you are in the middle of a sentence. Hey, the word limit said only 500 words, didn’t it? Your teacher will appreciate the beautiful flow of your words, and then curse himself for cutting you off like that.

3.  Turn your essay into art. Write your essay—but then shape the words into a picture. Or, you can write your essay in a spiral form. Next time your teacher assigns an essay, she'll be so busy defining the other limits on your essay (straight lines, no pictures, etc.) that she'll forget to assign a word limit!

4. Write your essay without thinking of the word limit, and then count how many words you went over by. Go through your essay and delete all the most important verbs and nouns in order to make the word count. Your essay will make absolutely no sense at all—but when your teacher asks about it, you can innocently reply, “I was just trying to make it under the word limit.”

5. Change your font color to purple, green, or turquoise. Or all three. Just trust me on this one.

Do you love word limits or loathe 'em?

Related post: How To Write the Anti-Essay