College students face various challenges while studying. Someone cannot cope with a task because of its high complexity, another one cannot gather their thoughts and get rid of procrastination, while others have tough times trying to meet the requirements for the paper length. You can find a way out from each case, but we will focus on the latter issue. How to elongate an essay if you have already outlined all your thoughts and added even some bonus ideas, but the length of paper still leaves much to be desired? The first thing you have to do is to calm down and drink a glass of water. Dehydration always negatively affects mental activity. After that, come back, and let's continue.
Your teacher may have provided you with a range of requirements for your paper, so you should follow them all to get a high grade. The length of an essay is one of the most crucial moments that shows your professor you have taken their demands seriously. If you have no idea how to fluff an essay, let's consider some tricks and tips.
How to Extend a Paper Adding More Useful Information
You may believe that you have already included all possible information in your paper, so there is nothing to add. However, if you look critically at your essay, you may see that it is not the case. Pay attention to the following moments that will help you extend your paper length and improve its quality.
Review Your Teacher's Requirements
If your professor has provided a prompt, it is high time to look at it again. Maybe you have examined it a million times till this moment, but it will never be superfluous to do it again. It can happen that you have missed some questions your teacher posed, and it can be a great chance to extend your essay and show yourself as an expert. Check your vocabulary and make sure all your phrases are convincing enough to hand in the paper. Go through the list of requirements step by step, not to miss anything.
Use Multiple Examples to Support Your Arguments
A top-notch paper involves at least several facts and examples that back up the ideas provided. If you have given only one example to explain your point, it is time to deepen your research and bring to the table some additional evidence. Such a trick will help kill two birds with one stone since you will make your paper longer and show a higher expertise level in the question studied. All teachers like it when students support the thesis statement with quality info and examples.
Involve More Transitional Phrases
Everyone knows that you should make your text go smoothly if you want your target audience to get a great reading experience. When working on the body paragraphs, you should necessarily involve some transitional phrases to make the essay look holistic. Go through your text and make sure all the sentences are complete and have transitional words where necessary. Thus, you will be able to make your paper look more appealing to your reader.
Use Expert Quotations
It is important not to overdo it with them. You should find a middle ground when using quotations if you need to take up more space. If your paper is clogged with the sayings of other authors, it will hardly impress your professor. Quotations should be rather like a seasoning for your dish than its main ingredients. Use them wisely to enhance your argument. If you need to make your essay longer, you can replace some of the quotes with longer analogs or add your thoughts to them. However, you should be extremely careful when using quotes and follow all the citation rules. Otherwise, you will find yourself in trouble. Chasing for ways to make your paper longer, don't lose sight of its essence and requirements for paperwork.
How to Extend Paper Length Using Non-Standard Ways
If you believe that your paper is already top-notch, so you need some non-standard ways to extend your essay length, we have something to offer you. They may seem ineffective at first sight, but don't rush to turn a blind eye to them. Sometimes the simplest ways are the most fruitful ones.
Ask Someone to Proofread Your Paper
If a person in your circle can proofread your essay and provide reasonable comments, it is worth asking them for help. When you are working on a paper for too long, your vision can be blurred, so you can miss even the most obvious things. They can mark all the points they find confusing, so when you start revising it, you can add more information to make your essay more understandable and clearer. Besides, an independent reader may notice the lack of some details.
Take a Break from Your Paper
If you have been spending hours over your essay and staring at your laptop screen for ages, it is time to go for a walk. Words will not pop into your head if you continue to repeat the same useless actions. A quality break can become a magic wand that will give you a clue on how to extend essay length. Thus, take a short walk, drink a glass of water, grab a snack or talk to someone for a while. Just don't go online to check your Instagram feed. Give your head a break from any information.
Read Your Paper Out Loud
Does this advice sound silly? Well, maybe a bit, but when you start reading your essay out loud, you start noticing all the issues that have been hidden from you before. When you start rephrasing your sentences to fix all the moments, you can end up making an essay longer. Reading your paper out loud, you may notice some content gaps or lack of arguments. If you notice some issues, your reader will notice them too.
How to Format Your Paper
If all the previous tips on how to make an essay longer seem too complicated and time-consuming, you can cheat a bit, working with the font of your paper and some other elements. Just bear in mind that if your professor has pointed out the minimal required number of words you should write, these tricks may not work out. However, if you haven't got any instructions, you can do the following:
- adjust the size of your font, making it a bit larger;
- make your headline longer;
- enhance the margin by quarter;
- increase your paragraphs' spacing.
How to Add Length to an Essay of a Certain Type
When you want to make your paper longer, check which way will be the most suitable for your type of essay. The thing is that various essay formats will require different approaches. So, let's check out what you can do in each case:
- Narrative essay. Since it is about sharing your personal thoughts and ideas, you can just add more words and examples to tell your story.
- Argumentative essay. Since it requires various examples and supportive evidence, you can involve quotations and explanations of other authoritative people.
- Review. Since it demands more details about the subject, add more transitional words, explanations, quotes, etc.