Tips From Professionals: How To Write A 500 Word Essay


Writing a 500 word essay can be an extremely hard and tough task for students. The word count isn’t really high and so students cannot fully fledge out their talking points. However, writing papers of this kind teaches students how to succinctly express their thoughts, which is a very handy skill to have. Here, we will discuss some important tips on how to successfully compose a 500 word paper.

  • Compress Your Thoughts
  • Since the word limit is quite restricting, the main obstacle students face when composing such a paper is the fact that they run out of words to use and go over the word limit. Thus, you should learn to compress your writing and to express your ideas succinctly.

    The main way to do this is to write a sentence how you would normally write it and then go back and analyze where you cut out certain words or phrases that do not add to your point, or replace a couple of words with one word without changing the point you are trying to convey.

  • Word Count
  • This is one of the most vital aspects to pulling off a great 500 word essay flawlessly. Having a word count on the program you are writing your essay on is absolutely pivotal. Having one that keeps track as you write is even better.

    You can usually locate this under the options section of your program. We cannot emphasize enough how helpful it is to have a word count tracker as you write; it will save you a lot of time to implement it into your program.

  • Format
  • The hardest part of writing a 500 word paper is the format. Since there are not many words, students do not know how to split up their paragraphs so that they can write all their thoughts properly.

    Due to this, we have created a format for you to follow that will allow you to easily write down all the points you want to make. We recommend the following structure to your paper:

    • Introduction: This is a brief paragaph telling the reader what you will be talking about in your paper. Due to your already constrining word count, you should not go into too much depth, just a quick mention of the topics you will talk about should suffice. We recommend that your introduction be around 50 words.
    • Main Body: These are the main paragraphs will you will try to succintly say all your pivotal talking points. We recommend that you aim to devote around 400 words to the main body, split equally in around 2-3 paragraphs.
    • Conclusion: Like the introduction, your conclusion cannot be too in depth. Just briefly repeat your main talking points, and your thesis. Aim to write a conclusion in around 50 words.

    If you follow this format then you will have no problem composing your paper, since you will know how many words to devote to each section, which is an aspect of writing a 500 word essay that many students struggle with.