In my experience, the hard part of writing a 600 word essay isn't getting to 600 words, it's not going too far over that! Once you get into the flow, it can be hard to stop in time.
this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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Right? You literally only need an opening, like 3 points, and a closing. If it's a good topic, I'm going way past that
The target word count makes a nice whooshing sound as it goes by, then comes the painful task of deleting half of what you wrote.
Pro tip: if you have a hard time to reach the word limit, just write redundant sentences that add nothing to the essay. Just reiterate what has already been said before, but with different words and sentence structure. Then you will never have a hard time reaching the word limit. It’s not hard. Don’t worry if the sentence is redundant. If you keep your word choice varied, you’ll disguise the fact that you actually have nothing new to say. Word limits will then be the least of your concerns.
I did the thing as a joke, and now that I see how long it is I'll spoiler it to avoid taking up a bunch of space
I'm tempted to try to come up with a six hundred word essay for this comment, but I am at a loss for a great many of the tools which would aid one such as myself in this proposed endeavor. For one, there is not a word counter to be found in the commenting system of the Alexandrite desktop user interface for Lemmy that I am currently using inside my Firefox browser, or at least none that I am aware of at this moment in time. This would mean that, if I were intending to pursue the feat of making a six hundred word essay for this comment, as I had previously mentioned my desire to do, I would have to go out of my way to make use of some other word processing or similar software, such as: Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, Google Docs, or even the humble NotePad, though many prefer NotePad++ for its many additional features beyond those of NotePad.
Actually, it would seem that, upon checking into this further, NotePad does not have a word counting functionality built into it, or at least not in the version present on my Microsoft Windows 10 Home Edition personal laptop computer. Perhaps the fancier version of NotePad, with tabs and CoPilot included, maligned though it is, may be equipped with just such a capability, but I do not have that version of the NotePad software loaded on my aforementioned Windows 10 Home Edition personal laptop computer, nor do I have an interest in trying to perform a so-called "upgrade" to that version. Possibly the oft forgotten alternative, WordPad, which was killed off by Microsoft to focus on the expanded features for NotePad, is in possession of a word counting feature which would aid one such as myself in the drafting of a six hundred word essay for this comment, as I previously expressed my interest in doing, but that interest does not exceed the threshold necessary for me to make the effort to open up the start menu and search for it, and then paste this text into a new document in said software, and finally attempt to see if that functionality is even there, which it may not be.
In addition to the technical hurdles presented above, which would inhibit the task of composing a six hundred word essay comment for this topic, as a means to amuse myself and maybe others, though I doubt anyone would read such a lengthy comment, let alone go to the trouble themselves of verifying that the comment actually met the alleged length of six hundred words, surely I would be in need of a topic upon which to pontificate in order to reach the proposed minimum word count as originally brought up in the image which is attached to, and the central focus of, this post.
In fact, I would say that not only would I, or someone else, wishing to perform this task of writing a six hundred word essay as a comment under this post, be in need of a topic to write said lengthy comment about, but then if you were to address the concerns regarding software functionality originally brought up, and if someone that was going to go for this feat of elaborate prose had decided upon a topic which they wished to write about, then it would behoove that person to then first make an outline of the topic which they wished to write a six hundred page essay about, laying out their key points, providing supporting statements to those points, and structuring the whole of the essay with said points in a way that effectively communicated the intended message of that essay without rambling or adding a lot of superfluous filler words, repeating overly verbose phrases, or carrying on in paragraph length sentences just to artificially inflate the word count to meet an arbitrary requirement.
Shit I was going to throw in a joke here about this last sentence making the whole thing 600 words exactly, but it turns out I hit 650 words before this sentence so... hahaha did you actually read all this? Oh my god I've wasted your time and mine now. Anyway, now I've bullshitted out a 700 word essay. Not including the previous sentence. Or this one. Or this one. Or...
I was also going to do a bit about how learning to game the system like this got me nowhere in life, but given that I actually took the time to do this, I feel like that part is self-evident. Also, this is crap writing, but I swear this is how I got through everything. We should really do something about our public schools, it's like they just rubber stamp kids to pass because the teachers are overworked and underpaid, the schools are underfunded, parents are overwhelmed with their jobs, and... hey, this would make a good topic for a real 600 word essay.
853 words. Went and did almost 50% more than required.
As another commenter said, sometimes once you turn on the bullshitting tap it can be hard to stop
It's really just about practice, writing in high school is difficult because you are just learning how to really do it correctly. By the time I finished college I could write 3-5 page papers with minimal effort. If I tried to write one today it would probably be extremely difficult since I haven't done it in a while.
Once you understand the formula it gets really easy. Introduction should have 1 sentence about the general topic, 1-2 about your overall thesis/point, 1 sentence for each of 3-5 points you want to make. Each point should get it's own paragraph with 1 sentence to state the point, 1-2 sentences the reference the source material to support it, 1-2 external references if required, and 1 sentence to restate the point you made. The conclusion should have 1 sentence per point you made and 1-2 sentences that restate your overall point of the paper.
Let me shorten that up. This goes for oral presentations as well:
Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em.
Tell 'em.
Tell 'em what you just told 'em.
... and then, hopefully, you can later graduate to not writing/presenting everything in the basic standard writing template originally designed for 6th graders and learn how to use more complex but still effective communication techniques, which can allow you to discover your own unique writing style.
To exemplify this, see the above sentence.
It is a single sentence, and it is not a run on sentence.
It also deviates from the typical rule of never starting a sentence with 'and'.
But, within this context, it works, because it directly following the previous comment.
Oh, beginning the sentence with ellipsis?
That is literally a stylized way of indicating more of a pause than a comma.
Marylin Monroe wrote that way, so did Desmond Tutu, so did Shirley Temple ... I happen to be fond of it as well.
How do they imagine entire books are written?
One sentence at a time.
It was really hard for me as a freshman in high school. By the end I could crank them out easily. It was all thanks to a simple pair of tricks called practice and learning.
I habe written more than one 600+ words comment on Lemmy about topics I Am absolutely interested in. And even then I sometimes have to hold myself back for the sake of simplicity.
600 words was hard for me because I just get to the fucking point when I write. That's your question here's the goddamn answer don't make me use purple prose on an essay I'll kidnap your dog and dye his fur purple.
I used to be the same way. The way out is elaborating not on what, but on the why: the answer is short, but the explanation of why that's the answer and not something else can take quite a while.
Exactly, that's always what they wanted it turned out. It's easy to say that 19th century Europe was reshaped by Napoleon, because he seized control of France from the fledgling republic and invaded all of Europe. But how did he do that, why is it different when Napoleon did it from when previous European powers invaded each other. Are there any other people or armies to compare him to, and how were they alike or different. What tactics did he use. What were the long term effects of all of this.
This is the opportunity to not just say that you know the answer but to explain that you understand the context within which the question and answer reside. To demonstrate an understanding of the material. Sure some essays are bad essay questions, and I think some teachers really suck at explaining what they want out of an essay, but most of them just want that.
History in particular really needs essays to be taught well because short answer, fill in the blanks, and multiple choice questions can struggle to test the understanding of the whole picture and can leave people thinking that Frederick the Great is just some king who was good at war in the mid 1700s and not a vital piece of a story that eventually results in two nuclear weapons being dropped on the Empire of Japan.
Huh. I grew up with 500-word essays in high school. That was easy and a hundred words is basically nothing, though, so not much different.
I'm concerned about children using AI slop machines instead of learning and practicing the fundamentals of written communication
I TOTALLY would have. I'm so glad that I didn't have the option - I wouldn't have understood or cared about the problem here. But there's no putting the genie back in the bottle now... How do we stop the mass stupification these tools will cause?
How do we stop the mass stupification these tools will cause?
Well, if I had the power to do anything about it...
Probably smaller class sizes and better paid teachers. A teacher with ten students can pay more attention than one with thirty. And that means they can intervene more and better if a kid is trying to cheat, or doesn't understand, or isn't engaging
I love this solution. You're 100% right. I'm afraid though that it's going to take a pretty serious amount of degradation and WAY too much time before anyone is willing to react appropriately. We're already seeing this young generation not capable of reading with their attention span ruined by social media - Gen AI is the next major problem to contend with and we're not even dealing with the first yet.
yeah but the kids are concerned learning and practice written communication is a waste of time and boring when they can have chat gpt do it for them in 15 seconds and they can spend the 3-4 hours of essay work gaming and chatting on discord with friends.
do you not remember being a schoolchild? what school child actually ever wants to do school work?
there are sections of my application to become a licensed engineer that have a character limit of 1650
Character limits are the dumbest thing, how does "I can't properly express myself because I used proper punctuation" even make sense?
I'd easily write an essay with 600+ words if it was about my game of choice even back in my high school years. For school stuff, ugh, it often felt like they wanted you to drag on and on and on about something that could fit in a paragraph, or even a single sentence.
Well, then, if you can do that... then you can learn to identify when other doing that, using way too many words to say basically nothing.
The other idea here is to encourage you to think about things that you may not immediately find inteteresting.
Sounds like more parents need to use "The Paper," as a preferred punishment.
I've written a 200k word book this year alone.
It’s hard to write a good essay with that few of words.
Part of the actual answer:
Oh, well, some of us schooled before ChatGPT were also schooled before No Child Left Behind.
But I guess kids wouldn't know about that these days.
... for some reason.
Word count requirements are bullshit. I say this as a college grad.
It's just to train us to do arbitrary busywork so we will be more useful workers.
You want 600 words? Here's a dictionary, keep the change.
The point of the word count goal is to teach you both how to communicate your thoughts in detail and how to edit yourself so that your writing is concise.
Exactly.
The restraints are meant to challenge you to develop skills.
Kinda like how some people play games on hard mode! Or permadeath!
Different constraints force different strategies, different methods.