mr_awesome Posted October 4, 2014 Report Share Posted October 4, 2014 Hi all,As most IB students do, I have gone over the 4k word count for my EE, does anyone have any suggestions on how I can lower my wordcount? Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandwich Posted October 4, 2014 Report Share Posted October 4, 2014 If you are WAY over then thinking about cutting a section is a possible option, and you can also think about changing your EE question to give it a slightly smaller scope such that the bit you cut won't be missed. However, if you're not too far over then ruthless editing can cut hundreds of words out if you know what you're doing - I think I took almost 1,000 out of mine! As an example: If you are WAY over, cutting a section is an option, and you can reduce the scope of your EE to reflect that. Would be my 'ruthless editing' of my first sentence. 41 words down to 23 is almost halving it. Re-word, cut things out and basically reduce your EE down to the bare minimum. It probably helps if you're like me and tend to write a bit more wordily than you really need to, but if you can eliminate every 4th or 5th word plus re-word certain parts of it to be expressed in fewer words to begin with, you'll probably surprise yourself with how much you can cut out. The beauty of it is two-fold - firstly your writing becomes very sparse and perfectly expressed, and actually much easier to read! Secondly you've cut down your word count without removing any of the content. Plus you get to re-read your EE in fine detail and fix up any little niggles you spot on the way. If you do all that though and are still over 4,000 words, perhaps you should have just taken a section out to begin with - because if you've edited it very harshly and THEN take a section out, chances are you'll dive down quite a bit below the 4,000. Being close to 4,000 looks REALLY good, definitely aim for that. 2 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_awesome Posted October 4, 2014 Author Report Share Posted October 4, 2014 Okay, Ill try to be ruthless and see how i go hopefully i can knock off around 600 words Thanks for the advice, really appreciate it! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
dniviE Posted October 4, 2014 Report Share Posted October 4, 2014 There is also an obvious, but potentially dangerous, way to solve this: lie about the word count! One of my friends actually ended up with a word count in the range 4100-4300 and he wrote on the cover page and official documents that it was 4000 words. Nothing happened to him and he actually received an A for his EE as well! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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