how many quotes on average should be included


We then end the study by thinking through a variety of hypothetical arguments and discussing how to best structure each to meet the audience and purpose, and this leads directly into the students writing their own essays where the approach and structure are entirely up to them. They can build up to an argument at the end, state the thesis directly in the first line, begin with an anecdote, or even use the five-paragraph form, if they deem it the most effective way to organize the argument.


Sometimes, you’ll just be given a topic and told to air your opinion. This gives you more freedom, but it’s a tad more difficult. The research will show you how many angles you should look at, and it’ll help you to find information that both supports and contradicts your point of view. To make a strong argument, you need to look at both supporting and contradictory information.

To avoid getting tangled up in one aspect of the discussion, you’ll have to decide how long it should be. If it’s the most important aspect informing your conclusion, you can spend a little more time (and words) on that particular point. It could run into several paragraphs rather than just one or two.

Words that Count: How Many Are in a 5-Paragraph Essay?

Ultimately, your essay will be evaluated on the information you present, not on the number of paragraphs in the essay. Early in your academic life, teachers and lecturers may give you both a structure for your essay and a guideline on how long each part of the essay should be. I have seen essay instructions say how many marks are allocated for each section, and my trick is to take the total and allocate a percentage of words to each section based on the percentage of marks you can get for it. After all, if the teacher is allocating 80 marks for content in total and you can see 50% of the mark relates to a certain part of the essay, then 50% of your essay’s words should be devoted to that section.

Paragraphs structure information into sub-topics, and they make your work easier to read and understand thanks to the structure they provide. With careful advance planning, you’ll be able to work out more or less how many paragraphs you need to complete your essay.

As a form, the five-paragraph essay is invaluable. As a rigid formula, it’s useless—hence the many criticisms of it. , viewing the five-paragraph essay as a set of inflexible rules will most likely lead to contempt of writing and a failure of an essay. At its base, though, the five-paragraph essay forms the backbone of persuasive writing—which all academic essays are. Whether you’re trying to argue a point of view, explain why an idea is true, or simply convince a professor that you know the material, every essay is going to be proving a point. But if you’re not supposed to strictly follow the rules, how does the five-paragraph essay help?

For those looking for a general rule-of-thumb, below are some estimates on the number of paragraphs there would be in an essay of different lengths based on an average length of 150 words per paragraph. Of course, the number of paragraphs for your essay will depend on many different factors. You can use the following information for a general reference, but don’t take these numbers as literal..


How many sentences and paragraphs should be in an essay?

Assuming five psychological effects have been identified, you can assume you’ll need to write five paragraphs if you are going to write a relatively in-depth essay. But if both those who say technology is bad for kids and those who say it can be good have done a great deal of work on the sub-topic, you might want to make that ten paragraphs so that you can cover both sides of the argument and look into how earlier authors reached their conclusions.

How many words are necessary for a 5 paragraph essay

There’s a rampant hatred of the five-paragraph essay among academics and writing instructors, and I’ve heard many a teacher express the desire to do away with it completely. The arguments for its destruction usually revolve around students’ stunted writing abilities, especially in terms of writing for a specific audience, but every criticism I’ve found is a criticism of general writing instruction rather than the specific pedagogy itself. To blame poor writing skills on a certain form of essay is to completely miss the forest for the trees. While there is , it generally stems from a lack of understanding on both the part of the student and the teacher. An inability to comprehensively teach writing will lead to poor student writing skills, regardless of what methods are used. And a student who doesn’t care about school will choose to not learn how to write, again regardless of what methods are used. To throw out the five-paragraph essay in the name of bad teaching is to dismiss one of the most powerful tools for writing expository and persuasive essays, especially ones that bring passing grades in college classes.

How Many Paragraphs Are There In An Essay

I don’t understand, How can a 100, 200, 300 and 400 word essay all have 3 paragraphs if a paragraph is 100 to 200 words long? A 100 word essay should be 1 paragraph or 1/2 a paragraph, not 3 paragraphs. Can someone explain this too me?

Can You Quote A Whole Paragraph in A Research Paper

Another, less limiting and more accurate way to work out how many paragraphs you need to cover your topic is to look at the main points you have to cover in the body text. A paragraph contains all the ideas that support or explain a single concept.