I hate word limits. I understand and appreciate why universities use them but they drive me nuts.
I hate absolute word limits absolutely, to plagiarise a well known phrase or saying.
So, I am about to start the third radical edit of a paper with a 6k word absolute limit that is currently still 300 words over. My mother's (non-serious) suggestion was to delete every 20th word. As it is I will remove a few not absolutely essential sentences, adopt a different 'grammatical' voice in a few places (not sure what it's called though - the 'radical edit voice' sounds about right) and hope to goodness this does the trick. And in these days of electronic submission you can't even fiddle the declared word count... not that I would of course!
Ah well, back to the swingeing electronic razor blade!
Comments
Don't worry about ... they won't notice 600 words ... its not worth it!
Hi Andy, well, it's now down to 6050 including headings which I reckon means it's about 5990 of real words...
I have spent many hours trying to cut my other half's essays down to an absolute word limit (what happened to 10% either way?) - especially hard when I have suggested stuff he has missed out or needs expanding before I knew he was already at the limit!
Yup, I recall that only too well... 'you should also have considered x, y or z' but when I asked 'and what should I have omitted to make space for it?' 'nothing' was the (unhelpful) reply.
Anyway a final cut got it to 5998 with no fiddles. This may mean it is a 'sharper' piece of writing but I feel it loses some of what I want it to do - i.e. be something that engages real people!
Many thanks to B from 'no name church' for off blog reference which I have now purchased