"How long should my essay be?" the student asks.

"As long as it needs to be," I answer.

Students don't like this answer.  They are accustomed to being given certain limits – X number of words or X number of pages. I call this the "500 words or you die" approach to composition.

Such an approach has certain negative consequences.  First, students cultivate the art of padding.  When the goal is X number of words or X number of pages, they consciously or unconsciously throw in extra words in an effort to reach this goal – no matter that the words are redundant.  They write "In my personal opinion" instead of "I think" because the former is two words closer to the target.  Wordiness thus becomes a habit.

Secondly, such an approach fosters fuzzy writing.  Students get the idea that the more modifiers they throw into a sentence, the clearer it will be.  Instead of writing, as Mathew Arnold did, "The sea is calm tonight," they write, "On this beautiful, starlit evening, the sea as I gaze over it is tranquil, calm, and undisturbed."  As the adjectives and redundant phrases mount, the picture blurs. 

Third, and most important, this approach contradicts the purpose of writing.  Our objective is to express ourselves as clearly and effectively as we can, not to use as many words as we can – or to meet a quota.  This is not to say that details don't matter.  Any effective description must contain powerful images; however, the impact that these images have on the reader is not measured by the number of words used to create them but by how apt those words are.  Any effective argument requires detailed and specific support, but verbosity may strike the reader as mere ranting rather than logical, thoughtful argument.

Consider, if you will, some of the writing that has had the greatest impact – the Ten Commandments, the 23rd Psalm, the Gettysburg Address, the St. Francis Prayer, the Declaration of Independence, the Lord's Prayer, countless secular proverbs, most of the world's greatest poems.  The authors of these works were not shooting for a word quota.  What they wrote is as long as it needs to be.

Rich Turner