As a rule of thumb you can expect to spend about 10% of your words on the introduction and 10% of your words on the conclusion.
This leaves 80% of your words for the body paragraphs.
Let’s say you have an essay that’s 2000 words long and has 32 marks available. If we assume that
there aren’t really any marks available for the introduction or conclusion (as these just outline and summarise what you will cover/have covered) How many words do you have available to gain 1 mark?
(80% of 2000 = 1600, 1600/32 = 50)
So, roughly every 50 words you should be saying something worthwhile.
Of course this is only a rough rule of thumb. While it may be worth keeping in mind it is not worth obsessing over.
Additionally remember that these numbers are also something of a conservative estimate. We have
assumed that you can’t gain marks in the intro and conclusion (not always true) and we have
assumed that all of the marks are for content only (seldom true). As such you would probably have slightly more words available to make your point.
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