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Follow these simple steps to create a summary of your text.

Click the Summarize! button.

Read your summarized text. If you would like a different summary, repeat Step 2. When you are happy with the summary, copy and paste the text into a word processor, or text to speech program , or language translation tool

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Text Compactor: Online Shorten Essay Tool

It cannot be easier to use our text compactor. Insert any text into the given window, choose the needed settings, and press the button. The results will appear in seconds!

For a person engaged in academic writing, it is crucial to save time wherever possible. There is nothing more crushing than realizing that a source you were using doesn’t fit your topic. This is especially true when it happens halfway through the text. The hours you've spent reading are lost forever, and you still have to look for new sources. This is exactly why we use essay compactors – to avoid situations such as these.

This isn’t the only reason for using summarizers. They can also be useful when you're working on your own texts. The main aims might be a) to create summaries to use as examples and b) to shorten your writing. Below, our team has discussed these points in further detail. We have also offered advice on how to effectively condense an essay on your own.

📈 Why Is a Text Compactor Useful?

👍 tips to make a text compact, 👌 online text compactor: the benefits, 🔗 references.

During your studies, you may encounter a very diverse set of tasks. You may have to write a synopsis , analyze an article, compose an essay, etc. Online tools like paragraph compactors are meant to help you with all kinds of assignments. They are free, quick, and ready to use whenever!

Besides, a text compactor has the following benefits:

• Reduces information to key ideas. When composing your papers or evaluating the work of others, you should be able to summarize the presented arguments and conclusions. Online tools automatically select and reveal all the critical elements from the given text.
• Helps to memorize and understand the data. Remembering hundreds or even thousands of sentences at a time is almost impossible. A single one can go on for an entire paragraph and have complicated jargon. Summarizing tools can shorten your sentences to a manageable length, helping you understand and memorize them better.
• Saves time. Summaries, in general, cut down the reading time. It is one of the reasons research papers typically include an abstract before the main text. In addition, digital summarizers will save you a lot of time writing and rewriting the summaries yourself.
• Assists in reviewing materials. When you study for your exams, you have tons of information to go through. If you insert the text of an article or a book chapter into the text compactor, you will immediately see its meaning. This way, you save precious revision time and keep your material organized.
• Creates abstracts, abridged texts, and more. As mentioned above, you will get many different assignments during your studies. Sometimes, you will have to write an abstract for a project. Or you might need to give a speech based on an academic paper. Online text summarization is an easy solution for these tasks and many others.

You may find it challenging to decide which elements of your work are essential. This becomes particularly worrying when your deadlines are approaching and your paper is still well above the word count. That’s why sentence compactors turn out to be life-saviors for many students.

If you insist on doing the work yourself, we have a couple of tips for you. Pay attention to them, and you won’t have any trouble shortening your writing.

Two short sentences are better than a single long one.

Lengthy sentences can be challenging to follow. They are usually packed with numerous prepositions and linking words that can be easily avoided. Breaking up drawn-out sentences into several parts will help reduce text complexity. Just pick a linking phrase or comma that you can replace with a dot and do so. But first, check what punctuation marks you should keep .

Cut down on filler words.

We are familiar with “parasite” words that appear in speech (such as “like,” “kind of,” “you know,” etc.). We may not even notice that we often use them in essay writing. Fillers are words and expressions that don’t contribute to the text’s meaning. For example, phrases like “as a matter of fact” don’t add any new information and only take up space. Try to delete them all from your writing.

Try not to sound redundant.

Like fillers, redundancies are pointless repetitions that can be removed without losing meaning. To illustrate, in the expression “final outcome,” the first word is unnecessary. That’s because both of them mean the same thing. Modifying text to get rid of the redundancies can significantly shorten it.

Stick with the active voice whenever possible.

It may seem that the passive voice sounds more professional and scholarly. However, it can also make sentences longer, more awkward, and harder to understand. Consider switching to the active voice wherever you can. It will improve readability and save space. Remember, you can always use an online sentence shortener. It will provide you with the results in seconds!

We hope that our tool will help you in your work and that you have found our text compactor useful. We have another option if you didn't like the summary you received or expected something different. Try our alternative summary generator , which is just as easy and quick to use!

How to Shorten an Essay

It is critical to make an essay more concise while maintaining its persuasiveness when shortening it. Keeping the vital arguments and evidence in the text is essential, while redundancies and complicated structures can be safely removed.

How to Shorten a Speech

Your presentation may serve various purposes. When you’re shortening it, the most important thing is not to lose the main message. Highlight the key points and use as simple and concise language as possible. This way, you can communicate your ideas effectively in less time.

How to Shorten a Paragraph

According to the rules of academic writing, one paragraph should convey one main idea. This idea is formulated in the topic sentence, and the rest sentences support and confirm it. Your task here is to preserve the meaning of the topic sentence and not lose key evidence and arguments; you can throw away unnecessary details.

• When to Summarize, Paraphrase, and Quote – The Writing Center, George Mason University
• Writing Concisely – The Writing Center, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Eliminating Wordiness – Writing Resources, Hamilton College

5 Best ways to Make an Essay Shorter

If you are like me, you will find that you often struggle to stay within the word count in your essays.

In this article, I will show you exactly how to reduce your word count in your essay.

If you go over the word count in an essay, there are some strategies to make your essay shorter that make sure you keep your marks high and, sometimes, make them even higher.

The trick to going over the word count is seeing this as a positive: you now have the chance to only present your absolute best arguments.

This is a luxury other students in your class just don’t have. Reducing your word count is actually your chance to get even further ahead!

The best essays have no dull, irrelevant or sub-par content. Every paragraph is on-point and designed to win you more and more marks. When editing your work, keep this in mind.

Below, I introduce five important strategies that will help you to reduce your word count in a way that will actually increase your mark!

• Delete your three Worst Paragraphs. …
• Listen for Weaknesses using Google Translate or Microsoft Excel Read-out-Loud.
• Re-Read the Marking Criteria.
• Shorten Paragraphs over 7 Sentences Long.
• Delete Irrelevant Words.

1. Delete your three Worst Paragraphs

I usually aim to go over my word count intentionally so I can creatively make the essay shorter in a way that increases my marks.

If I go over the word count, I can look back over my piece and find my worst performing paragraphs and remove them.

This not only helps me to ensure I present my best work to the teacher, it also forces me to admit that some of my writing is better than others. It keeps me critical of myself and always aiming for improvement.

Removing the worst paragraphs of an essay also ensures there are less boring, pointless or unanalytical sections of an essay. It means that the paragraphs I submit are the best sections – and that the teacher will be impressed throughout the piece.

To assess which paragraphs are best and worst, I do the following things:

• Find the paragraphs with the least or worst references in them. Teachers will scan over a paragraph to assess the quality of the references in them. Paragraphs with minimal referencing, too much referencing of just one source, or only references to non-academic sources, instantly get marked down by the teacher before they’re even read. These are also often the paragraphs that provide the least depth of information. That is because finding sources to reference in a paragraph often leads to adding detail that the source has provided.
• Find the paragraphs that are least convincing. When I re-read my paragraphs, sometimes I just think ‘the argument here is my weakest’. These are the ones I want to cut: they’re ones that won’t get me top marks. Teachers will lower your marks for any paragraph that doesn’t shine – so you’re best removing it.
• Rate your paragraphs out of 10. I often tell my students to delete their three worst paragraphs and they say ‘I like all of them!’ In this case, you will have to get brutal with yourself: rate every paragraph out of 10. This will help you make the hard decisions about which to lose.
• Combine two paragraphs into one. Sometimes I really like one sentence from a paragraph but don’t like the rest. If this is the case for you, have a go at extracting those good sentences from one paragraph and placing them in another one. Then, you can delete the not-so-good sentences from the original paragraph. If you do this, make sure all paragraphs still cohere around one key point.

2. Listen for Weaknesses using Google Translate or Microsoft Excel Read-out-Loud

Google Translate and Microsoft Excel both have read-out-loud options. Google Translate’s option is the easiest.

For Google Translate, simply search for ‘Google Translate’ on your internet search engine (or just click here ) to access it. Then, copy and paste the text into the translate box and press the ‘listen’ button:

For Microsoft Excel, you will need paste the whole essay into any cell and then activate the read out loud option.

This procedure is somewhat more complicated than Google Translate, but if you want to give it a go, you can get instructions from the Microsoft help website and go from there

Hearing your paper read out loud back to you can help you to identify which paragraphs or sentences are worth removing.

Here are some things to keep in mind while listening to the computer read your paper out loud to you:

• If a sentence feels like it’s too long and exhausting to listen to, you can bet your teacher will be exhausted, too;
• If a phrase seems awkward to hear, it will be awkward to read;
• If the paper seems to have lost its focus on the topic area, you’ll need to remove that section or edit it to ensure it links to the essay question.

Pause the read-out-loud each time you find a sentence long or awkward and work on shortening it.

Too often, students think long, complicated sentences with fancy-sounding words will get them marks. In reality, it’s the opposite.

Being able to describe complex concepts in a very easy, understandable way is a skill all top students learn to master.

The read-out-loud option can help you to see your paper from your marker’s perspective. Use it to your advantage and listen out for anything that sounds complicated, confusing, awkward or exhausting. Delete it or shorten it immediately.

Remember, the goal is to have your paper sounding short and clear.

3. Re-Read the Marking Criteria

When editing your work, it is best to have the marking criteria by your side at all times.

The marking criteria is the list of things the teacher is looking for when marking your essay. Sometimes it’s also called:

• Marking Criteria;
• Indicative Content;
• Marking Rubric;
• Learning Outcomes

These should be easy to find. Go to your course webpage (usually on Blackboard, Canvas, or Moodle depending on your university) and find where your teacher has provided details about your assessment. If there are marking criteria, this is where it would be.

Sometimes, teachers don’t provide marking criteria.

If the teacher has simply provided an essay topic or question, that means the chances are they don’t have a list of outcomes they are marking your piece against. In these instances, you will have to simply rely on the essay question.

When you have your marking criteria or essay question by your side, read each paragraph then look back to your marking criteria.

You need to ask yourself:

• Does this paragraph directly answer the essay question or marking criteria?
• Does this paragraph add new information that helps me answer the essay question?

If your paragraph is not linked directly to the essay question or marking criteria, you’ve just identified the paragraph you need to remove to reduce your word count.

4. Shorten Paragraphs over 7 Sentences Long

Teachers hate long paragraphs. Teachers are just like you and me. They get bored very fast.

Chances are, any paragraph over 7 sentences isn’t being fully read. The teacher might have only read the first three sentences and made their judgement about your work based on those three sentences!

That’s why the ideal paragraph should be between 4 and 7 sentences long. This length helps to ensure:

• You haven’t gone off on a tangent;
• You have provided some explanatory or example sentences, but not too many;
• You have focused only on one key idea in the paragraph.

Your paragraphs that are more than 7 sentences long will be your low-hanging fruit for reducing your word count. Read through each of these paragraphs and try to find a way to reduce it to only 6 sentences. Find those sentences that seem to drag on or add nothing useful to your discussion and delete them.

By reducing all paragraphs over 7 sentences long, you won’t only bring your word count down. You will also make your essay much clearer and easy to read.

In this way, you’re both reducing your word count and increasing your mark.

5. Delete Irrelevant Words

Going through your paper and deleting irrelevant words can often save you several hundred words and could shorten your essay enough to get you back within the required word count.

Irrelevant words are words that are overly descriptive, redundant, too emotive, or in first-person. These words tend to get the same point across in far more words than necessary.

Furthermore, you will find that in removing overly descriptive, redundant, emotive and first-person words, your work will be much improved.

This is because academic writing is supposed to be formal and direct. Writing too many words can make your marker think you have poor communication skills and do not understand academic writing requirements.

Check below for examples of how to reduce your word count by removing overly descriptive, redundant, overly emotive and first-person language.

• Overly Descriptive: The amazing thing about the industrial revolution was that it brought about enormous changes to the ways people transported themselves and communicated across the globe in such a short amount of time.
• Alternative: The industrial revolution brought about rapid changes in transportation and communication globally.
• Redundant: The sum of five hundred dollars.
• Alternative: $500
• Redundant: It was quite unique.
• Alternative: It was unique.
• Redundant: It was triangular in shape.
• Alternative: It was triangular.
• Too Emotive: The disgusting thing about communism is that it refuses to allow poor everyday people to improve their lives by creating their own businesses that might flourish and really help our their communities, too!
• Alternative: Communism prevents citizens from starting businesses that can help bring people and their communities out of poverty.
• In first Person: In summary, I believe that the Industrial Revolution was good for the whole world.
• Alternative: In summary, the Industrial Revolution was good for the world.
• In first Person: This author argues that Thomas Edison was the greatest mind of his time.
• Alternative: Thomas Edison was the greatest mind of his time.

Making your essay shorter can sometimes be an absolute nightmare.

By following the above five steps, you can find easy ways to reduce your word count while also improving your work.

If you are an advanced or ambitious student, you might find that you always go over the word count. This isn’t necessarily a problem.

Try to look at going over the word count as a positive thing. Going over the word count means you have the freedom to only present your best work. You have the chance to delete anything that isn’t absolutely focused on gaining you marks.

In the end, your final submission will be cleaner, easier to read and easier to mark. Hopefully, this will see your marks growing even more!

Let’s review one more time the five top ways the best students reduce their word count in an essay:

Five Top Ways to Make an Essay Shorter

• Delete your three Worst Paragraphs
• Use Google Translate or Microsoft Excel to Read your Paper out Loud
• Re-Read the Marking Criteria
• Shorten Paragraphs over 6 Sentences Long
• Delete Irrelevant Words

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

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How to shorten an essay (2022 Top Expert Guide)

Table of Contents

 What comes to a naive mind when dwelling on “ how to shorten an essay ” is that, it is a tedious and meticulous task. 

How to shorten an essay

Shortening an essay is not difficult when you grab the right tips and tricks. These are the best common ways to make your assigned essay shorter in terms of pages. Some of these methods may reduce the essay by three or four pages. Some may cause more pages, and some may create a more elusive outcome. 

Experiment with your submission and find the ideal combination. Do not worry about the assignment due date; focus on the cat.

The five best ways to make an essay shorter include: 

1. Start with a thesis statement. A good thesis statement is the foundation of a well-rounded paper. When you begin your essay, make a clear statement. Be able to back that statement up if necessary, but be prepared to argue for it in a strong sense. Avoid the sentence “I believe that X.” Instead, state a thesis to help the reader understand exactly how you feel and why. 

2. Read your essay out loud. This will help you find areas that need improvement, and it will keep you aware of the pace of this activity. 

3. Take notes. It is easy to get caught up in this activity and lose sight of what else needs to be done. Make a note of the best ideas that come to you while doing this research activity. 

4. When writing the thesis, write down how you will prove or support it. Read your essay aloud again, and look for areas where you need more information. 

5. If your project is expository, the most commonly misunderstood aspect is the conclusion. You need to write the conclusion at the end of your project. Make sure it is clear, concise, and to the point. 

Paraphrasing

Can we shorten our essays through paraphrasing? Yes, we can. However, many students mistake rewording what they learn in the book. To create a properly-written paraphrase, you need to understand the original text and also be careful to maintain its organization. 

Paraphrasing language that is poor, vague, or missing essential details can have a significant impact on the audience. To write a good paraphrase, you need to practice and review it before publishing.

 The best way to write a good paraphrase is that the writer expresses his ideas in his own words. While paraphrasing, ensure your reader understands what you mean by your sentences and writing.

Write More Concisely – Tips to Shorten Your Essay

Need help on how to shorten an essay ? Shortening your essay is not a difficult thing to do, but it might require some effort. You will have a concise and engaging essay if you follow these steps!

Here are eight proven tips to shorten your essay:

1. Use simple, everyday words. Don’t try to conceal yourself behind big words. They will only exacerbate your flaws. 

2. Remove any unnecessary words.

Examine your adverbs (strongly, gratuitously), adjectives (large, great), and qualifiers (very, somewhat). The majority of the words you don’t need can be found here. Consider whether they are necessary. If not, get rid of them.

3. Avoid using nominalization.

How many times have you suffocated a verb by making it a noun? 

(delude – delusion, exclude – exclusion, contract – contraction) Stop it!

4. Avoid using these five words too close to a verb.

Desist from using the words’ take,’ ‘give, “make,’ ‘conduct,’ and ‘come’ too close to a verb or a nominalized verb phrase. They detract from the clarity of your sentences. 

Example: ‘The organization needs to take the defects into consideration.’  should be  ‘The organization needs to consider the defects.’ 

Other tips to shorten your essay include:

5. Make use of strong, specific verbs and nouns. This allows you to avoid using the passive voice, cut down on wordiness, and eliminate modifiers and qualifiers.

6. Make use of the active voice.

You must use the active voice if you follow plain language rules. It assists you in simplifying your message and saying precisely what you want to say. The active voice eliminates uncertainty. We are always aware of who is doing what. The Hemingway App assists you in identifying passive voice.

7. Avoid using jargon.

Overused phrases in a company or industry lose all meaning. Please refrain from using the terms’ like, ‘think outside the box,’ ‘win-win situation,’ ‘low-hanging fruit,’ and ‘pushing the envelope.’ Your readers will ignore you if you don’t say what you mean.

8. Avoid using verbs that require you to ‘tell.’

When used to describe something, these ten verbs will unnecessarily increase your word count. 

These ten verbs are appeared, mused, seemed, thought, wondered, seemed, felt, decided, heard, and realized. Stay away from them.

Shortening an essay requires a lot of focus, but the payoff is well worth the effort. Try out these tips, and soon you’ll be able to significantly shorten your essay without removing any significant content from the piece.

Think about your essay like a puzzle. You can add and subtract individual pieces to make the picture stronger. 

Pam is an expert grammarian with years of experience teaching English, writing and ESL Grammar courses at the university level. She is enamored with all things language and fascinated with how we use words to shape our world.

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How to Shorten an Essay: 4 Techniques to Reduce Word Count

If you need to shorten your essay by 100-500 words, or even more, you can use one or more of four techniques. You can clean up your sentences, remove repetition, summarize your examples, and/or cut out an entire section.

One of my subscribers recently asked me, “ How do I compress an essay of 700-1000 words, or even more, to just 300 words? ”

In this tutorial I will show you four easy ways to shorten your essay by as much or as little as you wish. I am giving them to you in the order you should try them out.

Here are four techniques to shorten your essay:

Technique #1: Sentence Cleanup

When I taught essay writing in college, I noticed that students wrote sentences that were just too wordy. 

They used 20 words where 10 would have probably done the trick. If you examine your sentences, you’ll often find that you can say the same thing in much fewer words.

“In my opinion, there are many people who want to lose weight.”

This sentence contains 12 words. 

Here’s how we can shorten it by performing a Sentence Cleanup.

First, you never have to say, “ In my opinion, ” because if it were not your opinion, you wouldn’t be stating it. Okay? So, let’s cross out “ in my opinion. ”

“ In my opinion, there are many people who want to lose weight.”

We just cut out three words. 

Next, the phrase “ there are ” is usually unnecessary, and if you take it out, your sentence will become more elegant. So, let’s do it. Let’s just cross it out.

“ There are many people who want to lose weight.”

We also have to cross out the extra word “ who ” because it is only needed if you use “ there are. ”

We just got rid of three more words. 

And so our sentence becomes:

“Many people want to lose weight.”

How many words is that? That is now a six word sentence. Guess what – we just cut this sentence in half. 

Do this enough times in your essay, and it will get a lot shorter.

“How do I cut out 200 words from my essay to make it shorter?”

This sentence contains 14 words. Let’s perform a Sentence Cleanup.

Notice that it is pretty obvious that to cut out 200 words from an essay will make it shorter. Therefore, stating that you want to do it “ to make it shorter ” is unnecessary. 

If we get rid of that phrase, we’ll cut out 4 words from this sentence and make it a lot more elegant. 

“How do I cut out 200 words from my essay to make it shorter ?”

Technique #2: Removing Repetition

Repetition can be found on all levels – in a sentence, in a paragraph, or a section. When you reduce or eliminate repetition in your essay, you are making it less redundant. “Redundant” just means repetitive and therefore useless.

In the last example we just did, we eliminated a redundancy from a sentence. And that’s part of a Sentence Cleanup. But you can also find and eliminate entire redundant sentences.  

Look for repetitive phrases, sentences, and even passages in your content and remove them. 

Students often repeat things over and over, using different words, thinking that they’re writing great content. Those are your opportunities to significantly shorten your essay while improving it at the same time.

Here’s an example from a fictitious student essay. Let’s say the student writes about his trip to Paris and states:

“ I found that Parisians are very nice if you talk to them in French. ”

And then, in the same or even a different paragraph or section, the following sentence would appear:

“Parisians can be very nice people, but they really prefer that you speak French with them.”

Well, the two sentences say the same thing, just using different words. 

So, what do you do? 

Pick the longer sentence and just delete it.

Sometimes you will find a whole paragraph in your essay that is repetitive and can be removed without the essay losing any meaning. If you find such a paragraph, just delete it.

Technique #3: Zooming Out

Make sure that you go through your essay using the first two techniques before you employ this and the next one. 

The only case where you would do Zooming Out first would be if you had to shorten your essay drastically – by 30% or more. 

If you’ve cleaned up all your sentences and removed all repetitive content, and you still need to lose hundreds of words, the Zooming Out technique will really help. 

Here’s how it works. 

You may have heard that in essay writing, you are supposed to proceed from general to specific. Whether you stick to this rule really well in your essay or not, I want you to notice something. 

In your essay, you make statements that are:

• very general
• less general
• somewhat specific
• very specific

The most general statement in your essay is the thesis because it summarizes the entire essay. And the most specific parts of your essay are examples .

So, in order to shorten your essay, you can summarize your examples. I call this Zooming Out because you are taking something that was very specific (zoomed in) and making it more general (zoomed out). 

Let’s say you’re writing about the harms of second-hand smoking. And in one of the sections you provide an example of your friend or someone in the news who became seriously ill because she lived with a smoker for a long time:

“My friend Isabelle was married to a chain smoker. Her husband refused not only to give up his habit but even to reduce it. As years went by, Isabelle began to notice some respiratory symptoms. At first, she developed a light but persistent cough. Then, she started to feel out of breath more and more often. When she finally went to a pulmonologist, a test revealed that she had COPD, a serious lung disease.”

This example is 74 words long. And this is your opportunity to shorten your essay dramatically. 

You can simply contract this example into one short sentence and write something like this:

“A friend of mine developed lung disease after having lived with a chain smoker for twelve years.”

Now, this sentence contains only 17 words. We just cut out 57 words just by Zooming Out on one example. 

We are Zooming Out because we are no longer exploring this example in detail. We simply provide a fact without giving a lot of specific information. 

So, look for these detailed examples in your essay and just summarize each of them into one short sentence.

Technique #4: Cutting out a Section

This technique works very well to cut out a big chunk of your essay in one fell swoop.

Let’s say that you wrote an essay in which you have four supporting points to prove your main point, your thesis. 

If this is a 2,000-word essay, then each section is approximately 500 words long. But do you really need four reasons/sections to support your point?

Is it possible that if you provide only three supporting points, your essay will still work very well?

For example, if you argue that apples are a great food, you could have four supporting points, claiming that apples are:

But what if you simply took out one of these points? Let’s say that you eliminate the section about the portability of apples.

Will your essay still work? Sure it will. It will work just fine with the three remaining supporting points. And you just cut out 500 words (in a 2,000-word essay). 

After you have cut out a section, make sure to go back to your thesis statement and edit it to reflect the change.

I’ll leave you with one final tip. When trying to choose which sentence, paragraph, or section to cut out from your essay, go for the content that you know is not the best.

For example, you may have a section in your essay where you quote too much. Or, perhaps you were not very careful in paraphrasing, and your passage sounds too much like the original source. These would be great bits of content to get rid of.

I hope this was helpful. Now go ahead and shorten your essay to your heart’s desire!

How to Write a 300 Word Essay – Simple Tutorial

How to expand an essay – 4 tips to increase the word count, 10 solid essay writing tips to help you improve quickly, essay writing for beginners: 6-step guide with examples, 6 simple ways to improve sentence structure in your essays.

Tutor Phil is an e-learning professional who helps adult learners finish their degrees by teaching them academic writing skills.

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How to Shorten an Essay: Reduce Word Count but keep Points

Shortening an Essay

When writing an essay, you may need to shorten it by reducing its word count to the number required by your instructor. In this case, you might have some words you need to eliminate in the essay. Also, you may have to shorten the paragraphs.

Read on for a comprehensive guide on 7 ways how you can shorten your essay but still make the points you intended to keep in the paper. If you need help to shorten your essay, just get in touch with our online essay writers, and the team will help you score an A

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How Do I Make My Essay Shorter

It is possible to shorten your essay or reduce the word count to meet the requirements during the editing process. The editing process should be the last step in writing your essay. The following are some of the most effective techniques to shorten your essay.

When it comes to writing essays, there are two types of students; those who write beyond the word count and those who write below the word count.

For those who write beyond the word count, you can use simple techniques to shorten an essay.

1. Rank your Arguments’ strengths and weakness 

The first technique for making your essay shorter is by ranking your arguments. If your essay is longer than the requirement, rank the points used to support your arguments.

A good essay should contain only the most vital and valid points.

If you find some of your weak supporting points, eliminate them while removing the unnecessary wording.

Students will often be tempted to present a multifaceted point of view to support a single point.

While this may demonstrate your knowledge of the subject, it will add unnecessary content to your essay.

To avoid this and reduce the essay’s length, carefully select the most relevant and vital points.

However, if you still want to include all the points, you can minimize the details, especially within weaker points. This will make your essay shorter.

2. Focus on the Main Point of your Essay

This is a very practical technique for making your essay shorter. When given an essay to complete, the instructor expects you to come up with a topic and support it throughout your essay.

Valid arguments within each paragraph of your essay should support the topic and the thesis statement.

Therefore, if your essay is longer than recommended, look for sentences or entire paragraphs that do not address or support your essay’s main point or topic.

Students may find themselves accidentally going off-topic and including other unnecessary wordings and arguments to make their essays appear “smarter” or well-written.

This can result in unnecessary words and sentences beyond the required word count.

If you identify such unnecessary arguments within your essay while editing, eliminate them to focus more on your main point and achieve the target word count.

3. Eliminate the use of Verbiage

You should eliminate the verbiage if you want to make your essay shorter. This is especially relevant when writing academic essays where you are required to present your arguments professionally and straightforwardly.

Eliminate any extra information or words that do not add value to your point or overall argument. Such verbiage is some of the weak words to avoid in writing essays and research papers.

You can eliminate unnecessary adjectives, adverbs, generalizations, clichés, and lengthy verb phrases here. You can do this while performing the first and second techniques mentioned above.

Best Professional Essay Writers for Hire: Cheap but Vetted

4. Write Short Sentences using the Active Voice

As we have noted, academic essays will require you to present your arguments straightforwardly. Using the active voice while constructing your sentences will help you achieve this while keeping them brief.

While this may not apply to all sentences within your essay, try to begin most of your sentences using the subject.

In this case, the subject is the thing or person performing an action. This should be followed by the action the subject performs.

If you use the passive voice, where you describe how the object is acted upon, then your sentences will be longer and contribute to the unwanted length of the essay.

For example, take a simple sentence like, “John plays basketball regularly.”

This sentence is in the active voice because John (subject) performs the action of playing basketball (object).

Now take a sentence like, “basketball is regularly played by John.” The second sentence is in passive voice because it describes how the object (basketball) is acted upon.

The first sentence in the active voice comprises 4 words, while the second sentence in the passive voice comprises 6 words. Therefore, you can see that writing in an active voice shortens your essay.

5. Utilize the most Applicable Strong Verbs

This may seem obvious, but many students cannot find the most applicable verbs. They find those that are close instead of using the perfect verb.

If you want to shorten your essay, find the best verb that conveys a precise meaning.

This is because when you use an imperfect verb, you will end up using more words to clarify the meaning.

Here is an example to clarify what is meant by using the most applicable verb:

“John’s team defeated the opposing team by several points.”

Using “defeated” in the above sentence is not grammatically wrong. However, it is not the best verb to use because John’s team not only defeated the opposing team, they all defeated them by several points.

If you wish to reduce the word count while maintaining the same meaning, you can use the verb “trounce” in place of “defeat.” The new sentence will be:

“John’s team trounced the opposing team.”

6. Quote from the most Relevant Sources

In academic essays, you may be required to provide quotes from secondary sources to support your essay. The number of sources needed depends on the length of the paper. For instance, a 4-page paper may require more secondary sources than a 2-page one.

However, if you find that you have used several quotes that are lengthening your essay, retain quotes from secondary sources that are most related to your topic, and eliminate the rest. Again, only cite the sources that are most relevant to your topic.

7. Avoid Block Quotes

The best way to avoid longer essays is by avoiding direct quotations from other authors. This can be done by paraphrasing their content and just citing the sources without using many words.

Avoiding block quotes will make the paragraphs short and your arguments more captivating to the reader. Therefore, avoid using essay or sentence generators, as these will quote other sources.

However, note that using external sources to support your points and arguments is always advisable when writing an essay. Such supporting content is important for the grades and to back up your claims.

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Weak Words to Avoid in Writing an Essay

Now that we have explored the most applicable methods or techniques that can help make your essay shorter, it is important to identify the unnecessary things to avoid in an essay to avoid going beyond the word count.

1. The passive voice

As we have noted, the passive voice makes your sentences unnecessarily lengthy. On the other hand, the active voice makes the sentences more compelling and clear because they are straight to the point.

Consequently, the active voice uses lesser words compared to the passive voice. Therefore, it is important to avoid the passive voice in an essay.

2. Adverbs and Adjectives

While adjectives modify nouns while adverbs modify verbs, good and well-utilized words in a sentence do not require modifying.

In most cases, adjectives and adverbs weaken strong nouns and verbs, thus weakening your overall writing.

Such weak words add no value to your paragraphs; you must avoid them when writing an essay.

When editing your essay and you find adverbs with “ly” as their endings, you can eliminate them because they act as filler words that add no value to the point you are trying to communicate.

When it comes to adjectives, they do not add meaning to the sentence and are, therefore, unnecessary.

3. Conjunctions

Conjunctions such as and, or, however, but, and, e.g., connect two different sentences that can be written independently. They are unnecessary when you want to make an essay shorter.

These are some of the words that make an essay ridiculously long and create the need to be precise. Eliminating them reduces the word count and shortens the essay.

4. Running Starts and Needless Transitions

Running starts are commonly used phrases that act as an introduction to the sentence. They include “it is, “there is, “the fact that, “and so on. This is basically the opposite of what we discussed in our post on making an essay longer, as we outlined.

Those phrases add unnecessary words to your essay. Needless transitions can be “furthermore,” “then,” indeed,” “however,” and so on.

The bottom line is that when you are told to write a specific number of pages or meet a particular word count, it is imperative to meet the requirements because you will lose some points.

5. First-Person Language

This is a common thing in any essay writing task. It is always advisable that one should avoid using first-person language when writing an essay. This is because the first person is not formal and tends to be confrontational.

Instead of first-person or second-person language, always use a third-person approach. While this does not contribute i reducing the word count, it gives a lot of formality to your essay and puts a warm reading tone.

In addition, using the third person promotes the objectivity of your arguments by presenting them in a manner that can relate to any person, in this case, your readers. Read our guide on avoiding the first-person language in an essay and apply that in your future writing.

Following the above tips will make it easier to shorten your essays.

Watch this video to learn more about this.

With over 10 years in academia and academic assistance, Alicia Smart is the epitome of excellence in the writing industry. She is our managing editor and is in charge of the writing operations at Grade Bees.

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Paraphrasing and Summarizing Tool

Our teachers share tons of different information with us, expecting us to keep it all neat and organized in our heads. Is that fair—or even possible?! From now on, you can easily solve the problem of information overload by using our Summarizer online tool to compress any important text into a 10-sentence summary.

The size of your summary is: % ( words, characters)

This tool analyzes the textual patterns of any piece to render the best results. You’ll get the gist of any article, essay, research paper or any other text compressed into just a couple of sentences! You can also use this tool to summarize your own papers or custom writing works and to create great abstracts, thesis statements, and more.

• ❇️ Summary & conclusion generators today
• ✅ Online summarizer’s 5 practical advantages

Extraction-based

Abstraction-based

Aided summarization

• ❓ Summary Making FAQs

❇️ Why Are Summarizing Tools Important?

Today, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and neural networks are developing rapidly. So it would be weird not to take advantage of this development by using an online summarizer.

Modern online summarizing tools are capable of delivering a decent result regardless of the text’s complexity and the length of summary you want to get. And the technology just keeps getting better. It’s very rare that you’ll have to revise the text you get from a summary maker.

Why summary making tool is a must-have for students:

• Because the summary generator delivers a clear structure, the text is easy to digest.
• If you’re working with a lengthy summary, the article summarizer usually divides the text into meaningful parts and complete paragraphs.
• Summary tools are also capable of making a smooth transition from general to specific, uncovering the main ideas of the text in more detail.
• The resulting summary has a good overall readability without additional “information noise,” dangling references, broken-up sentences, or semantic flaws.

✅ Summarizing and Paraphrasing tool: the Benefits

In other words:

It keeps you from missing any important info from the text.

An article summarizer can highlight keywords, so you don’t even have to worry about looking for those. The tool scans the text and picks out the most important details. As a result, you’ll get a clear picture of what the text is about—without stressing about whether or not you’ve missed anything.

It delivers instant results.

How much time does it take you to read through and digest a page? You’ll then spend even more time to write a summary of your own. Let’s say you can finish reading a 500-word article in about 4 minutes. You’ll spend another 10 to 15 minutes writing a short summary. And that’s only if you don’t have to re-read anything!

A summary tool works instantly. You just paste the text, press the button, and get your summary in a split second.

You’ll get all the same important data, only much quicker, and without having to read through all the text yourself (which might contain a lot of unimportant stuff, too).

It increases your productivity.

This one is a result of the previous advantage. Being able to make a summary with a single click allows you to go through way more material.

For instance, when you’re researching a topic, searching the web can easily take hours and hours. You have to carefully read through each article that might contain some piece of information you need.

There’s no such task when using a summary generator. It will give you short snippets that are clear and to the point.

It boosts your study process.

Notes, written answers, and summaries are often the result of study sessions. Being able to produce summaries without having to put in too much effort increases your feeling of accomplishment. All you have left to do is to check out your summaries in order to engage the new material even more and retain the information you’ve gathered.

It can become a vital part of your review sessions.

It doesn’t matter whether you already have summaries or were just about to make them. A text summarizing tool can still be a huge help when you have to review material to prepare for a test or exam.

Attempting to skim the text won’t do you any good and will only turn out to be a waste of time. Having a good summary allows you to avoid this unnecessary and time-consuming step and instead get right down to business.

To memorize the information even better, you can try and interpret the summary in your own words. This way, the material will be more familiar to you. This step will also ensure that the summary has no contextual flaws and that its message is clear.

Just the fact that you can skip all the steps required to summarize the text or article properly makes an online summarizer an absolute winner in terms of usefulness.

All automatic summary tools rely on a certain algorithm to produce the desired result. The way a specific algorithm works is determined by the type of summarization that the tool performs.

📃 3 Types of Summarizing Tools

Conclusion generators can usually perform one of three major summary types:

With this type, the article summarizer will extract snippets from the whole text without changing or altering them in any way.

The process is very similar to extracting key phrases, where the purpose is to find phrases or individual words that could be used as tags for the text or document.

In other words, an extraction-based summary generator copies the most important information from the source text and puts the pieces together to create a summary.

This type of summary is more advanced than the extraction-based type. It involves paraphrasing the parts of text you initially input into the summarizer tool.

Generally speaking, tools that can perform this type of summarization do a much better job of condensing the source text, bringing results that are superior to those of extraction-based summarizers.

The only downside is that it’s much more difficult to develop such summary machine. The main reason for this is that in order to work properly, paraphrasing and summarizing tool requires natural language generation technology. This field is continuously growing, and there have been attempts to create an abstract synopsis capability that’s similar to what we as humans have. But for now, the majority of summary generating tools remain extraction-based.

This type comes as the result of merging findings from the fields of machine learning, text mining, and information retrieval in an attempt to improve the process of automatic summary generation.

This is an obvious step away from fully automatic summarizers towards a slightly different concept. Instead of being a summary generator that does the entire job itself, machine-aided human summarization systems only provide help in the process. For instance, they can highlight passages that could potentially be included in a summary.

On the other hand, human-aided machine summarization systems act in a reverse manner. They generate a summary on their own so that the result can later be processed by a human.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. It’s only a matter of further developments in the field that will bring automatic text summary creation to the next level.

But for now, a free online summarizer has already proven its usefulness.

If you’re short on time, have a ton of essays and research papers that will take you forever to complete, or just don’t feel like sitting for hours trying to capture the main idea from a lengthy text—be sure to try a free summarizer. It’ll make writing summaries much more effortless and save you extra time to spend on the things that are really important to you.

❓ Paragraph Shortener FAQ

❓ how to summarize an article without plagiarizing.

To create an original summary, follow these tips:

• Read the article several times to have a clear idea of its content
• Inspect the introduction, find the thesis statement and rephrase it
• Write down the article’s key points and phrases so as not to forget them
• Compose your summary without peeking at the source text, relying only on your notes
• Cite all the sources used

Alternatively, you can use our online tool, which creates summaries of source texts automatically.

❓ How to make a paragraph shorter?

To shorten a paragraph, cut the unnecessary or redundant information. Your paragraph should contain only one idea, outlined in an introductory sentence. Make sure to elaborate on it in 2 to 3 sentences, cutting out phrases or ideas t that deviate from the core subject.

Then, eliminate words that don’t add any value to the text, stating the obvious or excessive information. Get rid of unnecessary determiners and modifiers and cut repetitive phrases or words.

❓ How to summarize a research paper?

To create a summary, you need to divide the research paper into key sections and elaborate on each one. You then compose a brief overview of everything that’s crucial in the document.

In your summary, include the following parts:

• An introduction, in which you engage the reader in your study
• An explanation of the hypothesis, or purpose of your research
• Description of the methods used
• A review of the results that ties directly to the hypothesis
• A conclusion in which you outline your interpretation of the results and plans for future study

❓ Is there an app that can summarize articles?

Yes, of course! There are plenty of summary makers available in the App Store or Google Play. Furthermore, you can find some great summarizing tools online that don’t require payment or registration. Or use our automatic summary generator above to get an original summary of your text.

❓ How to summarize an article online?

You can use our free summarizer to create a summary of an article. You don’t have to download it on your computer or pay a subscription or fee to use it.. Just follow these simple instructions and get your summary online:

• Copy and paste your text (up to 17.000 characters long) in the available space
• Choose how long you would like the summary to be
• Indicate whether you want to see keywords
• Click the “Analyze text” button and get your summary online!
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Would You Provide Me With a Essay Shortener? – All the Answers

Or try service with sample text, don’t hesitate and try a word shortener right here.

Whether you are in need of something to reduce the length of a paper to meet your word count limit our simple to utilize sentence shortener from summarize website may help you. Many times you need to make the narrative shorter or to make writing more concise. Unlike using a text compactor , doing it manually may be hard and take a considerable amount of time.

The machine placed here is an effective one that is capable of taking out many of the unnecessary words from the original version. It is an effective and quick way to rehash text in a way that is going to reduce the length of writing to meet specific requirements. By using it you’d be able to create text of exactly the length which you need in a fraction of the time that it takes to work through and do it manually.

How to Work with the Tool?

Our paragraph shortener could not be any easier to employ. Just highlight the content you wish to have reduced in length and select copy, then past it into the box. Just let the tool know what your final word count should be and complete the simple challenge to show you are a real person and you may run the process. The essay shortener would then work through an article to remove unnecessary words and swap phrases for shorter ones. This process is done quickly and efficiently and provides with an outline in the blink of an eye.

Benefits That You Can’t Miss

If you want to know why you should employ our automatic article shortener over any other just look at these clear benefits:

• There is no need for you to download any software onto the computer.
• You don’t have to register or provide the information to make a machine works.
• It is completely free to employ.
• You are able to utilize the software an unlimited number of times.
• It is online and you may utilize when you want to get a shorten paragraph.
• It takes just a fraction of a second to provide with results.

How to Use the Results From a Paragraph Shortener

Like any piece of word shortener, the output from software needs to be treated with care. The English language is highly complex and software available today simply cannot comprehend the context and the many other peculiarities. It is therefore likely to make mistakes when it creates new rundown. It should be carefully read and edited before submitting. It should not be simply used without careful thought on your part.

We Offer Excellent Manual Service

We provide a full summing up, rehashing and text shortener service through staff who is fully qualified to assist you. Our shorten my essay services have been around for many years and we have successfully provided clients from all around the world with the support which they need at a high standard. Feel free to come to us with any task and ask to “ write a summary for me “, and we will handle it perfectly, be sure!

Contact our specialized services today to reduce your content length quickly and effectively!

Free Essay Reducer

Summarize any text with this essay reducer in 3 steps:

• Enter the text you want to shorten.
• Choose the length of your summary.
• Click on "Reduce" and get your new text.

Number of sentences in results:

Original ratio

100 % in your summary

Working within a specific word count limitation is often problematic for a student. Sometimes you go far beyond the limits during writing and then don't know how to cut down the content to avoid grade reduction.

How can you squeeze all information into the assigned 500 or 1,000 words?

If you need to submit a shorter essay but don't understand how to shorten the word count effectively, welcome to our essay reducer . Our online, free tool can help you quickly and easily, giving you the exact word count you need for submission.

• ✂️ How to Use the Tool

📐 How Long Should an Essay Be?

• 🔢 Reducing the Word Count

🔗 References

✂️ how to reduce words in essay online.

Now, let's say a few words about our word reducer for essays – here, we show how it works and how it can help you improve the essay's word count and free you from unnecessary wordiness. You need to take only a couple of steps to receive a neatly reduced essay from our generator:

• Copy the text you want to work on.
• Paste the text into the tab at the center of the main page – the maximum you can insert in the excessive word remover is 17,000 characters.
• Stipulate the number of sentences you want to have in the resulting text.
• Tick or untick the box "show keywords depending on whether you want to specify the keywords that need to be preserved in the text.
• Click the “Reduce” button.

Once you click the button, your text will be processed with the smart tool to give you a condensed variant of the content that meets your sentence quantity requirement.

There is no single standard for an essay's word count. Students receive various assignments from their professors, ranging from around 1 page (250-300 words) to large-scale works for 10 pages or more (3,000+ words).

So, you should be ready for any essay project when you start your study process and prepare for the rising word count of essays at higher study levels.

🔢 How to Reduce Essay Word Count

Depending on your circumstances, you may need to engage various word count reduction techniques in writing.

Here's what we recommend for quick, hassle-free word count minimization :

• Remove articles,
• Get rid of unnecessary adverbs,
• Write clearly,
• Use active voice,
• Revise your transitions,
• Delete unnecessary intros.

Below we’ll explain all the details.

Remove Articles

Many students use the article "the" in places where it can be mostly skipped. So, by working on removing "the," you can bring the word count significantly down without large-scale content rework.

Oust Adverbs and Adjectives

In most cases, adverbs and adjectives are used as elements of figurative language and do not add any vital content to your text. Thus, by removing them altogether, you don't undermine the meaning of your essay and deliver the same facts and arguments, though in a far more concise form.

Manage Wordiness

When you write an essay, the temptation is very high to use well-known, sophisticated language forms, such as "in order to," "in the course of," etc. But the fact is that they don't make any sense and steal the vital space for important data. So, it would help if you cut them out of the text to keep only meaningful words.

Opt for Active Voice

According to statistics, passive-voice constructions are always longer and harder to comprehend than active voice. So, revise your use of passive voice in the text and transform all passive phrases into active voice to see how much your proper use of space improves.

Work on the Transitions

Transitions improve the flow of any academic writing but may also be redundant if overused in places that don't need binding with transitions. We recommend going through these phrases and removing some of them from the text to help manage your word count.

Delete Unnecessary Intros

The "running start" use is a common problem among students. Revise your sentences' beginnings to see where you abuse this technique and remove these running starts to ease the reading and shorten the word count.

Thank you for reading this article! Note that you can also use our free paraphraser and title generator at different stages of work on your assignment.

❓ Essay Reducer FAQ

❓ how to make an essay shorter.

You can use many methods for shortening an essay, such as reducing the number of redundant articles, conjunctions, transition phrases, and introductory words. You can also use shorter and simpler words to reduce the essay's overall page and character count.

❓ How does this tool reduce words in essay online?

Our automatic tool applies all the principles we've mentioned above. It reviews the use of articles, conjunctions, and transitions and removes all the unnecessary clutter in your sentences, leaving only the gist. This way, you manage to deliver the same message in a shorter form.

❓ What is a good word count for an essay?

There's no optimal word count for an essay, as tasks differ in length depending on your level of study. It's okay to write an essay of up to 1,000 words at school and 300-500 words for an admission essay. Undergraduate and graduate essays, however, should be a minimum of 2,000 words to present an in-depth examination of your topic.

❓ How to increase the word count of an essay?

Increasing the word count is simpler than reducing it. You only need to pick separate facts and arguments you've given in the body of your essay and expand them with additional evidence and interpretations. As a result, you receive a well-informed discussion without wordiness or redundancy.

• Writing Concisely - UNC Writing Center
• 7 Tips for Clear and Concise Writing - 2022 - MasterClass
• 10 Tips for Cutting Your Word Count
• Summarizing - Academic Integrity at MIT
• Summarising - Academic Writing in English

Free AI Paragraph Rewriter

Improve any paragraph's readability and rewrite it to make it sound more human-like with this powerful free tool.

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Use cases of Ahrefs’ Paragraph Rewriter

Content editing and revision. Ahrefs’ Paragraph Rewriter can be beneficial for content creators, editors, or writers who need to enhance or refine their written content. By inputting a paragraph into the tool, users can receive a rewritten version that offers improved clarity, structure, and overall quality. This use case can save time and effort in the manual editing process while ensuring polished and professional content.

Automation of rewriting tasks. Ahrefs’ Paragraph Rewriter can automate the process of rewriting paragraphs for various purposes. Instead of manually rephrasing content, the tool can be integrated into workflows or applications to automatically generate alternative versions of paragraphs. This use case can significantly streamline tasks that involve rewriting content, such as content spinning for SEO purposes or generating multiple variations of product descriptions.

Language improvement. Language learners and non-native speakers can leverage Ahrefs’ Paragraph Rewriter to enhance their writing skills. By submitting their paragraphs, they can receive rewritten versions that showcase proper grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structures. This use case can aid in language comprehension, provide examples for learning, and help individuals improve their written communication skills.

The technology behind Ahrefs’ Paragraph Rewriter

Ahrefs’ Paragraph Rewriter uses a language model that learns patterns, grammar, and vocabulary from large amounts of text data – then uses that knowledge to generate human-like text based on a given prompt or input. The generated text combines both the model's learned information and its understanding of the input.

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A growing share of Americans say affordable housing is a major problem where they live

Prospective homebuyers and renters across the United States have seen prices surge and supply plummet during the coronavirus pandemic . Amid these circumstances, about half of Americans (49%) say the availability of affordable housing in their local community is a major problem, up 10 percentage points from early 2018, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in October 2021.

This Pew Research Center analysis about the levels of concern among Americans about the affordability of housing draws from a Center survey designed to understand Americans’ views and preferences for where they live.

The survey of 9,676 U.S. adults was conducted from Oct. 18 to 24, 2021. Everyone who took part is a member of Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the  ATP’s methodology .

Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology .

References to White, Black and Asian adults include only those who are not Hispanic and identify as only one race. Hispanics are of any race.

“Middle income” is defined here as two-thirds to double the median annual family income for panelists on the American Trends Panel. “Lower income” falls below that range; “upper income” falls above it. Read the  methodology  for more details.

References to respondents who live in urban, suburban or rural communities are based on respondents’ answer to the following question: “How would you describe the community where you currently live? (1) urban, (2) suburban, (3) rural.”

Another 36% of U.S. adults said in the fall that affordable housing availability is a minor problem in their community, while just 14% said it is not a problem.

Americans’ concerns about the availability of affordable housing have outpaced worries about other local issues. The percentage of adults who say this is a major problem where they live is larger than the shares who say the same about drug addiction (35%), the economic and health impacts of COVID-19 (34% and 26%, respectively) and crime (22%).

Opinions on the question of housing affordability differ by a variety of demographic factors, including income, race and ethnicity, and age. A majority of adults living in lower-income households (57%) say availability of affordable housing is a major issue in their community, larger than the shares of those in middle- (47%) or upper-income households (42%) who say it is a major problem.

Fewer than half of White adults (44%) say that availability of affordable housing is a major problem where they live – lower than the shares of Black (57%), Hispanic and Asian American adults (both 55%) who say the same.

Adults under 50 are more likely than their older counterparts to say affordable housing availability is a major problem locally. More than half of adults ages 18 to 29 and 30 to 49 say this (55% in both age groups), compared with smaller shares of those 50 to 64 and those 65 and older (44% and 39%, respectively).

Americans’ perceptions of this issue also vary based on where they live. About six-in-ten U.S. adults living in urban areas (63%) say that the availability of affordable housing in their community is a major problem, compared with 46% of suburban residents and 40% of those living in rural areas.

Regardless of income level, city dwellers generally tend to view affordable housing availability as a bigger issue than those living in the suburbs or rural areas. Two-thirds of urban adults with lower household incomes (66%) say affordable housing in their area is a major problem, compared with 56% of suburban dwellers with lower incomes and 52% of those with lower incomes living in rural areas. Among upper-income adults, 58% of those living in urban areas say housing affordability is a major problem, compared with 43% of upper-income Americans living in suburban places and 25% of upper-income rural residents.

There are also regional differences. Around seven-in-ten Americans living in the West (69%) say affordable housing availability is a major problem locally. This compares with 49% of Northeasterners, 44% of Americans in the South and 33% of those living in the Midwest.

Since 2018, there have been increases across demographic groups in the shares who say that the availability of affordable housing in their community is a major problem. For example, 55% of adults under 30 now say this is a major problem – a 16 percentage point rise from the 39% who said so in 2018. The share of adults ages 30 to 49 who hold this view has also risen from 42% in 2018 to 55% last year.

About six-in-ten Democrats and independents who lean to the Democratic Party (59%) said in 2021 that affordable housing availability is a major problem in their community, compared with 36% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents.

These partisan differences remain when looking separately at those who live in urban, suburban and rural communities. Among urban residents, two-thirds of Democrats (67%) see the availability of affordable housing locally as a major problem, compared with 54% of Republicans in urban areas. In suburban or rural communities, smaller majorities of Democrats hold this view (56% in the suburbs and 54% in rural places), compared with around a third of Republicans in those areas (35% and 31%, respectively).

Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology .

• Economic Conditions
• Economic Inequality
• Homeownership & Renting
• Issue Priorities
• Personal Finances
• Rural, Urban and Suburban Communities

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ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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