The answer seems obvious at first. A 400 word essay includes 400 words. But I've learned over years of writing, teaching, and reading student submissions that this straightforward answer masks something more complicated. The real question isn't mathematical. It's about what happens in those 400 words, how they're…
formatting
I've been reading student essays for seven years now, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the moment I see a quote just sitting there, orphaned and unintroduced, something inside me dies a little. Not because I'm dramatic, but because it signals a fundamental misunderstanding about…