last night I finished my History coursework. All 3752 words of it. Unfortunately the exam board has a strict word limit of 3000 words (for comparison, this entry is 297 words). Meaning my essay was almost exactly 25% too long. Whilst many people would be amazed that someone could write to much in an essay, when the question is

To what extent was Britain’s involvement in war the key factor in explaining both the expansion and contraction of its Empire in the period of 1870 to 1980?

its a bit harder. Putting 110 years of British foreign policy with reasons for all the events into 3000 words is no easy task. Particuly given the number of wars; The Anglo-Zulu war, 1st Boer War, Second Boer War, Anglo-Zanzibar war, Occupation of Egypt, Various wars in Sudan, WWI, WWII, Suez War, Mau Mau uprising, Malayan emergancy. all of those get at least an honourary mention. And ontop of that you have to talk about East and West Africa and Indian nationalism. See the problem?

So this morning I set to work on whittling down the essay. Cutting almost all descrpition out lost 550 words. The last 200 where a complete nightmare. Seriosuly. Hours and hours spent re-writing breif sections to cut 4 or 5 words out. Having done this through the entire essay, you check again. 3050. Damn. What next? And hour of trying to replace places with two words with 1, or removing occaisional descriptive words, so the Suez crises is now only a war rather than a disasterous war. great.

3020.

Next stop, do we really need all those first names? Eden, Rhodes, Macmillan, Attlee, yeah we can forget Anthony, Cecil, Harold and Clement.

3005

this last bit was the hardest. Lets just say thank god for semi-colons.