world's longest essay

This 1,288-Word Run-On Sentence Broke Records and Inspired Hundreds of Modern Writers

Longest Run-On Sentence by William Faulkner

William Faulkner in 1954 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons Public Domain) This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase, My Modern Met may earn an affiliate commission. Please read our disclosure for more info.

Most book lovers would agree that coming across a very long sentence in a novel can sometimes require multiple reads to comprehend. The world of literature is full of examples of sprawling monologues and multi-line descriptions, but it was American writer William Faulkner who was featured in the 1983 Guinness Book of World Records for his lengthy passage from his 1936 book, Absalom, Absalom!

The huge run-on sentence consists of 1,288 words and countless clauses. It takes patience to read, but once you get into the rhythm, it’s like delving into Faulkner’s stream of consciousness. The experimental writer’s sentence style inspired hundreds of writers since, including Samuel Beckett, Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and other masters of modern literature.

Nowadays, postmodern fiction writers such as John Barth are still influenced by Faulkner’s run-on technique. He once said, “It was Faulkner at his most involuted and incantatory who most enchanted me.” The current record holder for the longest english sentence is Jonathan Coe for his staggering 33-page, 13,955-word sentence in The Rotter’s Club , 2001. Though the record has been broken, Faulkner's legacy lives on.

William Faulkner was featured in 1983 Guinness Book of World Records for this 1,288-word sentence from Absalom, Absalom! Try to read it without getting out of breath.

Just exactly like Father if Father had known as much about it the night before I went out there as he did the day after I came back thinking Mad impotent old man who realized at last that there must be some limit even to the capabilities of a demon for doing harm, who must have seen his situation as that of the show girl, the pony, who realizes that the principal tune she prances to comes not from horn and fiddle and drum but from a clock and calendar, must have seen himself as the old wornout cannon which realizes that it can deliver just one more fierce shot and crumble to dust in its own furious blast and recoil, who looked about upon the scene which was still within his scope and compass and saw son gone, vanished, more insuperable to him now than if the son were dead since now (if the son still lived) his name would be different and those to call him by it strangers and whatever dragon’s outcropping of Sutpen blood the son might sow on the body of whatever strange woman would therefore carry on the tradition, accomplish the hereditary evil and harm under another name and upon and among people who will never have heard the right one; daughter doomed to spinsterhood who had chosen spinsterhood already before there was anyone named Charles Bon since the aunt who came to succor her in bereavement and sorrow found neither but instead that calm absolutely impenetrable face between a homespun dress and sunbonnet seen before a closed door and again in a cloudy swirl of chickens while Jones was building the coffin and which she wore during the next year while the aunt lived there and the three women wove their own garments and raised their own food and cut the wood they cooked it with (excusing what help they had from Jones who lived with his granddaughter in the abandoned fishing camp with its collapsing roof and rotting porch against which the rusty scythe which Sutpen was to lend him, make him borrow to cut away the weeds from the door-and at last forced him to use though not to cut weeds, at least not vegetable weeds -would lean for two years) and wore still after the aunt’s indignation had swept her back to town to live on stolen garden truck and out o f anonymous baskets left on her front steps at night, the three of them, the two daughters negro and white and the aunt twelve miles away watching from her distance as the two daughters watched from theirs the old demon, the ancient varicose and despairing Faustus fling his final main now with the Creditor’s hand already on his shoulder, running his little country store now for his bread and meat, haggling tediously over nickels and dimes with rapacious and poverty-stricken whites and negroes, who at one time could have galloped for ten miles in any direction without crossing his own boundary, using out of his meagre stock the cheap ribbons and beads and the stale violently-colored candy with which even an old man can seduce a fifteen-year-old country girl, to ruin the granddaughter o f his partner, this Jones-this gangling malaria-ridden white man whom he had given permission fourteen years ago to squat in the abandoned fishing camp with the year-old grandchild-Jones, partner porter and clerk who at the demon’s command removed with his own hand (and maybe delivered too) from the showcase the candy beads and ribbons, measured the very cloth from which Judith (who had not been bereaved and did not mourn) helped the granddaughter to fashion a dress to walk past the lounging men in, the side-looking and the tongues, until her increasing belly taught her embarrassment-or perhaps fear;-Jones who before ’61 had not even been allowed to approach the front of the house and who during the next four years got no nearer than the kitchen door and that only when he brought the game and fish and vegetables on which the seducer-to-be’s wife and daughter (and Clytie too, the one remaining servant, negro, the one who would forbid him to pass the kitchen door with what he brought) depended on to keep life in them, but who now entered the house itself on the (quite frequent now) afternoons when the demon would suddenly curse the store empty of customers and lock the door and repair to the rear and in the same tone in which he used to address his orderly or even his house servants when he had them (and in which he doubtless ordered Jones to fetch from the showcase the ribbons and beads and candy) direct Jones to fetch the jug, the two of them (and Jones even sitting now who in the old days, the old dead Sunday afternoons of monotonous peace which they spent beneath the scuppernong arbor in the back yard, the demon lying in the hammock while Jones squatted against a post, rising from time to time to pour for the demon from the demijohn and the bucket of spring water which he had fetched from the spring more than a mile away then squatting again, chortling and chuckling and saying `Sho, Mister Tawm’ each time the demon paused)-the two of them drinking turn and turn about from the jug and the demon not lying down now nor even sitting but reaching after the third or second drink that old man’s state of impotent and furious undefeat in which he would rise, swaying and plunging and shouting for his horse and pistols to ride single-handed into Washington and shoot Lincoln (a year or so too late here) and Sherman both, shouting, ‘Kill them! Shoot them down like the dogs they are!’ and Jones: ‘Sho, Kernel; sho now’ and catching him as he fell and commandeering the first passing wagon to take him to the house and carry him up the front steps and through the paintless formal door beneath its fanlight imported pane by pane from Europe which Judith held open for him to enter with no change, no alteration in that calm frozen face which she had worn for four years now, and on up the stairs and into the bedroom and put him to bed like a baby and then lie down himself on the floor beside the bed though not to sleep since before dawn the man on the bed would stir and groan and Jones would say, ‘flyer I am, Kernel. Hit’s all right. They aint whupped us yit, air they?’ this Jones who after the demon rode away with the regiment when the granddaughter was only eight years old would tell people that he ‘was lookin after Major’s place and niggers’ even before they had time to ask him why he was not with the troops and perhaps in time came to believe the lie himself, who was among the first to greet the demon when he returned, to meet him at the gate and say, ‘Well, Kernel, they kilt us but they aint whupped us yit, air they?’ who even worked, labored, sweat at the demon’s behest during that first furious period while the demon believed he could restore by sheer indomitable willing the Sutpen’s Hundred which he remembered and had lost, labored with no hope of pay or reward who must have seen long before the demon did (or would admit it) that the task was hopeless-blind Jones who apparently saw still in that furious lecherous wreck the old fine figure of the man who once galloped on the black thoroughbred about that domain two boundaries of which the eye could not see from any point.

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Absalom, Absalom! ">When William Faulkner Set the World Record for Writing the Longest Sentence in Literature: Read the 1,288-Word Sentence from Absalom, Absalom!

in Books , Literature , Writing | March 14th, 2019 38 Comments

Image by Carl Van Vechten, via Wikimedia Commons

“How did Faulkner pull it off?” is a question many a fledgling writer has asked themselves while struggling through a period of apprenticeship like that novelist John Barth describes in his 1999 talk “My Faulkner.” Barth “ reorchestrated ” his literary heroes, he says, “in search of my writerly self… downloading my innumerable predecessors as only an insatiable green apprentice can.” Surely a great many writers can relate when Barth says, “it was Faulkner at his most involuted and incantatory who most enchanted me.” For many a writer, the Faulknerian sentence is an irresistible labyrinth. His syntax has a way of weaving itself into the unconscious, emerging as fair to middling imitation.

While studying at Johns Hopkins University, Barth found himself writing about his native Eastern Shore Maryland in a pastiche style of “middle Faulkner and late Joyce.” He may have won some praise from a visiting young William Styron, “but the finished opus didn’t fly—for one thing, because Faulkner intimately knew his Snopses and Compsons and Sartorises, as I did not know my made-up denizens of the Maryland marsh.” The advice to write only what you know may not be worth much as a universal commandment. But studying the way that Faulkner wrote when he turned to the subjects he knew best provides an object lesson on how powerful a literary resource intimacy can be.

Not only does Faulkner’s deep affiliation with his characters’ inner lives elevate his portraits far above the level of local color or regionalist curiosity, but it animates his sentences, makes them constantly move and breathe. No matter how long and twisted they get, they do not wilt, wither, or drag; they run river-like, turning around in asides, outraging themselves and doubling and tripling back. Faulkner’s intimacy is not earnestness, it is the uncanny feeling of a raw encounter with a nerve center lighting up with information, all of it seemingly critically important.

It is the extraordinary sensory quality of his prose that enabled Faulkner to get away with writing the longest sentence in literature, at least according to the 1983 Guinness Book of World Records , a passage from Absalom, Absalom! c onsisting of 1,288 words and who knows how many different kinds of clauses. There are now longer sentences in English writing. Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club ends with a 33-page long whopper with 13,955 words in it. Entire novels hundreds of pages long have been written in one sentence in other languages. All of Faulkner’s modernist contemporaries, including of course Joyce, Wolff, and Beckett, mastered the use of run-ons , to different effect.

But, for a time, Faulkner took the run-on as far as it could go. He may have had no intention of inspiring postmodern fiction, but one of its best-known novelists, Barth, only found his voice by first writing a “heavily Faulknerian marsh-opera.” Many hundreds of experimental writers have had almost identical experiences trying to exorcise the Oxford, Mississippi modernist’s voice from their prose. Read that onetime longest sentence in literature, all 1,288 words of it, below.

Just exactly like Father if Father had known as much about it the night before I went out there as he did the day after I came back thinking Mad impotent old man who realized at last that there must be some limit even to the capabilities of a demon for doing harm, who must have seen his situation as that of the show girl, the pony, who realizes that the principal tune she prances to comes not from horn and fiddle and drum but from a clock and calendar, must have seen himself as the old wornout cannon which realizes that it can deliver just one more fierce shot and crumble to dust in its own furious blast and recoil, who looked about upon the scene which was still within his scope and compass and saw son gone, vanished, more insuperable to him now than if the son were dead since now (if the son still lived) his name would be different and those to call him by it strangers and whatever dragon’s outcropping of Sutpen blood the son might sow on the body of whatever strange woman would therefore carry on the tradition, accomplish the hereditary evil and harm under another name and upon and among people who will never have heard the right one; daughter doomed to spinsterhood who had chosen spinsterhood already before there was anyone named Charles Bon since the aunt who came to succor her in bereavement and sorrow found neither but instead that calm absolutely impenetrable face between a homespun dress and sunbonnet seen before a closed door and again in a cloudy swirl of chickens while Jones was building the coffin and which she wore during the next year while the aunt lived there and the three women wove their own garments and raised their own food and cut the wood they cooked it with (excusing what help they had from Jones who lived with his granddaughter in the abandoned fishing camp with its collapsing roof and rotting porch against which the rusty scythe which Sutpen was to lend him, make him borrow to cut away the weeds from the door-and at last forced him to use though not to cut weeds, at least not vegetable weeds ‑would lean for two years) and wore still after the aunt’s indignation had swept her back to town to live on stolen garden truck and out o f anonymous baskets left on her front steps at night, the three of them, the two daughters negro and white and the aunt twelve miles away watching from her distance as the two daughters watched from theirs the old demon, the ancient varicose and despairing Faustus fling his final main now with the Creditor’s hand already on his shoulder, running his little country store now for his bread and meat, haggling tediously over nickels and dimes with rapacious and poverty-stricken whites and negroes, who at one time could have galloped for ten miles in any direction without crossing his own boundary, using out of his meagre stock the cheap ribbons and beads and the stale violently-colored candy with which even an old man can seduce a fifteen-year-old country girl, to ruin the granddaughter o f his partner, this Jones-this gangling malaria-ridden white man whom he had given permission fourteen years ago to squat in the abandoned fishing camp with the year-old grandchild-Jones, partner porter and clerk who at the demon’s command removed with his own hand (and maybe delivered too) from the showcase the candy beads and ribbons, measured the very cloth from which Judith (who had not been bereaved and did not mourn) helped the granddaughter to fashion a dress to walk past the lounging men in, the side-looking and the tongues, until her increasing belly taught her embarrassment-or perhaps fear;-Jones who before ’61 had not even been allowed to approach the front of the house and who during the next four years got no nearer than the kitchen door and that only when he brought the game and fish and vegetables on which the seducer-to-be’s wife and daughter (and Clytie too, the one remaining servant, negro, the one who would forbid him to pass the kitchen door with what he brought) depended on to keep life in them, but who now entered the house itself on the (quite frequent now) afternoons when the demon would suddenly curse the store empty of customers and lock the door and repair to the rear and in the same tone in which he used to address his orderly or even his house servants when he had them (and in which he doubtless ordered Jones to fetch from the showcase the ribbons and beads and candy) direct Jones to fetch the jug, the two of them (and Jones even sitting now who in the old days, the old dead Sunday afternoons of monotonous peace which they spent beneath the scuppernong arbor in the back yard, the demon lying in the hammock while Jones squatted against a post, rising from time to time to pour for the demon from the demijohn and the bucket of spring water which he had fetched from the spring more than a mile away then squatting again, chortling and chuckling and saying ‘Sho, Mister Tawm’ each time the demon paused)-the two of them drinking turn and turn about from the jug and the demon not lying down now nor even sitting but reaching after the third or second drink that old man’s state of impotent and furious undefeat in which he would rise, swaying and plunging and shouting for his horse and pistols to ride single-handed into Washington and shoot Lincoln (a year or so too late here) and Sherman both, shouting, ‘Kill them! Shoot them down like the dogs they are!’ and Jones: ‘Sho, Kernel; sho now’ and catching him as he fell and commandeering the first passing wagon to take him to the house and carry him up the front steps and through the paintless formal door beneath its fanlight imported pane by pane from Europe which Judith held open for him to enter with no change, no alteration in that calm frozen face which she had worn for four years now, and on up the stairs and into the bedroom and put him to bed like a baby and then lie down himself on the floor beside the bed though not to sleep since before dawn the man on the bed would stir and groan and Jones would say, ‘flyer I am, Kernel. Hit’s all right. They aint whupped us yit, air they?’ this Jones who after the demon rode away with the regiment when the granddaughter was only eight years old would tell people that he ‘was lookin after Major’s place and niggers’ even before they had time to ask him why he was not with the troops and perhaps in time came to believe the lie himself, who was among the first to greet the demon when he returned, to meet him at the gate and say, ‘Well, Kernel, they kilt us but they aint whupped us yit, air they?’ who even worked, labored, sweat at the demon’s behest during that first furious period while the demon believed he could restore by sheer indomitable willing the Sutpen’s Hundred which he remembered and had lost, labored with no hope of pay or reward who must have seen long before the demon did (or would admit it) that the task was hopeless-blind Jones who apparently saw still in that furious lecherous wreck the old fine figure of the man who once galloped on the black thoroughbred about that domain two boundaries of which the eye could not see from any point.

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The World's Longest Sentence (5237 words)

Once upon a while back there was an ambitious contortionist who made up his mind he would try to conquer the twenty-seventh highest dead volcano on Neptune, with his tongue secretly hiding behind his overweight postman's Swedish Hi-Fi set and the shoelaces of his Persian Ugh boots stubbornly caught on the corner of the round Toongabbie equestrian sports complex, while he would try to breed miniature brown cicadas inside a quickly rotating water-heater with seven silk pillowcases hanging from his uneducated vacuum cleaner which would be chained around his navel, and ask if his second grand-stepfather has heard of any orange-flavoured Portuguese atomic submarines in the neighbourhood lately that have precisely half of their crews attempting to break the 1958 record for mass voluntary electrocution whilst being sponsored by the dangerous chrysanthemum division of Interflora, who have recently gone bankrupt due to the discovery of an overcrowding of rebellious screwdrivers in the Martian stratosphere last week, when salamanders controlled nine hours forty-seven minutes of the 1978 Pakistani croquet final between the lower Philadelphia fishmonger recruiting officer and Karl Marx's younger brother Harpo, who has not seen his bedroom since the Mexican figure-skating champion booked fourteen tomatoes for exceeding the post-war speed limit and lost his balance whilst trying to hunt abominable snowmen at the Olympics with a soggy sultana hidden inside his chaperone's nightshirt which, in 1947, when John Lennon first washed his face and socks in the same country, had its only steel-plated sleeve melted off by the self-appointed chairman of Doubtful Drainpipes Destruction Company under the New Moscow Harbour Bridge which is, at present, rusting severely, due to a heavy downpour of talcum powder over at Disneyland and also due to sixteen undernourished lizards going into a deep, meditating coma without asking their mothers, who were not about to stand for this caper and sat down immediately, squashing Winston Churchill's scale model of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, which was about to be tested for leakages by the Unemployed Dandelion Research Institution of Dublin, the only city in the Northern Hemisphere to have nine-tenths of its population with an I.Q. less than the average shoe size of the Australian woman, which is seven, but would be more if Neil Armstrong, the best marbles player to walk the surface of the moon, had not decided that he would accept the challenge to be the first and only man to extract his own eardrum while suffering from severe cramps in the left thumbnail, because Franklin D. Roosevelt once put on his coat inside out, which did not seem like a particularly good reason at all, but, considering the fact that the great tennis ball makers' strike of 1904 was, in fact, a fraud, he felt that he could not let the United States of America down who had already bet four buttons and a can of coconut milk on his success and hoped that he would survive the operation which had full, live television coverage by the Ethnic Ethiopians' Broadcasting Commission (E.E.B.C.) in a program with five different commercials showing how to get sperm whales with thick dandruff out of your backyard swimming pool by calling the "sperm Whales with Dandruff in the Backyard Pool Removal Service," who instantly give a free measure and quote, on the condition that the sperm whale to be removed is not suffering from gravel rash, a symptom quite often associated with Outer Mongolian malaria, the only disease in the world except, of course the 'flu, to pass the standards of the Waterloo Water Board, which were introduced six weeks ago because of the invention of shockproof, water-resistant, anti-magnetic, nuclear-explosion-proof sideburn trimmers (the greatest thing since sliced bread), and because of the remembrance of the first Anti-sliced Bread Protest March, which had to be cancelled due to a lack of support on the same afternoon as Norman Gunston's attempt to capture a smart Irishman which, while being unsuccessful, had to be satisfied by a blowfly of about the same intelligence extremely quickly, because the net profit of the experiment had to finance a joint venture between ESSO and BHP in which Norman's aunt's second husband's greengrocer's friend's hairdresser's mother-in-law was to have her false teeth removed by means of voodoo, which is at present practised only by an almost extinct race of politicians found only in the remote valley of Canberra who are trying very hard at the moment to keep the economic sky from falling on to their heads and subsequently avoid a quiet democratic dismissal by the public in a never-ending search for truth, justice and a cheap Christmas dinner which is not surrounded by enormous overheads comprising mostly of a few million dollars profit thrown in for the Artificial Christmas Turkey Company to make the industrial road smoother, and for good old Uncle P.M. in his private, mental straightjacket to tax merrily so as to have enough money to pull his head out of the clouds and his fingers out of his public image money box, which is the largest of its kind in the known world according to the latest annual survey carried out by N.A.S.A., which also showed that there has been a drop in the number of people willing to explain to their bosses why their two-week sick leave lasted nine years and why, when they are rung to be questioned about the reason for this peculiarity, the phone is always answered by a stuttering grandmother trying to persuade the inquirer into thinking there is something wrong with their telephone or that he has been dialling the wrong number for the past eight years eleven and a half months and when, after these possibilities have been overruled on the grounds that the phone was checked last year and that the inquirer has never rung a wrong number before in his life, an elderly vacuum cleaner salesman makes off with the telephone, never to be seen again by anyone alive, except his fellow vacuum cleaner salesmen, who arranged and secretly planned the whole operation without any help whatsoever from Berlin's newly elected Mayor - Mr Jerry Lewis Jnr who received this appointment because of his love of South American curry powder, since the prime ingredients are, of course, peppermint and Manhattan mushrooms, with no artificial flavouring, colouring or preservatives usually found in American suntan lotion worn by most of the population of Miami Beach, where a film appropriately named "The Fourth Return of Son of Son of Jaws XIX" (repeat) is being shot by a team of highly paid, unqualified voluntary producer/directors, who cannot really keep their greedy eyes off the admirable feminine figures that make up practically all of the film's screening time of forty-three hours sixteen and a half-minutes, except for the part where the tedious hero goes into an underwater cavern to search for lost victims of this pathetic shark, which is really half electronics, thought up simultaneously by one hundred and forty-two brigadier-generals, which may seem amazing, but is really nothing compared to the incredible twenty-three cents amassed over seventy-two years of solid devotion by eighty-six members of the Royal Philharmonic Choir in an effort unsurpassed since the year of completion (1978), when an enormous celebration was prepared that turned out to be as difficult to accomplish as dissecting an experimental nuclear warhead with a dried mosquito wing, with the complete collection of Status Quo's albums obstructing the view that is needed to perform this difficult operation, which once, and only once, was performed by the one and only John Smith, who is no relation to John Smith or the other John Smith, well known for his attempt to beat the monstrous rate of inflation by changing the price tag of every retail item in the country, which happened to be a miserable failure because the price tags were so well hidden by the shops concerned that he failed to find more than the six left exposed on the last remaining loaves of bread in the state of Queensland, which he did not buy, leaving them behind for the next seven hundred shopping-mad housewives to tear apart ferociously, trying to get as many crumbs as possible for their starving families waiting in the cars outside hoping for their darling mother's safety for the secret reason that they did not have anything else to do, as the family mother-in-law just passed away and there is a unanimously undecided decision to mourn with deep regret while celebrating joyously, with a mysterious reign of utter confusion governing the whole situation, which is also governed by the "No Small Talk Just Small Print Insurance Brokers", whose business is rapidly increasing because it has just been announced that they have insured Marty Feldman's eyes against normality for $600,000.63, an enormous sum of money, as the "600,000 dollars" part is profit for the insurance brokers, and actually only the "63c" part is the payment really made to poor old Marty, the funniest looking beetle ever to attempt to ski up a steep gravel road with no snow, no skis and his arms and legs tied behind his back since the ex-tap-dancing coach of Dizurted Island escaped from the Federal Penitentiary after serving a sentence nearly as long as this one for actually voting in a federal election, which might have been bad enough, but of course he had to go and make the whole ordeal worse by buying a bus ticket without accusing the bus driver of highway robbery or a similar offence, such as insulting the referee present at the gala day for the premier Czechoslovakian Embroidery Team who were undefeated in the season preceding the present one, where they lost only those two games because the teams they played in those games had decided to be cruel and turn up to compete with them in what is now proclaimed as being the most exciting competition sport in the known world, and special stadiums are rapidly being constructed all around the globe to cater for the millions interested in this fascinating, enthralling and totally mind-blowing spectacle being promoted by bee-sting scratching supervisors all around the world who do not want any new people joining the already overcrowded International Embroidery Association, because already multitudes of over-enthusiastic potential world champions are forgetting their life ambitions and running away to any one of the forty-add thousand clubs belonging to the I.E.A., or beginning new clubs, which is an original concept, but there are still the seventy club houses and gymnasiums being set up in Darwin alone that cannot be forgotten, but seeing that they ARE in Darwin, the club houses are therefore full of people not worth talking about, except for one drunk from (quote) "somewhere out behind that big, red rock by the name of Ayers" (unquote), who believes that the first life form on earth was a bartender, which is a slightly unusual view, but he backs up his argument by saying that the bartender must have been very successful because he had no competition in those days and who else could have begun the idea of forming the multitude of bartenders alive today which this drunk needs constantly but which Alcoholics Anonymous abhors, preferring Real Estate Agents much more, because, according to A.A., a Real Estate Agent - or rather his dog - was the first life form on earth, and that dog's master was not very successful because, although he could sell all the land he could see, he could not actually sell it to anybody, a complication which made him extremely depressed, and he started taking his frustrations out on his dog, who ran away to join a circus - or rather form a circus - because, of course, circuses had not been invented in those days, the days before the ages of watermelons, bread knives, letter openers, curtains, sunflower seeds, and thermo-nuclear disasters that wipe out entire street lights in one blast, a phenomenon which the manufacturers of the dog-repulsers surrounding the bottom of the telegraph poles involved are trying to have abolished, arid the efforts of one man, a Mr It-was-an-Accident-Sir, have contributed enormously to the success of their project which, in fact, was a failure due to the destructive influences of Mr I-Can't-Remember-My-Name Constable, who is also the proud owner of a set of twelve volumes of the International Orange Peel Preserving Encyclopaedia, which he won in a quiz show entitled "How much can you lose in thirty Seconds?", where Mr Constable lost over ninety thousand pounds, to become the night's winner of the worthless encyclopaedia idiocy, which is all a typical example of the heights to which people will go just to say that they have actually won something, even if they did lose more than they won, but nobody hears about that side of the story, except if it was somebody else's fault, which would result in the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, with a few odd lies coming out in a court of suit, very similar to a normal law court, except that in a law court where a murder case is being held, there is a general pandemonium in progress about who killed whom, and why or why not, with a geriatric judge quietly reading girlie magazines whilst some frantically emotional barrister calmly interviews a terrified witness who does not really know what happened and will not tell anyone anyway, because some queer fool of a colleague located next to this apparently brilliant barrister is repeating everything said by the latter with the utmost tedium, a factor of many which end up making the judge resentful, the barrister irritated, the opposing barrister still more irritated and a little furious, the witness not sure what the questions were about in the first place, the jury not sure about what they are doing there anyway, the audience sleepy, the government poorer, and the defendant guilty, a promising prospect for a certain potential murderer who is seriously considering making a full-time trade of depriving a human being of the right to reach senility, but there is a chance of his managing to escape the several thousand loyal policemen, several hundred self-loyal detectives, several million eager members of the general public looking for a scapegoat, several unsuccessful private detectives, and a mother-in-law who is still chasing him for injecting nitro-glycerine into her meat tenderiser in an attempt to make her stop sending him those tasteful beef casseroles which he accidentally fed to his four, once valuable, now paraplegic, German shepherds while trying in vain to remember what Dustin Hoffman gave the United Nations for Christmas in 1958, and at the same time the poor dogs were trying to imagine why their master gave them a bowl with a desk diary in it to drink with their meal and why he was wrapping up a box of water addressed to "The United Nations, c/o Everywhere", which the postman duly collected and lost in the carburettor of his new 1981 Lamborghini, that alone cost £46,000 new, but of course he did not buy this essential component new but second hand for a mere 1,410,000 Lire, because the previous owner wanted a fast sale as he was going abroad, which all goes to show, not that if postmen can afford Lamborghinis then postmen get paid too much, but that Lamborghinis are too cheap and therefore their price should treble so that only doctors, barristers, politicians and milkmen can afford them, in this way separating the rich from the poor in the community, so as a con-man would know with whose wife to become involved in a secret, close relationship lasting about $10,000, or if she really loved him then maybe about £46,000, or 1,410,000 Lire if the current rate of exchange stays stable as long as that, which is very unlikely, because the price of custom-built biorhythms is skyrocketing, due to the increased demand for them by heroin addicts and high-school teachers, who cannot cope with life by themselves, so they have to rent, buy or steal some extra biorhythms just to be able to keep themselves from having a nervous breakdown, or from shaving their legs and spleens, which a lot of them will do because their television told them to, but which a lot of them will do because their horoscope revealed to them that Venus was closer to Jupiter than that day's weather report, so that all Sagittarians would have a tremendous lift in their sex life, and that because the stars of Alpha X-74C-5, or ABCTV-2 were not in view (not counting the fact that a tree was in the way) then all Virgos would undergo a nose transplant, or twenty-four percent of all Geminis would find their true purpose in life at the bottom of a forty-foot snake pit confronted by an arm-wrestling champion, when all that is really going to happen is that astrologers are going to get richer and all the people who believe that their life depends on where a U.F.O. has decided to park are going to get poorer, but if some of them were Americans, then they could probably go on getting poorer indefinitely, seeing that the Americans, with their super-sophisticated technology, their thirty-foot long go-carts, their thirty-foot wide wallets, their air-flavoured pollution and their milkmen, have done everything except find an answer as to whether God (Amen) is communist, socialist, capitalist, democratic, or bored, whereas God (Amen) has really decided to become an independent state, not being ruled by the President (Amen) of America, and has gone to live on an island somewhere in South Andromeda, away from all the hustle and bustle of the modern bridge game, but unfortunately Mrs God (Awomen) does not like South Andromeda, as there are no shopping centres, bridge clubs, knitting needles or milkmen established in the immediate vicinity, which is almost completely occupied by one of the biggest schools in the galaxy, where Mr and Mrs God's family (Amass) can go and disrupt class just like all good little gods and goddesses, or boys and girls as well, who apparently grow up to be men and women according to the Irish National Bureau of Statistics, who have recently revealed that hordes of top scientists from that country are working on a brilliant invention that they are appropriately naming "the wheel", and they feel sure that it will be of infinite benefit to our modern-day life, according to a spokesman, who also said that they are going to sell the valuable patent rights to the Soviet Union for at least £48,000 or maybe, if they are lucky, 1,410,000 Lire, depending upon whether the Soviet Union needs the use of a wheel or two in its industry of making intercontinental ballistic missiles, international disagreements, lots of snow and not many milkmen, or depending upon whether the weather of the island of "Oh, Where on Earth am I" is going to remain at a constant tropical heat of about -68° Fahrenheit or whether the weather is going to become cold, which could lead to the beginning of another Ice Age, similar to the first one when man had only just crawled out of the primeval slime and was just beginning to wipe it all off, but he had to wait until he thought of inventing Kleenex before patiently continuing in what seemed to be a never-ending uphill battle until the invention of soap and sandpaper, which helped tremendously to clean but did not succeed in stopping the re-application of dirt by man again, and even to this day men are still trying to wash off this persistent filth in a strange ritual called a bath, performed in controlled situations called tubs under extremely high temperature absurdities by one - sometimes two, or maybe even three - persons if the World Cup final is on television, the television is in the bathroom and no one has had the intelligence to think of actually moving the television out of the bathroom so that the rest of the less intelligent bathroom inhabitants have an opportunity to get themselves into a living-room or similar room and in the end find out that the World Cup final has been cancelled and that they have to put up with two hours of solid commercials for everything under the sun except milkmen, who never advertise on television as they cannot afford to after purchasing their new Lamborghinis from a leading used car dealer in Harlem, New York, where Lamborghinis are nearly as expensive as Central Park mugger detectors, that are so expensive because the only users of them are the only inhabitants of Central Park - two squirrels and a car park - who really use the mugger detectors because they are shaped like yo-yos, so that the users can throw them into the nearest bush to see if a mugger has camped there for the night, and if one has, then the yo-yo will theoretically hit him on the head, betraying then his unique hiding place to the operator of the ingenious device which was thought up by a crack team of thirty practical jokers employed by IBICTUACITY (I Bet I Can Think Up A Crazier Idea Than You) Proprietary Limited, who are also available on an international long-playing record that is guaranteed to be the wrong size, the wrong shape and the wrong speed, so that the buyer ends up with a piece of worthless plastic that he can either burn or break, in which case he would break a world record for the most useless recording of an insane yo-yo manufacturer of Central Park, New York, an effort of which he could be proud, but for which he would get no recognition, on account of the fact that nobody on the known part of the globe would be interested in that record being broken, except a group of fanatics on records called "The Guinness Bureau of Records", who put out a best-selling book called "The Guinness Book of Records", that uses a special type of ink of very high quality in its printing to make sure that a person buying the book will be able to read it, this then giving the Book a considerable advantage over most of the other world-wide publications, which are usually illegible to the reader, even if the reader is of the same nationality as the writer, which is not very likely anyway, as writers are almost invariably the wrong nationality and speak the wrong language, a particularly difficult obstacle to overcome on the reader's behalf, except if the reader was an aardvark, which speaks every known language, strangely enough, with consistent fluency, which makes it an invaluable addition to any zoo, as the aardvark can instruct the zoo keeper as to what cage deodoriser it would like used on its cage on a certain day of the week or how many autographs it would like to sign for little girls with little grannies who visit the zoo on the condition that the proprietors of the zoo let the little granny play with the larger pythons and the exciting starfish, and the little girl play with Monty Python and the exciting stars, who are determined not to reveal to her their secrets of success or their recipe for strawberry pudding that only that one group of professional idiots are permitted to prepare, according to the Margaret Fulton's International Cookery Book edition of 1979 which has outsold "The Complete Book of Chewing Gum", which is distributed by the same people that organised the first official U.F.O.-spotting ceremony, where the person who spots the most unidentified flying objects in ten minutes wins the lucky door prize of a trip for two, one-way, to the planet of the winner's choice, where he can visit the historic origin of quite a few extra-terrestrial beings and become one of the many suckers to fail for that publicity stunt by "Acme Flying Saucer and Distant Planet Corporation" who, because they are the sole manufacturers of the incredibly intricate, sophisticated, patented garbage tin lid, and because they have claimed rights to any misapprehension arrived at by a member of the general public after seeing a shooting star or a lost reindeer in the upward vicinity of the universe, have found it very easy indeed to influence the media into thinking that there is, in fact, a thriving colony of green men of various sizes orbiting the Earth and bas been throughout the history of the gullible consumer and his parents, who are a vital element in the stability of the belief in these approximately 50%-absolute absurdities of the heavens and who will solemnly swear that they are definitely descended from - or even living with - Napoleon, George Washington and Lord Nelson, and that they have all had a close encounter of the third kind with their favourite unexplained monster from the Loch Ness, the Himalayas, and/or the forests of southern Canada, when everyone knows that all three have been captured and put into Parliament to extrapolate the fundamental laws of human existence and support the theory that man did, in fact, evolve from the Tyrannosaurus Rex and not, as previously believed, from one of the more intelligent species of tinned apricots in syrup, which is a totally ridiculous idea, as Tyrannosaurus Rexs are infinitely more brainless and therefore perfect candidates for the title of "Dinosaurian Enemy No 1", even though they never ate tinned apricots in syrup, which is probably why they became extinct and why man is still thriving, because man eats tinned apricots in syrup every now and again, so that Ardmona, SPC and the rest can consider themselves the saviours of the species, as they are all the producers of the apparently vital part of man's diet, without which man could never have survived the Second World War, according to a self-proclaimed nutritionist, who believes that the Second World War, with its day-centres for Nazi prisoners-of-war, with its various air forces testing out their own anti-enemy firework displays - on the enemy, with its couple of million disguised civilians running around in funny uniforms seeing how close to the enemy they could fire their guns or throw their hand grenades without actually killing them, all falling miserably, with its super-generals all pretending that this little folly is really a dress-rehearsal for World War Three, and with its milkmen running around looking for work, was a complete waste of time on behalf of everyone who had anything to do with creating or inventing it, because no one had permission to have fun in the 1940s from the person in charge of international sport and recreation, who apparently has just retired after a frustrating succession of almost-fatal heart attacks and several quite nasty doses of cancer, which nearly drove him to drink, but was rescued from this boredom by a team of about seven hundred thousand doctors working around the clock for nearly six months without even enough rest to have a quick glimpse of the uncut fifty-one hour version of "War and Pieces of Things that are Not Really Anything to Do with War at All", which is a less successful rendition of the epic movie, "War and Percy", which described Percy Ivegottaluvalybunchofkoconutz's escapades during the Industrial Revolution, where he was barracking for all the industrials and their allies and was fighting whatever the industrials were revolting against, which eventuated in his being put in a lovely room with cushions all over the place and a couple of heavy locks on the door, with plenty of people looking after him and, strangely enough, all wearing white coats and looking much like traditional physio-chemists except for one minor detail, and that is that they were all wearing defence mechanisms to protect themselves from many of Percy's roommates, who appeared to be absolutely mad and quite unaware of the fact that Percy happened to be quite sane and wondering why all these people clad in white had classified him in with all these other weirdos when he was really as normal and sensible as, for instance, Mr E. Rattic, the current president of "Bigots Anonymous", who organises all socials where top-class bigots from all over the world come to degrade minority groups and try to win arguments in the longest possible time with the shortest amount of cocktail breaks or police rails that inconveniently interrupt this apparently jolly good get-together of world-champion, anti-social, chauvinistic, human letdowns, and discouraging Mr Rattic from shooting the lot of them if they laugh at him - or even near him - without consulting the extremely accurate "El Cheapo Bureau of Laws" (ECBOL) to see if laughing at Mr Rattic is currently against the law, or whether it is merely illegal and punishable by being sent to an Ita Buttrose (Amen) rock concert where forced to listen to a musical version of the recipe for next week's fascinating Women's Weekly, that includes an enthralling article on what to wear to the crowning of the next King of England, and how to dig up mushrooms if they get lost as a result of a sudden shower of larger pieces of hail than a dictionary updater would be led to expect, considering of course that a normal, everyday dictionary updater has only a limited intelligence and therefore could not be expected to expect a larger-than-expected size hailstone in the next sudden shower, provided the expected blizzard was conclusively not in April, in which case the dictionary updaters would be the first, if not the only, people to be able to predict the exact weight and diameter of an average hailstone falling in the region of Kuala Lumpur or Morocco, which would not be too difficult to predict, because, as everyone knows, no hailstones fall in Malaya or North Africa (at least not during public holidays), but petrol, by the gallon, or - if most of the residents of Morocco and Malaya have already received instructions from their respective leading petrol station operators to go metric - by the litre, which results in all the petrol sinking into the ground where it lies until some fool of a firebug throws a match in Morocco's general direction so that there is an instant flame that results in the whole of Morocco becoming unbearably hot, permitting the growth of larger than expected hailstones and encouraging the growth of masochists, who really love being tortured beyond recognition and cannot stand being pampered or having a good time, preferring having a really bad time which is how they go about having a good time, which confuses them because they can have a good time only by having a bad time, and good times are totally against their principles, so they have to have a good time which they cannot do either, so most of them kill themselves, resulting in a very large death rate for masochists, nearly as high as the corresponding rate for contortionists, who do really strange things like conquering volcanoes on Neptune in outrageous positions, so as to try to keep up with the already victorious original mountain-climbing contortionist, who really sped up that challenging peak, exhausting himself to the extent that he did not even have enough energy to compile, write, edit, publish and print a record-breaking sentence, since writing sentences of absurd lengths is thoroughly exhausting and not to be tried unless in peak physical condition, since people have tried (ABC NEWS INTERRUPTS THIS SENTENCE TO REPORT THAT AN UNKNOWN CONTORTIONIST, PARTS OF WHOM IT IS BELIEVED HAVE ORIGINATED ON NEPTUNE, HAS ATTEMPTED TO SCALE A FAMOUS MOUNTAIN IN THE SAHARA WITH A GRAND PIANO TIED TO HIS ANKLE. THANK YOU).

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Explore African Literature

Teju Cole Writes the Longest Sentence Ever Published by The New York Times

by Lara Abiona

September 11, 2017

When a writer who is also a photographer writes a piece about photography, one can only expect wonderful things.

In his new essay titled “Still Lives That Won’t Hold Still”, Open City author Teju Cole pays homage to the late renowned photographer Marie Cosindas, who passed away in May at the age of 93.

In the first part of the essay, Cole compares the experience of viewing Cosindas’ photos to “watching a single sentence unfurl over several pages, driven along by an invisible inner consistency…” He then allows the reader to discover that the essay itself is, in fact, one long sentence.

By taking this ingenious approach to honoring Cosindas, Cole recreates for the reader the distinct sensation of interacting with her body of work. Throughout the essay, he touches on noteworthy aspects of her life, extols her signature technique, and puts her work in conversation with artists from a range of disciplines.

The piece is inventive and mesmerizing all by itself. But, as Cole observes in a note he posted on Facebook, the essay is also the longest sentence ever published by the New York Times .

We congratulate Teju Cole on writing such beautifully experimental work!

Here is how the sentence begins:

Marie Cosindas, who was born in Boston in September 1923 and who died in the same city in May of this year at age 93, made photographs of such potency that they seem magical, dependent on something beyond mere sleight of hand for their mesmerizing effects and unified mood, so that the experience of looking at a selection of them is like watching a single sentence unfurl over several pages, driven along by an invisible inner consistency, not unlike the atmosphere of imaginative abundance that Gabriel García Márquez evoked in his novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” an atmosphere he used as the backdrop for the dense saga of the Buendía family in the mythical town of Macondo, and especially in his account of the magician Melquíades, a “heavy Gypsy with an untamed beard and sparrow hands,” a bearer of dazzling and arcane knowledge, including visions of the present and the future, as well as the secrets of optics, telescopes and magnetism, so that many different kinds of insight seem to find a natural unity inside him, and whose work re-emerges in the final pages of the novel in Sanskrit parchments, with “the even lines in the private cipher of the Emperor Augustus and the odd ones in a Lacedaemonian military code,” the inscrutabilities layered on one another to arrive at a startling lucidity of the kind that might be experienced by someone whose tangled dreams, regardless of their wildness or relentlessness, give way to a pure vision of wakefulness, though not the uninflected wakefulness of one who rises in early morning to a hot and innocent white light but rather the shadowed knowingness of one who has slept all day and awakes to the infinitesimally graded colors of a deepening evening, a moodiness recognizable to any viewer of Cosindas’s photographs, which make the most of small, dark spaces, a talent that perhaps originated in her being the eighth of 10 children raised by Greek immigrant parents in a small South Boston apartment, just as her experience as a child attending her parents’ Greek Orthodox church, with its gilded Byzantine icons and busy walls, was possibly the origin of her luminous sense of color and the suggestion of incense even when there is no smoke to be seen, a dimension of her work which certainly did not arrive instantaneously, though it did finally arrive, after she had worked as a painter and also as a photographer in black and white, including time spent in the workshop of Ansel Adams, whose grayscale lessons she abandoned in order to take up color with an alchemical force that is reminiscent of the great Amsterdam painter Rachel Ruysch, a widely celebrated artist in the very first rank of still-life painters of the Dutch golden age, who was active from the final quarter of the 17th century until shortly before her death in 1750 at age 86, and who, moreover, was one of very few women to be feted in that profession, and who outgrew both her botanist father and painter husband, outshining them in reputation as she consolidated both botanical and artistic knowledge, while raising 10 children, to produce ferociously accurate bouquets of flowers, some of which were literal works of fiction that showed in a single vase blooms that would have been seen in life only in different seasons but which through the magical art of painting could permanently be brought together, each precisely painted and often accompanied by equally fine depictions of marble plinths, tabletops, vases and insects, the entire arrangement set against a dark background, as was the vogue during the maturity of Dutch floral painting, a branch of art that was the elevation of the most modest and domestic material into an intensity that approached the sublime, a gift given to only a few: to leverage the ordinary into the glorious, to turn the soft petals of flowers into a flamelike radiance, Read the full article HERE .

Image Source: Observe Nigeria

Marie Cosindas
new york times
photography

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COMMENTS ( 6 ) -

A.O February 14, 2020 05:15

Teju has applied a style of writing done by many such as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Virginia Woolf, called the stream of consciousness. It is inventive, but Teju did not invent it (he reads vastly and knows this). Teju is a wonderful writer that I admire. He is brilliant. That it states that its the first time its been done in The New York Times, speaks specifically where this innovation has been applied. And Teju has a wonderful sensitivity to creative writing.

No. 380: On Coach K, ‘foodpreneurs’ and Donna Drake’s new digs – plus, introducing our 2019 Innovators of the Year! - Innovate Long Island February 13, 2019 04:00

[…] New York Times published what is believed to be the longest published sentence of all time – a 1,286-word, one-sentence soliloquy by essayist Teju […]

Readers on Reading in 2017 — Trust F. Òbe – read.i.ng February 09, 2018 12:44

[…] I was haplessly drawn toward the above title, a la Season of Anomy — due to a trio of books: Hanya Yanagihara’s profound and repeatedly unsettling A Little Life, Anakana Schofield’s Martin John and Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s immensely compunctive The Fact of a Body. These books extended my capacity of understanding the complexity of people — the other things it can also mean to be human; to be complex and complicated and conflicted all at once. There is another trio of books that pushed the extent of what I had seen the novel form accommodate: Chris Kraus’s I love Dick, by blurring the lines between multiple genres, Anna Kavan’s Ice by dismantling the idea of what a narrative should be like and Solar Bones —cheating death— by being a book-long sentence, something that takes a lot more discipline than ambition for any writer to embark on, let alone successfully achieve—in a time when writing a few-paragraphs-long sentence is still being fussed over. […]

Jhon September 14, 2017 05:11

After the 18th line, I scrolled down in search of the full stop, finding none, I gave up. That's my longest sentence ever fa!

Simeon Mpamugoh September 13, 2017 12:35

Teju has broken record. He deserves a place in Guinness book. I felt bored continuing without a pause.

Lesley Awino September 11, 2017 04:12

Maiye! And here I struggle to write beyond 500 words at a time. No full stops in sight! Brilliant!

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40 Best Essays of All Time (Including Links & Writing Tips)

I had little money (buying forty collections of essays was out of the question) so I’ve found them online instead. I’ve hacked through piles of them, and finally, I’ve found the great ones. Now I want to share the whole list with you (with the addition of my notes about writing). Each item on the list has a direct link to the essay, so please click away and indulge yourself. Also, next to each essay, there’s an image of the book that contains the original work.

About this essay list:

40 best essays of all time (with links and writing tips), 1. david sedaris – laugh, kookaburra, writing tips from the essay:, 2. charles d’ambrosio – documents.

Do you think your life punches you in the face all too often? After reading this essay, you will change your mind. Reading about loss and hardships often makes us sad at first, but then enables us to feel grateful for our lives . D’Ambrosio shares his documents (poems, letters) that had a major impact on his life, and brilliantly shows how not to let go of the past.

3. E. B. White – Once more to the lake

4. zadie smith – fail better.

Aspiring writers feel tremendous pressure to perform. The daily quota of words often turns out to be nothing more than gibberish. What then? Also, should the writer please the reader or should she be fully independent? What does it mean to be a writer, anyway? This essay is an attempt to answer these questions, but its contents are not only meant for scribblers. Within it, you’ll find some great notes about literary criticism, how we treat art , and the responsibility of the reader.

5. Virginia Woolf – Death of the Moth

6. meghan daum – my misspent youth, 7. roger ebert – go gentle into that good night.

Probably the greatest film critic of all time, Roger Ebert, tells us not to rage against the dying of the light. This essay is full of courage, erudition, and humanism. From it, we learn about what it means to be dying (Hitchens’ “Mortality” is another great work on that theme). But there’s so much more. It’s a great celebration of life too. It’s about not giving up, and sticking to your principles until the very end. It brings to mind the famous scene from Dead Poets Society where John Keating (Robin Williams) tells his students: “Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary”.

8. George Orwell – Shooting an Elephant

9. george orwell – a hanging, 10. christopher hitchens – assassins of the mind, 11. christopher hitchens – the new commandments, 12. phillip lopate – against joie de vivre, 13. philip larkin – the pleasure principle, 14. sigmund freud – thoughts for the times on war and death, 15. zadie smith – some notes on attunement.

“You are privy to a great becoming, but you recognize nothing” – Francis Dolarhyde. This one is about the elusiveness of change occurring within you. For Zadie, it was hard to attune to the vibes of Joni Mitchell – especially her Blue album. But eventually, she grew up to appreciate her genius, and all the other things changed as well. This top essay is all about the relationship between humans, and art. We shouldn’t like art because we’re supposed to. We should like it because it has an instantaneous, emotional effect on us. Although, according to Stansfield (Gary Oldman) in Léon, liking Beethoven is rather mandatory.

16. Annie Dillard – Total Eclipse

17. édouard levé – when i look at a strawberry, i think of a tongue, 18. gloria e. anzaldúa – how to tame a wild tongue, 19. kurt vonnegut – dispatch from a man without a country, 20. mary ruefle – on fear.

Most psychologists and gurus agree that fear is the greatest enemy of success or any creative activity. It’s programmed into our minds to keep us away from imaginary harm. Mary Ruefle takes on this basic human emotion with flair. She explores fear from so many angles (especially in the world of poetry-writing) that at the end of this personal essay, you will look at it, dissect it, untangle it, and hopefully be able to say “f**k you” the next time your brain is trying to stop you.

21. Susan Sontag – Against Interpretation

22. nora ephron – a few words about breasts, 23. carl sagan – does truth matter – science, pseudoscience, and civilization, 24. paul graham – how to do what you love, 25. john jeremiah sullivan – mister lytle, 26. joan didion – on self respect, 27. susan sontag – notes on camp, 28. ralph waldo emerson – self-reliance, 29. david foster wallace – consider the lobster, 30. david foster wallace – the nature of the fun.

The famous novelist and author of the most powerful commencement speech ever done is going to tell you about the joys and sorrows of writing a work of fiction. It’s like taking care of a mutant child that constantly oozes smelly liquids. But you love that child and you want others to love it too. It’s a very humorous account of what it means to be an author. If you ever plan to write a novel, you should read that one. And the story about the Chinese farmer is just priceless.

31. Margaret Atwood – Attitude

32. jo ann beard – the fourth state of matter, 33. terence mckenna – tryptamine hallucinogens and consciousness, 34. eudora welty – the little store, 35. john mcphee – the search for marvin gardens.

The Search for Marvin Gardens contains many layers of meaning. It’s a story about a Monopoly championship, but also, it’s the author’s search for the lost streets visible on the board of the famous board game. It also presents a historical perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, and on Atlantic City, which once was a lively place, and then, slowly declined, the streets filled with dirt and broken windows.

36. Maxine Hong Kingston – No Name Woman

37. joan didion – on keeping a notebook, 38. joan didion – goodbye to all that, 39. george orwell – reflections on gandhi, 40. george orwell – politics and the english language, other essays you may find interesting, oliver sacks – on libraries, noam chomsky – the responsibility of intellectuals, sam harris – the riddle of the gun.

Sam Harris, now a famous philosopher and neuroscientist, takes on the problem of gun control in the United States. His thoughts are clear of prejudice. After reading this, you’ll appreciate the value of logical discourse overheated, irrational debate that more often than not has real implications on policy.

Tim Ferriss – Some Practical Thoughts on Suicide

Edward said – reflections on exile, richard feynman – it’s as simple as one, two, three…, rabindranath tagore – the religion of the forest, richard dawkins – letter to his 10-year-old daughter.

Every father should be able to articulate his philosophy of life to his children. With this letter that’s similar to what you find in the Paris Review essays , the famed atheist and defender of reason, Richard Dawkins, does exactly that. It’s beautifully written and stresses the importance of looking at evidence when we’re trying to make sense of the world.

Albert Camus – The Minotaur (or, The Stop In Oran)

Koty neelis – 21 incredible life lessons from anthony bourdain, lucius annaeus seneca – on the shortness of life, bertrand russell – in praise of idleness, james baldwin – stranger in the village.

It’s an essay on the author’s experiences as an African-American in a Swiss village, exploring race, identity, and alienation while highlighting the complexities of racial dynamics and the quest for belonging.

Bonus – More writing tips from two great books

The sense of style – by steven pinker, on writing well – by william zinsser, now immerse yourself in the world of essays, rafal reyzer.

Hey there, welcome to my blog! I'm a full-time entrepreneur building two companies, a digital marketer, and a content creator with 10+ years of experience. I started RafalReyzer.com to provide you with great tools and strategies you can use to become a proficient digital marketer and achieve freedom through online creativity. My site is a one-stop shop for digital marketers, and content enthusiasts who want to be independent, earn more money, and create beautiful things. Explore my journey here , and don't miss out on my AI Marketing Mastery online course.

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Longreads Best of 2020: Essays

Mississippi: A Poem, in Days (Kiese Makeba Laymon, Vanity Fair )

Kiese Makeba Laymon was on a book tour when the pandemic hit in the U.S. In this stunner of a piece that unfolds over 14 days, the author writes on fear, racism, death, and home amid a moment of awakening. We follow along on the journey, from event to event in Ohio and West Virginia, with Laymon’s observations and thoughts interspersed with daily COVID-19 death counts and the latest words or orders from Donald Trump and Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves. It’s a powerful meditation, one that will stop you in your tracks.

We are awakened, I want to believe. 75 miles from the armed confederate statue in Oxford, Emmett Till’s childish body was destroyed. 70 miles from that armed confederate statue, Fannie Lou Hamer was nearly beaten to death. 160 miles from that armed confederate statue, Medgar Evers was murdered as he enters his home. 80 miles from that armed confederate statue, Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis. It took way too much Black death to get here. I am wandering around the spiritual consequences of materially progressing at the expense of Black death. I want to be courageous. I wonder, though, when courage becomes contagious—when courage is credentialized, subsidized, and incentivized—if it is still courage at all. Today, as I prepare to push send, and I lather my hands in sanitizer, it feels a bit too much like cowardice. Maybe I’ll wait to send tomorrow. Maybe I won’t send at all. The Lafayette County Board of Supervisors, a group of white men, unanimously vote to keep the armed confederate monument in the middle of Oxford, the town where I live, teach, and write. Humiliation, agony, and death, are what I feel. It could all be so much worse, is what the worst of white folks want us to recite.

Molly (Blake Butler, The Volta )

December’s special issue of The Volta is dedicated to the late poet Molly Brodak, and Brodak’s husband, Blake Butler, writes an incredibly moving essay to remember and honor her. In “Molly,” he weaves an intimate portrait of his late wife — and the details, textures, and expanse of their relationship –with so much love and care. Grab a tissue before sitting down to read it.

Making her laugh made me feel alive, like I’d really accomplished something. She wanted to laugh, I think, despite a widening parcel in her telling her that laughter in a world like ours was for fools. When I think the sound of it now, it reminds me of a bird trapped in a ballroom, looking for anywhere to land.

But there was always something still there underneath that, shredding its pasture—parts of her so dark and displaced I cannot find them anywhere touching the rest of how she was. The story, like all stories, holds no true shape. And that’s exactly what it wants—the pain—it wants more blank to feed the pain with, to fill the space up. It wants us all.

Then, in her poem, “Horse and Cart,” one of the last she ever wrote: “I can’t even imagine a horse / anymore. / That we sat on their spines / and yanked their mouths around.” The gears of her mind, as she grew tired, wore down even these good times, seeking further ways to break them up, send her away.

I Cry for the Mountains: A Legacy Lost (Dave Daley, Chico Enterprise-Record )

California experienced another unprecedented wildfire season this year; a number of fire complexes burned throughout the state, including the massive North Complex Fire that started in August and burned in Northern California’s Plumas and Butte counties. Rancher Dave Daley offers a devastating account of the destruction of his family’s cattle range in Plumas National Forest, and a passionate plea to legislators and regulators to ultimately listen to the land and the locals when it comes to forest management. Daley originally posted this account on Facebook; his followers recommended that the Chico Enterprise-Record reprint it for a wider audience.

I cry for the forest, the trees and streams, and the horrible deaths suffered by the wildlife and our cattle. The suffering was unimaginable. When you find groups of cows and their baby calves tumbled in a ravine trying to escape, burned almost beyond recognition or a fawn and small calf side by side as if hoping to protect one another, you try not to wretch. You only pray death was swift. Worse, in searing memory, cows with their hooves, udder and even legs burned off still alive who had to be euthanized. A doe lying in the ashes with three fawns, not all hers I bet. And you are glad they can stand and move, even with a limp, because you really cannot imagine any more death today.

For those of you on the right blaming the left and California, these are National Forest lands that are “managed” by the feds. They have failed miserably over the past 50 years. Smokey the Bear was the cruelest joke ever played on the western landscape, a decades long campaign to prevent forest fires has resulted in mega-fires of a scope we’ve never seen. Thanks, Smokey.

I get frustrated with experts and consultants who drive by and “know just what to do.” For 35 years I have attended conferences, given presentations and listened. What I have learned is solutions are local and specific. What happens in one watershed in Plumas or Butte County may be entirely different in the Lassen National Forest just next door. But experts of all kinds are glad to tell you how to do it. “Let’s prescribe graze, use virtual fences, change your timing, change your genetics.” Prescribe graze the forest and canyons? Yea. Right. They don’t know what they don’t know but they will take the honorarium anyway and have a great dinner on your dime. The locals and land rarely benefit.

How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda (Jiayang Fa n , The New Yorker )

Jiayang Fan pens a masterful piece of personal history, on her mother and their relationship, identity, family, propaganda and social media, and chronic illness (her mother has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS) . Fan recounts her struggle to help her mother get hospital care during New York’s COVID-19 crisis, all while going viral and facing threats on social media, calling her a criminal and a traitor to China. She tells a complicated and very personal story, one of loyalty and love, with strength and eloquence.

My mother has always knelt at the altar of mianzi , an aspiration of which A.L.S. makes a spectacular mockery. You may think it’s embarrassing to slur your speech and limp, but wait until you are being spoon-fed and pushed around in a wheelchair—all of which will seem trivial once you can no longer wash or wipe yourself. The progress of the disease is a forced march toward the vanishing point of mianzi . When my mother was first given her diagnosis, she became obsessed with the idea of why—why her, why now, and, above all, why an illness that would subject her to the kind of public humiliation she feared more than death itself. When she could still operate her first-generation iPad, my mother gave me a contact list of everyone she was still in touch with in China, and told me that, except for her siblings, no one must know of her affliction. Such self-imposed isolation seemed like madness to me, but she preferred to cut friends out of her life rather than admit to the indignity of her compromised state. Her body’s insurrection, my mother believes, is her punishment for her prideful strivings in America.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I had read that a virus is neither dead nor alive, and replicates only in the shelter of a host organism. I began to think of “Jiayang Fan” as viral not in a social-media sense but in a biological one; the calamitous state of the world and certain random mutations in the story had made it unexpectedly contagious. My original posts had served their purpose; now they were serving the purposes of others. I had unwittingly bred a potent piece of propaganda.

The Promise That Tested My Parents Until the End (Christopher Solomon, GQ )

Don’t you ever put me in one of those places, she said. Don’t put me in one of those places, my father replied.

Christopher Solomon’s parents made a pledge to one another. But what did that actually look like over time, especially when his father became sick? What does unconditional love and devotion look like in our own lives? Solomon writes an honest and heartbreaking essay on love, aging, and marriage — in sickness and in health.

In time what was imperceptible in him became noticeable, and then what was noticeable became something worse. The landscape of my father changed, the coastline eroded. There was less of him, until the old map of my father no longer fit the man before us. It has been 20 years now since he was diagnosed, and sometimes it is hard to remember a time that he was not sick. His speech became a gargle of consonants. The dementia took most of his mind. His body curled in on itself—shrinking, reducing, as if he were becoming an infant again. Despite this, for years he still played the piano, every day, and nearly as well as ever—the mysteryland of the brain permitting this freedom even as body, and mind, crumbled around him. My mother would sing along from the kitchen, as she always had. And then one day, after I arrive home, my mother sounds more concerned than usual. He has stopped playing the piano, she says. This seems to worry her more than anything else.

Finally, exhausted, she relents. She drives to visit a nearby nursing home. Afterward she cries in the parking lot. She cries for what she sees there. She cries at the prospect of breaking the Promise. She cries because even though almost nothing remains of her husband—even though he is the cause of her sleepless nights and her tendinitis and her bruises and her anger—in 55 years she rarely has been apart from him. She loves even the scrap of him that remains. He is half of the story they share, of the red VW Beetle and the sunstruck Italian patios and the singalongs and the three towheaded children. As long as he is here, their story, however unlikely, is not yet over. She cries because the end of him is the end of a possibility. And I think, not for the first time, how little I still know about love.

Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration and Me (Reginald Dwayne Betts, The New York Times Magazine )

“The prosecutor’s job, unlike the defense attorney’s or judge’s, is to do justice. What does that mean when you are asked by some to dole out retribution measured in years served, but blamed by others for the damage incarceration can do?” In this nuanced reported essay about mass incarceration in the U.S., Reginald Dwayne Betts reveals “our contradictory impulses” around crime, punishment, and the justice system. And he knows these impulses well, as both a felon and a son to a woman who was raped by a Black man.

But I know that on the other end of our prison sentences was always someone weeping. During the middle of Harris’s presidential campaign, a friend referred me to a woman with a story about Senator Harris that she felt I needed to hear. Years ago, this woman’s sister had been missing for days, and the police had done little. Happenstance gave this woman an audience with then-Attorney General Harris. A coordinated multicity search followed. The sister had been murdered; her body was found in a ravine. The woman told me that “Kamala understands the politics of victimization as well as anyone who has been in the system, which is that this kind of case — a 50-year-old Black woman gone missing or found dead — ordinarily does not get any resources put toward it.” They caught the man who murdered her sister, and he was sentenced to 131 years. I think about the man who assaulted my mother, a serial rapist, because his case makes me struggle with questions of violence and vengeance and justice. And I stop thinking about it. I am inconsistent. I want my friends out, but I know there is no one who can convince me that this man shouldn’t spend the rest of his life in prison.

Safe at Home in Los Angeles (Lynell George, High Country News )

Lynell George’s beautiful read exemplifies what I love about writing on place and home. A native of Los Angeles, George builds and shapes a complex L.A. in her piece: a “city of contradictions,” an elusive, ever-shifting place “built on either impermanence or illusion.” It’s a sensory and richly textured portrait of a vast place, looking at Los Angeles through a sort of kaleidoscope lens of gentrification, nature, and the pandemic lockdown.

Los Angeles has long been a contested domain — both as territory (from the Indigenous Tongva onward) and as emblem. Boosters, speculators and swindlers have had their way not just with the land but with the very image of Los Angeles. The city grew, like an opportunistic vine. It couldn’t just be . It had to be bigger than life, better than perfect. Even within my lifetime, popular culture has conjured a vision of Los Angeles that is sleight-of-hand, a trick of light, brutally at odds with the lived experience. Los Angeles, by its sprawling nature, absolutely resists oversimplification. This, despite its frustrations, irritants and absurdities, is precisely why I remain here.

Those stories of place, the Los Angeles of my childhood and adolescence and young adulthood — the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s — couldn’t be told until we began to tell them. Until we steadied and raised our voices. Until we made our way through gatekeepers, and most significantly until we were of age and of mind to turn our attention to a shifting definition of the West (or El Norte ), one that included stories of migration and immigration, of protest, of underemployment, of struggle, and of love and resilience despite disappointment, and in the ways in which we tend to the physical environment, to conserve against drought or be mindful of energy use and emissions. We must tend to the region’s various topographies in narrative. It’s imperative. Or they will be lost. As a chronicler, my responsibility is to try and tell an honest story. True to its roots. Even now, even in this quiet moment in the city, we must remember its cacophony, its music.

My Mustache, My Self (Wesley Morris, The New York Times Magazine )

This essay from Wesley Morris on growing a mustache during the pandemic is about so much more than quarantine-grown facial hair — it’s a brilliant and vulnerable piece on masculinity and race, one in which Morris reflects on becoming himself and considers and celebrates his Blackness.

The mustache had certainly conjoined me to a past I was flattered to be associated with, however superficially. But there were implications. During the later stages of the movement, a mustached man opened himself up to charges of white appeasement and Uncle Tom-ism. Not because of the mustache, obviously, but because of the approach of the sort of person who would choose to wear one. Such a person might not have been considered radical enough, down enough, Black enough. The civil rights mustache was strategically tolerant. It didn’t advocate burning anything down. It ran for office — and sometimes it won. It was establishmentarian, compromising and eventually, come the infernos at the close of the 1960s, it fell out of fashion, in part because it felt out of step with the urgency of the moment.

The Black-power salute is not a casual gesture. It’s weaponry. You aim that arm and fire. I aimed mine in solidarity — with white people instead of at a system they personify. And that didn’t feel quite right. But how would I know? I had never done a Black-power salute. It always seemed like more Blackness than I’ve needed, maybe more than I had. I’m not Black-power Black. I’ve always been milder, more apprehensive than that. I was practically born with a mustache.

Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Cheri has been an editor at Longreads since 2014. She's currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. More by Cheri Lucas Rowlands

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What are the six different essay lengths?

This is the second of three chapters about Essays . To complete this reader, read each chapter carefully and then unlock and complete our materials to check your understanding.

– Discuss why essays might vary in length

– Outline the six major lengths of academic essay

– Provide defining features for each essay length

Chapter 1: What is an academic essay?

Chapter 2: What are the six different essay lengths?

Chapter 3: What are the seven different types of academic essay?

Before you begin reading...

video and audio texts
knowledge checks and quizzes
skills practices, tasks and assignments

The length of essay you’re assigned will likely depend on where you are exactly in your academic course. Generally, assignments at the start of a bachelor’s degree will be shorter than those required in a student’s final years, just like master’s and doctoral-level essays will continue to increase in both length and difficulty.

1. The One-Paragraph Essay

Generally about 150 to 250 words in length, the one-paragraph essay may be assigned by academic tutors simply in order to practise the basic concepts of paragraph writing, or it may also be used for specific purposes such as to practise summarising an article that’s been read in class or to write an extended definition of a concept. Additionally, one-paragraph essays may also be used as a diagnostic to quickly determine the level of a student’s writing. Unlike other essay lengths, for the one-paragraph essay, you’ll need to include at least some introductory, body and conclusive elements within the same paragraph.

2. The Three-Paragraph Essay

Usually around 500 words in length, the three-paragraph essay is generally used to introduce students to the concept that all essays should maintain an introduction , body section and conclusion if the writer wishes to produce cohesive and a logical writing. The introduction and conclusion will be the first and last paragraphs and tend to be a little shorter in length, while the central body paragraph will contain the essay’s content or argument. A simple table explaining the balance of content in a three-paragraph essay has been provided below:

About Essay Types 2.1 Three Paragraph Essay

3. The Five-Paragraph Essay

Around 1,000 words in length, the five-paragraph essay is generally set by tutors who are content that their students understand the introduction-body-conclusion essay structure and wish to allow more freedom to expand the ideas and arguments presented by the writer in the body section of the essay. This length of essay still only dedicates one paragraph to the introduction and conclusion , but allows three paragraphs to be dedicated to the exploration of the theme in the essay’s body. At this length, certain essay types such as cause and effect essays or compare and contrast essays may now be utilised. The following is a simple diagram of the balance of paragraph lengths in a five-paragraph essay.

About Essay Types 2.2 Five Paragraph Essay

4. The Extended Essay

The extended essay is the most common type of essay that’s assigned during a bachelor’s or master’s degree , and it may be of any length – although it’s unusual for such essays to be above 5,000 words. The most common lengths for an extended essay are 1,500, 3,000 and 5,000 words, with a word count allowance of plus or minus 10%. Such essay types will most certainly require research and referencing skills , and may also begin to follow more complex structures such as are found in dissertations and theses rather than simply following the introduction-body-conclusion structure of shorter essays.

5. The Dissertation

Generally assigned as the final project for both bachelor’s and master’s degree , the typical length of an academic dissertation is 10,000 or 15,000 words. Unlike shorter essay types , dissertations have more complex structures and are almost always based around primary research (original research that the writer has conducted themselves). The following table demonstrates some of the key parts of a dissertation as well as the rough word count percentages for each section:

6. The Thesis

Finally, the thesis is the longest academic essay type and the one that’s reserved for doctorate students studying PhDs. Generally between 40,000 and 60,000 words in length, the doctorate thesis may contain all the elements of a dissertation but in much more detail and with more careful investigation. Such essays are almost certainly original and are based on primary research , with a larger focus on the accuracy of the literature review , data collection and data analysis . Many students will never encounter this essay type.

Once you can recognise which essay length you’ve been assigned, the next question covered in Chapter 3 is about determining the type of essay you have to write. This is because each essay type will require particular styles, structures, foci and language.

To reference this reader:

Academic Marker (2022) Essays . Available at: https://academicmarker.com/academic-guidance/assignments/essays/ (Accessed: Date Month Year).

Harvard Writing Center
Leeds University Library
Purdue Online Writing Lab

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Once you’ve completed all three chapters about essays , you might also wish to download our beginner, intermediate and advanced worksheets to test your progress or print for your students. These professional PDF worksheets can be easily accessed for only a few Academic Marks .

Our essays academic reader (including all four chapters about this topic) can be accessed here at the click of a button.

Gain unlimited access to our essays beginner worksheet, with activities and answer keys designed to check a basic understanding of this reader’s chapters.

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To save yourself 5 Marks , click on the button below to gain unlimited access to all of our essays chapters and worksheets. The All-in-1 Pack includes every chapter in this reader, as well as our beginner, intermediate and advanced worksheets in one handy PDF.

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What is the World’s Longest Essay?

Typically, the term “essay” refers to a piece of writing featuring the author’s argument. However, its length can greatly vary based on academic level, nature of study, and specific requirements.

Categorizing Essays Based on Length

The One-Paragraph Essay: Often assigned for the practice of writing basics, this type ranges between 150-250 words .
The Three-Paragraph Essay: Primarily to introduce students to the essay structure of introduction, body, and conclusion, such essays typically revolve around 500 words .
The Five-Paragraph Essay: A more advanced version, it allows for three paragraphs exploring the core idea in the body. Such essays generally land around 1,000 words .

Advanced Length Essays

The Extended Essay: Predominantly assigned during bachelor’s degrees, these types of essays usually fall under 1,500, 3,000 , and 5,000 words .
The Dissertation: The final project of both bachelor’s and master’s degrees usually caps around 10,000 or 15,000 words .
The Thesis: The most extensive and complex type of essay, typically associated with doctorate students studying PhDs generally falls between 40,000 and 60,000 words .

Word Count and Page Count Relationship

Determining the number of pages for your essay depends on spacing , margins , font size , and families’ . Using standard 1-inch margins, and 12 pt. Arial font ; a 5,000-word essay will generate 10 pages single-spaced or 20 pages double-spaced .

Conclusion: Final Words

In conclusion, the length of an essay greatly varies based on many factors, notably the academic level, the subject matter, and the type of essay. Recognizing the style and length of the essay you’ve been tasked with will significantly influence your approach towards it. While quantity does maintain importance in fulfilling assigned guidelines, focus on the quality of your content should not be overshadowed. In theory, the longest form of essay could be a PhD thesis , which can reach up to 60,000 words or more.

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The Best College Essay Length: How Long Should It Be?

College Essays

Figuring out your college essay can be one of the most difficult parts of applying to college. Even once you've read the prompt and picked a topic, you might wonder: if you write too much or too little, will you blow your chance of admission? How long should a college essay be?

Whether you're a terse writer or a loquacious one, we can advise you on college essay length. In this guide, we'll cover what the standard college essay length is, how much word limits matter, and what to do if you aren't sure how long a specific essay should be.

How Long Is a College Essay? First, Check the Word Limit

You might be used to turning in your writing assignments on a page-limit basis (for example, a 10-page paper). While some colleges provide page limits for their college essays, most use a word limit instead. This makes sure there's a standard length for all the essays that a college receives, regardless of formatting or font.

In the simplest terms, your college essay should be pretty close to, but not exceeding, the word limit in length. Think within 50 words as the lower bound, with the word limit as the upper bound. So for a 500-word limit essay, try to get somewhere between 450-500 words. If they give you a range, stay within that range.

College essay prompts usually provide the word limit right in the prompt or in the instructions.

For example, the University of Illinois says :

"You'll answer two to three prompts as part of your application. The questions you'll answer will depend on whether you're applying to a major or to our undeclared program , and if you've selected a second choice . Each response should be approximately 150 words."

As exemplified by the University of Illinois, the shortest word limits for college essays are usually around 150 words (less than half a single-spaced page). Rarely will you see a word limit higher than around 650 words (over one single-spaced page). College essays are usually pretty short: between 150 and 650 words. Admissions officers have to read a lot of them, after all!

Weigh your words carefully, because they are limited!

How Flexible Is the Word Limit?

But how flexible is the word limit? What if your poignant anecdote is just 10 words too long—or 100 too short?

Can I Go Over the Word Limit?

If you are attaching a document and you need one or two extra words, you can probably get away with exceeding the word limit by such a small amount. Some colleges will actually tell you that exceeding the word limit by 1-2 words is fine. However, I advise against exceeding the word limit unless it's explicitly allowed for a few reasons:

First, you might not be able to. If you have to copy-paste it into a text box, your essay might get cut off and you'll have to trim it down anyway.

If you exceed the word limit in a noticeable way, the admissions counselor may just stop reading your essay past that point. This is not good for you.

Following directions is actually a very important part of the college application process. You need to follow directions to get your letters of recommendation, upload your essays, send supplemental materials, get your test scores sent, and so on and so forth. So it's just a good general rule to follow whatever instructions you've been given by the institution. Better safe than sorry!

Can I Go Under the Word Limit?

If you can truly get your point across well beneath the word limit, it's probably fine. Brevity is not necessarily a bad thing in writing just so long as you are clear, cogent, and communicate what you want to.

However, most college essays have pretty tight word limits anyways. So if you're writing 300 words for an essay with a 500-word limit, ask yourself: is there anything more you could say to elaborate on or support your points? Consult with a parent, friend, or teacher on where you could elaborate with more detail or expand your points.

Also, if the college gives you a word range, you absolutely need to at least hit the bottom end of the range. So if you get a range from the institution, like 400-500 words, you need to write at least 400 words. If you write less, it will come across like you have nothing to say, which is not an impression you want to give.

What If There Is No Word Limit?

Some colleges don't give you a word limit for one or more of your essay prompts. This can be a little stressful, but the prompts generally fall into a few categories:

Writing Sample

Some colleges don't provide a hard-and-fast word limit because they want a writing sample from one of your classes. In this case, a word limit would be very limiting to you in terms of which assignments you could select from.

For an example of this kind of prompt, check out essay Option B at Amherst :

"Submit a graded paper from your junior or senior year that best represents your writing skills and analytical abilities. We are particularly interested in your ability to construct a tightly reasoned, persuasive argument that calls upon literary, sociological or historical evidence. You should NOT submit a laboratory report, journal entry, creative writing sample or in-class essay."

While there is usually no word limit per se, colleges sometimes provide a general page guideline for writing samples. In the FAQ for Option B , Amherst clarifies, "There is no hard-and-fast rule for official page limit. Typically, we anticipate a paper of 4-5 pages will provide adequate length to demonstrate your analytical abilities. Somewhat longer papers can also be submitted, but in most cases should not exceed 8-10 pages."

So even though there's no word limit, they'd like somewhere in the 4-10 pages range. High school students are not usually writing papers that are longer than 10 pages anyways, so that isn't very limiting.

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Implicit Length Guideline

Sometimes, while there's no word (or even page) limit, there's still an implicit length guideline. What do I mean by this?

See, for example, this Western Washington University prompt :

“Describe one or more activities you have been involved in that have been particularly meaningful. What does your involvement say about the communities, identities or causes that are important to you?”

While there’s no page or word limit listed here, further down on page the ‘essay tips’ section explains that “ most essay responses are about 500 words, ” though “this is only a recommendation, not a firm limit.” This gives you an idea of what’s reasonable. A little longer or shorter than 500 words would be appropriate here. That’s what I mean by an “implicit” word limit—there is a reasonable length you could go to within the boundaries of the prompt.

But what's the proper coffee-to-paragraph ratio?

Treasure Hunt

There is also the classic "treasure hunt" prompt. No, it's not a prompt about a treasure hunt. It's a prompt where there are no length guidelines given, but if you hunt around on the rest of the website you can find length guidelines.

For example, the University of Chicago provides seven "Extended Essay" prompts . You must write an essay in response to one prompt of your choosing, but nowhere on the page is there any guidance about word count or page limit.

However, many colleges provide additional details about their expectations for application materials, including essays, on FAQ pages, which is true of the University of Chicago. On the school’s admissions Frequently Asked Questions page , they provide the following length guidelines for the supplemental essays:

“We suggest that you note any word limits for Coalition or Common Application essays; however, there are no strict word limits on the UChicago Supplement essays. For the extended essay (where you choose one of several prompts), we suggest that you aim for around 650 words. While we won't, as a rule, stop reading after 650 words, we're only human and cannot promise that an overly wordy essay will hold our attention indefinitely. For the “Why UChicago?” essay, we suggest about 250-500 words. The ideas in your writing matter more than the exact number of words you use!”

So there you go! You want to be (loosely) in the realm of 650 for the extended essay, and 250-500 words for the “Why UChicago?” essay.

Help! There Really Is No Guidance on Length

If you really can't find any length guidelines anywhere on the admissions website and you're at a loss, I advise calling the admissions office. They may not be able to give you an exact number (in fact, they probably won't), but they will probably at least be able to tell you how long most of the essays they see are. (And keep you from writing a panicked, 20-page dissertation about your relationship with your dog).

In general, 500 words or so is pretty safe for a college essay. It's a fairly standard word limit length, in fact. (And if you're wondering, that's about a page and a half double-spaced.) 500 words is long enough to develop a basic idea while still getting a point across quickly—important when admissions counselors have thousands of essays to read!

"See? It says 500 words right there in tiny font!"

The Final Word: How Long Should a College Essay Be?

The best college essay length is usually pretty straightforward: you want to be right under or at the provided word limit. If you go substantially past the word limit, you risk having your essay cut off by an online application form or having the admissions officer just not finish it. And if you're too far under the word limit, you may not be elaborating enough.

What if there is no word limit? Then how long should a college essay be? In general, around 500 words is a pretty safe approximate word amount for a college essay—it's one of the most common word limits, after all!

Here's guidance for special cases and hunting down word limits:

If it's a writing sample of your graded academic work, the length either doesn't matter or there should be some loose page guidelines.

There also may be implicit length guidelines. For example, if a prompt says to write three paragraphs, you'll know that writing six sentences is definitely too short, and two single-spaced pages is definitely too long.

You might not be able to find length guidelines in the prompt, but you could still hunt them up elsewhere on the website. Try checking FAQs or googling your chosen school name with "admissions essay word limit."

If there really is no word limit, you can call the school to try to get some guidance.

With this advice, you can be sure you've got the right college essay length on lockdown!

Hey, writing about yourself can even be fun!

What's Next?

Need to ask a teacher or friend for help with your essay? See our do's and dont's to getting college essay advice .

If you're lacking in essay inspiration, see our guide to brainstorming college essay ideas . And here's our guide to starting out your essay perfectly!

Looking for college essay examples? See 11 places to find college essay examples and 145 essay examples with analysis !

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points? We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download them for free now:

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Ellen has extensive education mentorship experience and is deeply committed to helping students succeed in all areas of life. She received a BA from Harvard in Folklore and Mythology and is currently pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University.

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Poems & Poets

Verse by the Yard

The longest poem in the world will be written by horny robots..

BY Izzy Grinspan

Introduction

Don Pedro from his shirt has washed the fleas The bull’s horns ought to dry it like a bone Old corned-beef’s rusty armour spreads disease That suede ferments is not at all well known

"I can explain." by Kas Thomas

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

The world's longest (and best) paragraph.

Kerouac's famous scroll manuscript for .

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One Sentence Says It All

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Dec. 24, 2010

“No book worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep,” says the garrulous shoemaker who narrates the Czech novelist Bohumil Hrabal’s “Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age” (1964), “it’s meant to make you jump out of bed in your underwear and run and beat the author’s brains out.” Thirty-three pages into what appears to be an unbroken highway of text, the reader might well wonder if that’s a mission statement or an invitation. “Dancing Lessons” unfurls as a single, sometimes maddening sentence that ends after 117 pages without a period, giving the impression that the opinionated, randy old cobbler will go on jawing ad infinitum. But the gambit works. His exuberant ramblings gain a propulsion that would be lost if the comma splices were curbed, the phrases divided into sentences. And there’s something about that slab of wordage that carries the eye forward, promising an intensity simply unattainable by your regularly punctuated novel.

Hrabal wasn’t the first to attempt the Very Long Sentence. The Polish novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski went even longer in “The Gates of Paradise” (1960), weaving several voices into a lurid and majestic 158-page run-on. (The novel actually consists of two sentences, the final one a mere five words long.) An old priest listens to the contradictory confessions of some apparently holy but actually just horny French teenagers marching toward Jerusalem in the 13th-century Children’s Crusade. A profusion of colons and dashes helps toggle among the multiple points of view, while repeated descriptions of crummy weather give the brain some breathing space. Every mention of the “long and arduous road” seems to comment on the enduring nature of the sentence itself. The descriptions of sex — e.g., “That’s why when we do it we can keep it going so long” — also gain a double meaning.

For a long time, Hrabal and Andrzejewski were the only practitioners of the sentence-long book I could find. Not many writers have had the nerve to go this route: you’re locked in, committed to a rhythm and a certain claustrophobia. But might the format also be liberating? Joan Didion told The Paris Review in 1978: “What’s so hard about that first sentence is that you’re stuck with it. Everything else is going to flow out of that sentence. And by the time you’ve laid down the first two sentences, your options are all gone.” Sticking to just one sentence, ironically, might keep your options perpetually open.

The most famous mega-sentence in literature comes at the end of the book, not the beginning. Molly Bloom’s monologue from “Ulysses” (1922) —36 pages in the thinly margined, micro-fonted 1986 single-volume corrected text (and actually two long sentences, thanks to an often-overlooked period 17 pages in) — sets an impossibly high standard for the art of the run-on. It breathlessly binds together all that comes before while nearly obliterating it, permanently coloring the reader’s memory in one final rush. It feels unstoppable, and then it stops.

Molly’s soliloquy is a touchstone for writers aiming to go long. A copy of “Ulysses” pops up in “Green Coaster,” the 33-page, single-sentence section that closes Jonathan Coe’s brilliant novel “The Rotters’ Club” (2001). (The BBC has reported that at 13,955 words, it is the longest sentence ever written in English.)

Joyce also makes a cameo in the most recent candidate for the absurdly exclusive Book-as-Sentence club, the French novelist Mathias Énard’s “Zone” (2008), just published in an English translation . At 517 pages, it’s far longer than the Hrabal and Andrzejewski combined, though its status as a true single sentence is compromised by 23 chapter breaks that alleviate eye strain. (If “Zone” qualifies, what about Samuel Beckett’s 147-page “How It Is” (1961), with its paragraphic chunks but complete absence of periods?) A bigger disqualification for Énard’s book, about a train journey, is that three of the chapters are passages from a book the narrator is reading — a mediocre short story ripe with periods. If only he’d packed some Hrabal.

Even if the World’s Longest Sentence record is fraught with asterisks — does Hrabal truly qualify, if there’s no period at the end? What about early Greek writing, which had no spaces between words? — the allure of the form is, well, longstanding. An 800-plus worder in Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” (1862) has sometimes (erroneously) been cited as the longest in French literature; its winding description of Louis Philippe as a ruler who hews to the middle of the road in every aspect (“well read and caring but little for literature,” “incapable of rancor and of gratitude”), damns the king’s modesty with the grandness of its design. Is it coincidence that, as Roger Shattuck points out, the longest sentence in Proust — 944 words — dissects the plight of the homosexual in society? And what about the last of the six immense paragraphs that constitute Gabriel García Márquez’s “Autumn of the Patriarch” (1975), one mammoth sentence concluding with “the good news that the uncountable time of eternity had come to an end”?

For some writers, a chapter-long sentence is eternity enough. The Swiss author Friedrich Dürrenmatt was inspired to write “The Assignment” (1986), his superbly paranoid late-career “novella in 24 sentences,” after listening to a recording of Glenn Gould playing the first 24 movements of Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier.” (At 129 pages, that’s an average of 5.375 pages per sentence.) Here, the constraint sets up the potential for improvisation off a single musical line, while also allowing for clean breaks. The American writer Laird Hunt consciously adapted Dürrenmatt’s method in “Ray of the Star” (2009), in which a traumatic episode shadows a shell-shocked man’s sojourn in an unnamed foreign city. The man suffers from restless leg syndrome, and the affliction’s self-engendering quality (“the greater his fatigue the more pronounced it grew”) finds a mirror in Hunt’s labyrinthine sentences.

The Very Long Sentence could be seen as a futile hedge against separation, an unwillingness to part from loved ones, the world, life itself. “I’m trying to say it all in one sentence, between one Cap and one period,” William Faulkner wrote to Malcolm Cowley in 1944. “I’m still trying to put it all, if possible, on one pinhead.” (Faulkner, no stranger to the mind-expanding possibilities of the very long sentence, was once credited with a 1,400-worder by the Guinness Book of World Records.) In this age of 140-character Twitter posts — not to mention a persistent undercurrent of minimalism in our literature — there’s something profoundly rejuvenating about the very long sentence. For the sake of the novel, and ourselves, let’s hope that Hrabal wasn’t being prophetic when he wrote, four decades ago, “People twitter away like magpies and don’t really care.”

Ed Park is the author of “Personal Days,” a novel that ends with a sentence over 16,000 words long.

Longest Paper Ever

Mlomeister has given me a link to this site. One day I am not going to get so angry at these types of things. It’s a fact of life and an age-old issue, one that is almost pointless to fight and refute because it is an incredibly emotional topic and requires a lot time and effort to understand. Not only that, but there are hundreds and hundreds of sites like this, each one gathering information from each other so they’ve created their own religion against religion. Not too many people will delve into the ‘why’s and how’s of things like this, it’s way easier to just nod and shake your fist, close your eyes and form your opinions without doing anything to make sure that your opinions are based on literal fact, on truth. I was definitely, …show more content…

But I can certainly see how others might, when they are twisting and misconstruing information. Here is an example. I wrote, “It’s like saying “all Muslims” are terrorists, when obviously they all aren’t. “ Snip off the last part of that sentence, and suddenly I am someone who just made a really unfair and untrue statement, “All Muslims are terrorists.“ But someone makes a webpage about it, and all of a sudden its “Scarlett Is Anti Muslim” and then that statement has babies and all of a sudden I’m misrepresented. Really easy to do. Here is an example taken from the page that started this whole thing for me: “Death to the Rape Victim (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB) If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.” It is clear that God doesn't give a damn about the rape victim. He is only concerned about the violation of another mans "property". That last bit is the author of the webpage’s opinion. ( I did a quick search on this fellows page to see if I could find out his accreditations, not surprisingly there are none. Also not surprising is his unwillingness to respond to his emails that he gets generated from his site. Oh but you can

A snaffle curbs the fieriest steed, and he who in subjection lives must needs be meek. But this proud girl, in insolence well-schooled, first overstepped the established law, and then-- A second and worse act of insolence-- She boasts and glories in her wickedness. Now if she thus can flout authority unpunished, I am woman, she the man. But though she be my sister 's child or nearer of kin than all who worship at my hearth, nor she nor yet her sister shall escape the utmost penalty, for both I hold, as arch-conspirators, of equal guilt. Bring forth the older; even now I saw her within the palace, frenzied and distraught. The workings of the mind discover oft dark deeds in darkness schemed, before the act. More hateful still the miscreant who seeks when caught, to make a virtue of a crime” (Sophocles 474-496).

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Will Minimum Wage Help The Poor Analysis

This website is a credible source for a couple of reasons. The first reason this is a credible source is because of the author, Paul Godfrey. This author is in a peer reviewed website which would make this author a credible source. Furthermore, the website and the article itself is peer reviewed which makes this a credible source.

Wolly Mammoth Research Paper

A study was published just yesterday featuring our Woolly friend, the Woolly Mammoth, with new findings about its DNA structure and how it was adapted to its artic conditions in the Ice Age. The study was published with cell.com in more scientific detail and elaborates on the differences between the elephants that live today and the ones of yesterday. (http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/abstract/S2211-1247%2815%2900639-7).

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College essay

How Long Should a College Essay Be? | Word Count Tips

Published on September 29, 2021 by Kirsten Courault . Revised on June 1, 2023.

Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit. If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words.

You should aim to stay under the specified limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely. However, if you write too little, it may seem like you are unwilling or unable to write a thoughtful and developed essay.

Word count guidelines for different application types, how to shorten your essay, how to expand your essay, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about college application essays.

Each university has a different suggested or required word count depending on which application portal it uses.

Some application portals will allow you to exceed the word count limit, but admissions officers have limited time and energy to read longer essays. Other application portals have a strict limit and will not allow you to exceed it.

For example, in the Common App , the portal will not allow you to submit more than 650 words. Some colleges using the Common App will allow you to submit less than 250 words, but this is too short for a well-developed essay.

Application portal	Word count	Strict limit?
Common App	250–650
Coalition App	500–650
UC App	Four 350-word essays

For scholarship essays , diversity essays , and “Why this college?” essays , word count limits vary. Make sure to verify and respect each prompt’s limit.

Don’t worry too much about word count until the revision stage ; focusing on word count while writing may hinder your creativity. Once you have finished a draft, you can start shortening or expanding your essay if necessary.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

On some application portals, you can exceed the word limit, but there are good reasons to stay within it:

To maintain the admissions officer’s attention
To show you can follow directions
To demonstrate you can write concisely

Here are some strategies for shortening your essay.

Stay on the main point

It’s good to use vivid imagery, but only include relevant details. Cut any sentences with tangents or unnecessary information.

My father taught me how to strategically hold the marshmallow pierced by a twig at a safe distance from the flames to make sure it didn’t get burned, ensuring a golden brown exterior.

Typically, my father is glued to his computer since he’s a software engineer at Microsoft. But that night, he was the marshmallow master. We waited together as the pillowy sugary goodness caramelized into gooey delight. Good example: Sticks to the point On our camping trip to Yosemite, my family spent time together, away from technology and routine responsibility.

My favorite part was roasting s’mores around the campfire. My father taught me how to hold the marshmallow at a safe distance from the flames, ensuring a golden brown exterior.

These college essay examples also demonstrate how you can cut your essay down to size.

Eliminate wordiness

Delete unnecessary words that clutter your essay. If a word doesn’t add value, cut it.

Here are some common examples of wordiness and how to fix them.

	Problem	Solution
	We had done a lot of advance planning for our science project.	We had done a lot of planning for our science project.
	I didn’t know whether or not I should tell the truth.	I didn’t know whether I should tell the truth.
	When I was a child, I came up with an imaginary friend named Roger to get away from my parents’ fighting.	When I was a child, I invented an imaginary friend named Roger to escape my parents’ fighting.
Unnecessary “of” phrases	The mother of my friend was Marissa, who was a member of our church.	My friend’s mother Marissa was a fellow church member.
False subjects “There is/there are”	There are many large-scale farms in America, but there is a local sustainable farm preserved by my family.	America has many large-scale farms, but my family preserves a local sustainable one.
Unnecessary qualifiers	I pretty much just wanted a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins.	I wanted a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins.
Passive voice	Most of the German chocolate cake was eaten by me.	I ate most of the German chocolate cake.
Unnecessary helping verbs	I am going to be attending my school’s annual carnival.	I will attend my school’s annual carnival.

Use a paraphrasing tool

If you want to save time, you can make use of a paraphrasing tool . Within the tool you can select the “short” mode to rewrite your essay in less words. Just copy your text in the tool and within 1 click you’ll have shortened your essay.

If you’re significantly under the word count, you’re wasting the opportunity to show depth and authenticity in your essay. Admissions officers may see your short essay as a sign that you’re unable to write a detailed, insightful narrative about yourself.

Here are some strategies for expanding your essay.

Show detailed examples, and don’t tell generic stories

You should include detailed examples that can’t be replicated by another student. Use vivid imagery, the five senses, and specific objects to transport the reader into your story.


My mom cooks the best beef stew.	The sweet smell of caramelized onions and braised beef wafts from the kitchen. My mother attends to the stew as if it’s one of her patients at the hospital, checking every five to 10 minutes on its current state.
The shepherd’s pie reminded me of familiar flavors.	Reminding me of the warm, comforting blanket from my childhood, the shepherd’s pie tasted like home.
His hands were cracked and rough.	His hands were cracked and rough like alligator skin.

Reveal your feelings and insight

If your essay lacks vulnerability or self-reflection, share your feelings and the lessons you’ve learned.

Be creative with how you express your feelings; rather than simply writing “I’m happy,” use memorable images to help the reader clearly visualize your happiness. Similarly, for insight, include the follow-up actions from your lessons learned; instead of claiming “I became a hard worker,” explain what difficult tasks you accomplished as a result of what you learned.


After my best friend Doug moved away, it was really hard. Before, we used to always talk about video games, barter snacks during lunch, and share secrets. But now, I’m solo.	Before my best friend Doug moved away, we used to do everything together. We would spend countless bus rides discussing and strategizing sessions. At lunch break, we would barter Oreos and Cheez-Its while confiding in each other about whom we wanted to ask to the school dance. But now, I’m Solo, like Han without Chewbacca.
My mother’s death was difficult. My father’s grief made it difficult for him to take care of me and my brothers, so I took care of them.	After my mom passed, my grief was overwhelming, but my father’s was even deeper. At 13, I cooked, cleaned, and took care of my two younger brothers. Although the household responsibilities were tiring, I liked一and needed一the stability and purpose I derived from the new routine.

If you want to know more about academic writing , effective communication , or parts of speech , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Academic writing

Writing process
Transition words
Passive voice
Paraphrasing

Communication

How to end an email
Ms, mrs, miss
How to start an email
I hope this email finds you well
Hope you are doing well

Parts of speech

Personal pronouns
Conjunctions

Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit to write a developed and thoughtful essay.

You should aim to stay under the specified word count limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely. However, don’t write too little, as it may seem like you are unwilling or unable to write a detailed and insightful narrative about yourself.

If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words.

If you’re struggling to reach the word count for your college essay, add vivid personal stories or share your feelings and insight to give your essay more depth and authenticity.

If your college essay goes over the word count limit , cut any sentences with tangents or irrelevant details. Delete unnecessary words that clutter your essay.

You can speed up this process by shortening and smoothing your writing with a paraphrasing tool . After that, you can use the summarizer to shorten it even more.

There is no set number of paragraphs in a college admissions essay . College admissions essays can diverge from the traditional five-paragraph essay structure that you learned in English class. Just make sure to stay under the specified word count .

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10 Longest Pieces of Literature

While plenty of people love to curl up with a good book, most readers tend to stick with novels of a manageable length. But some people feel that longer is better and prefer to read more involved books that they can really get lost in!

So, just how many words make up the longest pieces of literature that you can read today? Let’s take a look at 10 of the longest pieces of literature that you can read and rank them according to word count. We’ll also learn some interesting things about each one!

The novel Kelidar is so long that it had to be divided into 10 books! The story is set in Iran from 1946 to 1949 and clearly depicts the local tensions that lingered following World War II. The protagonist’s Kurdish family experiences difficulties in coexisting peacefully alongside their neighbors.

Did you know?

Author Mahmoud Dowlatabadi grew up in a less-than-wealthy family of shoemakers in the Iranian village of Dowlatabad and worked as a farmhand , later applying his own experience to his writing.

A Dance to the Music of Time

The piece A Dance to the Music of Time is a cycle of novels which is divided into 12 volumes in order to accommodate the full story. The literary work was inspired by Nicolas Poussin’s painting that bore the same title and explores English customs and mannerisms in the middle of the 20th century . The dance patterns shown in the painting are said to have struck Anthony Powell as a metaphor for social interactions.

While A Dance to the Music of Time explores social behaviors, it seeks to do so objectively from an outsider’s viewpoint.

Zettels Traum

Zettels Traum, which translates to “Bottom’s Dream” in English, was first begun alongside Arno Schmidt’s cooperative efforts with Hans Wollschläger to translate Edgar Allan Poe’s works into German. Zettels Traum was partially inspired by the works of James Joyce, and aimed to depict the different forms of knowledge in his story .

Arno Schmidt is also known for his story Kühe in Halbtrauer, and is said to be one of the most important German authors of the 20th century.

Sironia, Texas

This story by Madison Cooper is set in the fictional town of Sironia, Texas, which many people believe is a very similar fictional version of Waco, Texas, where the author grew up. The novel follows the story of protagonist Tam Lipscomb from early childhood and details the struggles and social difficulties of the town’s citizens.

Sironia, Texas took 11 years to write and became a New York Times bestseller alongside winning the Houghton Mifflin Literary Award .

Marija Juric Zagorka is a notable figure for several reasons: Not only was she an outspoken women’s rights activist, but she was the first female journalist in Croatia as well. She is also one of the most frequently-read Croation authors, and Gordana is her longest work . Gordana, the protagonist, is a powerful fictional heroine who demonstrates strong national pride.

Other words by Marija Zagorka include Daughter of the Lotrščak, Republikanci, and The Knight of the Slavonian Plain.

A la recherche du temps perdu

When translated from French to English, the title of this piece of literature becomes “In Search of Lost Time” or “Remembrance of Things Past.” The novel is divided into seven parts and tells the story of the author’s life. The autobiographical nature of the piece is meant to serve as an allegory of the search for truth .

A key, central theme in this novel is the concept of involuntary memory, in which everyday cues spark the memory of a past experience without any deliberate effort.

Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus

The title of this lengthy piece translates to “Artamène, or Cyrus the Great” in English. This novel sequence is said to be one of the longest pieces of literature ever published, and the longest novel in all of French Literature . Artamène also sources other classic pieces such as the works of great historians and philosophers Herodotus and Xenophon.

While Madeleine de Scudéry is said to be the true author of this novel, the title pages cite her older brother, Georges de Scudéry.

Marienbad My Love

Marienbad My Love is, like many extremely long works, divided into several books of a more manageable length. The overall piece opens with a journalist and filmmaker who is exiled on a remote, deserted island and believes that he must convince a woman from his past to help him with an artistic project that will help him carry out the will of God.

Mark Leach is said to have added a fair bit of bulk to this piece by lifting long quotes from other books–but, to be fair, many of those other books were also his!

The Blah Story

Despite its name, The Blah Story isn’t really a story at all! This piece of literature is more of a written piece of abstract art, made to challenge the usual conventions and expectations of what a book should be. The Blah Story also knocks out a series of other notable feats, such as including the world’s longest made-up word in print, the longest sentence, and the world’s longest poem .

This abstract novel does contain monologues, dialogue, characters, and storylines, but these are very loosely defined in the spirit of keeping things open for interpretation.

Subspace Emissary’s Worlds Conquest

Subspace Emissary’s Worlds Conquest is the longest piece of literature that you can read according in terms of word count. It may not be a traditionally-published book, but no one can deny the impressive feat that author Christian has undertaken with this massive fanfiction! What’s more is that readers say it’s actually written well and provides a good balance of action, humor, and moral messages.

Rumor has is that Christian, who originally hails from Mexico, started writing this piece of fanfiction as a way of practicing his English.

12 of the Longest Words in the World, By Category

Antidisestablishmentarianism, everyone’s favorite agglutinative , entered the pop culture lexicon on August 17, 1955, when Gloria Lockerman, a 12-year-old girl from Baltimore, correctly spelled it on The $64,000 Question as millions of people watched from their living rooms. At 28 letters, the word—which is defined as a 19th-century British political movement that opposes proposals for the disestablishment of the Church of England—is still regarded as the longest non-medical, non-coined, nontechnical word in the English language (though according to Merriam-Webster, it’s rarely used outside of being "a really long word"). And it keeps some robust company. Here are some examples of the longest words by category.

1. Methionylthreonylthreonyglutaminylarginyl ... isoleucine

Note the ellipses. All told, the full chemical name for the human protein titin is 189,819 letters, and takes up to three-and-a-half hours to pronounce. The problem with including chemical names is that there’s essentially no limit to how long they can be. For example, naming a single molecule of DNA, with its millions and millions of repeating base pairs, could eventually tap out at well over 1 billion letters.

2. Nirantarāndhakāritā … lokān

According to Guinness World Records , the longest word in any language is a "compound 'word' of 195 Sanskrit characters (transliterating to 428 letters in the Roman alphabet) describing the region near Kanci, Tamil Nadu, India, which appears in a 16th-century work by Tirumalãmbã, Queen of Vijayangara.”

3. Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

At 45 letters, this is the longest defined word you’ll find in a major dictionary. An inflated version of silicosis, this is the vaguely scientific-sounding name for a disease that causes inflammation in the lungs owing to the inhalation of very fine silica dust. Despite its inclusion in the dictionary, it’s generally considered superfluous, having been coined simply to claim the title of the longest English word.

While pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is often given as the longest word in a dictionary, it’s not that straightforward. As explained in a 1997 article by Darryl Francis in the journal Word Ways , dictionaries—especially the Oxford English Dictionary—have the defined words but also quotations to show usage. So the first entry under hamburger , for example, contains a 55-letter word, with nary a space in sight: “You are asked if you will have ‘porkchopbeefsteakhamandegghamburgersteakorliverandbacon.’” Allowing for any non-space punctuation, under the word journey there’s this behemoth from 1938: “feeling-upset-physically-and-mentally-with-anticipatory-excitement-and/or-anxiety”—71 letters (and some hyphens and a slash; but no spaces). Francis even points out that there’s a 100-character “word” hiding under lincomycin , but that’s a chemical name. The longest word in the dictionary is, therefore, somewhat open to interpretation.

4. Parastratiosphecomyia Stratioshecomyioides

The longest accepted animal binomial, at 42 letters, is a species of soldier fly native to Thailand. The name dwarfs the creature, which has a length of just over 10 millimeters.

5. Pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism

This 30-letter medical condition is the longest non-coined word to appear in a major dictionary.

6. Floccinaucinihilipilification

By virtue of having one more letter than antidisestablishmentarianism , this is the longest non-technical English word. A mash-up of five Latin elements, it refers to the act of describing something as having little or no value. While it made the cut in the Oxford English Dictionary , Merriam-Webster volumes refuse to recognize it, chalking up its existence to little more than linguistic ephemera.

7. Subdermatoglyphic

At 17 characters, this is often considered the longest isogram , a word in which every letter is used only once, and refers to the underlying dermal matrix that determines the pattern formed by the whorls, arches, and ridges of our fingerprints.

8. Squirrelled

Though the more commonly accepted American English version carries only one L , the version with two is fully accepted—and in some accents it’s pronounced as one-syllable, making it possibly the longest non-coined monosyllabic English word at 11 letters.

9. Transtendinous

Are you having a surgery that might involve going through the tendon ? Then you might hear the word transtendinous thrown around. Are you at a conference of lexicographers ? You might hear transtendinous thrown around as, at 14 letters, potentially the longest English word to use all five vowels in order exactly once. But as that word (and the equally 14-letter lamelligomphus , a dragonfly genus) has yet to enter the hallowed halls of the better dictionaries, you might be better off with the 12 letters of abstemiously and affectiously , both of which have a pleasing Y to round out the word (and a special shout out to uncomplimentary , which, at 15 letters, has all five—though not the Y —in reverse alphabetical order).

10. Tattarrattat

At 12 letters, this word—coined by James Joyce in Ulysses and meaning a knocking at the door—is likely the longest palindromic word in English.

Joyce had a penchant for coining weird words that no one uses, so a better candidate for longest non-coined palindromic word in major dictionaries might be the nine-letter Malayalam , which is a Dravidian language spoken in parts of India. (A third candidate— detartrated —appears in some chemical glossaries and older food science publications , but is rarely included in dictionaries.)

11. and 12. Euouae and Psst

Euouae and psst are the longest words comprised entirely of either vowels or consonants appearing in a major dictionary. Euouae, a medieval musical term, is technically a mnemonic, but has been accepted as a word in itself.

As for longest without vowels, Guinness World Records gives the record for “ Longest word in the English language without any of the five main vowels ” as twyndyllyngs , the plural of an obscure 15th-century variant of an obscure now dialectical word meaning “twin.” But as American students learn, Y is sometimes a vowel.

Some argue cwtch ( cupboard/hiding place or a special hug ) or crwth ( a type of musical instrument ) hold the record, but in both of those, the W is taking the vowel role, as it can happily do in the Welsh both are loaned from. For something with neither a vowel letter nor a vowel sound , the best option is likely psst , which is a fully accepted word in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Austin Thompson contributed to this piece. A version of this story ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2022.

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What the Longest Study on Human Happiness Found Is the Key to a Good Life

The Harvard Study of Adult Development has established a strong correlation between deep relationships and well-being. The question is, how does a person nurture those deep relationships?

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T urn your mind for a moment to a friend or family member you cherish but don’t spend as much time with as you would like. This needn’t be your most significant relationship, just someone who makes you feel energized when you’re with them, and whom you’d like to see more regularly.

How often do you see that person? Every day? Once a month? Once a year? Do the math and project how many hours annually you spend with them. Write this number down and hang on to it.

For us, Bob and Marc, though we work closely together and meet every week by phone or video call, we see each other in person for only a total of about two days (48 hours) every year.

How does this add up for the coming years? Bob is 71 years old. Marc is 60. Let’s be (very) generous and say we will both be around to celebrate Bob’s 100th birthday. At two days a year for 29 years, that’s 58 days that we have left to spend together in our lifetimes.

Fifty-eight out of 10,585 days.

Of course, this is assuming a lot of good fortune, and the real number is almost certainly going to be lower.

Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has been investigating what makes people flourish. After starting with 724 participants—boys from disadvantaged and troubled families in Boston, and Harvard undergraduates—the study incorporated the spouses of the original men and, more recently, more than 1,300 descendants of the initial group. Researchers periodically interview participants, ask them to fill out questionnaires, and collect information about their physical health. As the study’s director (Bob) and associate director (Marc), we’ve been able to watch participants fall in and out of relationships, find success and failure at their jobs, become mothers and fathers. It’s the longest in-depth longitudinal study on human life ever done, and it’s brought us to a simple and profound conclusion: Good relationships lead to health and happiness. The trick is that those relationships must be nurtured.

From the June 2009 issue: What makes us happy?

We don’t always put our relationships first. Consider the fact that the average American in 2018 spent 11 hours every day on solitary activities such as watching television and listening to the radio. Spending 58 days over 29 years with a friend is infinitesimal compared with the 4,851 days that Americans will spend interacting with media during that same time period. Distractions are hard to avoid.

Thinking about these numbers can help us put our own relationships in perspective. Try figuring out how much time you spend with a good friend or family member. We don’t have to spend every hour with our friends, and some relationships work because they’re exercised sparingly. But nearly all of us have people in our lives whom we’d like to see more. Are you spending time with the people you most care about? Is there a relationship in your life that would benefit both of you if you could spend more time together? Many of these are untapped resources, waiting for us to put them to use. And, enriching these relationships can in turn nourish our minds and bodies.

Y ou don’t have to examine scientific findings to recognize that relationships affect you physically. All you have to do is notice the invigoration you feel when you believe that someone has really understood you during a good conversation, or the tension and distress you feel after an argument, or how little sleep you get during a period of romantic strife.

In this sense, having healthy, fulfilling relationships is its own kind of fitness—social fitness—and like physical fitness, it takes work to maintain. Unlike stepping on the scale, taking a quick look in the mirror, or getting readouts for blood pressure and cholesterol, assessing our social fitness requires a bit more sustained self-reflection. It requires stepping back from the crush of modern life, taking stock of our relationships, and being honest with ourselves about where we’re devoting our time and whether we are tending to the connections that help us thrive. Finding the time for this type of reflection can be hard, and sometimes it’s uncomfortable. But it can yield enormous benefits.

Many of our Harvard Study participants have told us that filling out questionnaires every two years and being interviewed regularly have given them a welcome perspective on their life and relationships. We ask them to really think about themselves and the people they love, and that process of self-reflection helps some of them.

Read: 10 practical ways to improve happiness

This is a practice that could help anyone. Looking in the mirror and thinking honestly about where your life stands is a first step in trying to live a good life. Noticing where you are can help put into relief where you would like to be. Having some reservations about this kind of self-reflection is understandable. Our study participants were not always keen on filling out our questionnaires, or eager to consider the larger picture of their life. Some would skip difficult questions or leave entire pages blank, and some would just not return certain surveys. Some even wrote comments in the margins of their questionnaires about what they thought of our requests. “What kinds of questions are these!?” is a response we received occasionally, often from participants who preferred not to think about difficulties in their life. The experiences of the people who skipped questions or entire questionnaires were also important, though—they were just as crucial in understanding adult development as the experiences of people eager to share. A lot of useful data and gems of experience were buried in the shadowed corners of their lives. We just had to go through a little extra effort to excavate them.

One of these people was a man we’ll call Sterling Ainsley. (We are using a pseudonym to protect his confidentiality as a study participant.)

Black line drawing illustration of a person inside a bubble of curly cues

S terling Ainsley was a hopeful guy. He graduated from Harvard in the 1940s and then served in World War II. After he left the service, he got a job as a scientist and retired in his 60s. When asked to describe his philosophy for getting through hard times, he said, “You try not to let life get to you. You remember your victories and take a positive attitude.”

The year was 1986. George Vaillant, the then-director of the study, was on a long interview trek, driving through the Rocky Mountains to visit the study’s participants who lived in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Montana. Sterling had not returned the most recent survey, and there was some catching up to do. He met Vaillant at a hotel to give him a ride to the diner where Sterling wanted to do his scheduled interview. When Vaillant buckled himself into the passenger seat of Sterling’s car, the seat belt left a stripe of dust across his chest. “I was left to wonder,” he wrote, “the last time somebody had used it.”

Sterling was technically married, but his wife lived far away, and they hadn’t slept in the same room in years. They spoke only every few months.

Read: The six forces that fuel friendship

When asked why they had not gotten a divorce, he said, “I wouldn’t want to do that to the children,” even though his kids were grown and had children of their own. Sterling was proud of his kids and beamed when he spoke of them, saying they were the most important thing in his life. But he rarely saw them and seemed to prefer to keep his relationships with them thriving mostly in his imagination. Vaillant noted that Sterling seemed to be using optimism to push away some of his fears and avoid challenges in his life. Putting a positive spin on every matter and then pushing it out of his mind made it possible for him to believe that nothing was wrong, he was fine, he was happy, his kids didn’t need him.

He didn’t travel to see his son’s new home abroad, because he didn’t “want to be a burden”—even though he’d been learning a new language to prepare for the trip. He had another child who lived closer, but he hadn’t visited in more than a year. He didn’t have a relationship with his grandchildren, and he wasn’t in contact with any friends.

When asked about his older sister, Sterling seemed startled. “My sister?” he said.

Yes, the sister he had told the study so much about when he was younger.

Sterling thought about it for a long time, and then told Vaillant that it must have been decades since he last spoke with her. A frightened expression came over his face. “Would she still be living?” he said.

Sterling tried not to think about his relationships, and he was even less inclined to talk about them. This is a common experience. We don’t always know why we do things or why we don’t do things, and we may not understand what is holding us at a distance from the people in our life. Taking some time to look in the mirror can help. Sometimes there are needs inside of us that are looking for a voice, a way to get out. They might be things that we have never seen or articulated to ourselves.

This seemed to be the case with Sterling. Asked how he spent his evenings, he said he spent time with an elderly woman who lived in a nearby trailer. Each night he would walk over, and they’d watch TV and talk. Eventually she would fall asleep, and he would help her into bed and wash her dishes and close the shades before walking home. She was the closest thing he had to a confidant.

“I don’t know what I’ll do if she dies,” he said.

Listen to Robert Waldinger in conversation with Arthur Brooks and Rebecca Rashid on "How to Build a Happy Life":

L oneliness has a physical effect on the body. It can render people more sensitive to pain, suppress their immune system, diminish brain function, and disrupt sleep, which in turn can make an already lonely person even more tired and irritable. Research has found that, for older adults, loneliness is far more dangerous than obesity. Ongoing loneliness raises a person’s odds of death by 26 percent in any given year. A study in the U.K., the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, recently reported on the connections between loneliness and poorer health and self-care in young adults. This ongoing study includes more than 2,200 people born in England and Wales in 1994 and 1995. When they were 18, the researchers asked them how lonely they were. Those who reported being lonelier had a greater chance of facing mental-health issues, partaking in unsafe physical-health behaviors, and coping with stress in negative ways. Add to this the fact that a tide of loneliness is flooding through modern societies, and we have a serious problem. Recent stats should make us take notice.

In a study conducted online that sampled 55,000 respondents from across the world, one out of every three people of all ages reported that they often feel lonely. Among these, the loneliest group were 16-to-24-year-olds, 40 percent of whom reported feeling lonely “often or very often.” In the U.K., the economic cost of this loneliness—because lonely people are less productive and more prone to employment turnover—is estimated at more than £2.5 billion (about $3.1 billion) annually and helped lead to the establishment of a U.K. Ministry of Loneliness.

Read: Why do we look down on lonely people?

In Japan, 32 percent of adults expected to feel lonely most of the time during 2020. In the United States, a 2019 study suggested that three out of four adults felt moderate to high levels of loneliness. As of this writing, the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic, which separated us from one another on a massive scale and left many feeling more isolated than ever, are still being studied.

Alleviating this epidemic of loneliness is difficult because what makes one person feel lonely might have no effect on someone else. We can’t rely entirely on easily observed indicators such as whether or not one lives alone, because loneliness is a subjective experience. One person might have a significant other and too many friends to count and yet feel lonely, while another person might live alone and have a few close contacts and yet feel very connected. The objective facts of a person’s life are not enough to explain why someone is lonely. Regardless of your race or class or gender, the feeling resides in the difference between the kind of social contact you want and the social contact you actually have.

Black line drawing of two people connected by curly line

I t never hurts —especially if you’ve been feeling low—to take a minute to reflect on how your relationships are faring and what you wish could be different about them. If you’re the scheduling type, you could make it a regular thing; perhaps every year on New Year’s Day or the morning of your birthday, take a few moments to draw up your current social universe, and consider what you’re receiving, what you’re giving, and where you would like to be in another year. You could keep your chart or relationships assessment in a special place, so you know where to look the next time you want to peek at it to see how things have changed.

If nothing else, doing this reminds us of what’s most important. Repeatedly, when the participants in our study reached old age, they would make a point to say that what they treasured most were their relationships. Sterling Ainsley himself made that point. He loved his older sister deeply—but he lost touch with her. Some of his fondest memories were of his friends—whom he never contacted. There was nothing he cared more about than his children—whom he rarely saw. From the outside it might look like he didn’t care. That was not the case. Sterling was quite emotional in his recounting of his most cherished relationships, and his reluctance to answer certain study questions was clearly connected to the pain that keeping his distance had caused him over the years. Sterling never sat down to really think about how he might conduct his relationships or what he might do to properly care for the people he loved most.

Sterling’s life reminds us of the fragility of our connections, and it echoes the lessons of science: Relationships keep us happier and healthier throughout our life spans. We neglect our connections with others at our peril. Investing in our social fitness is possible each day, each week of our lives. Even small investments today in our relationships with others can create long-term ripples of well-being.

This article is adapted from Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz’s new book, The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness .

When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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America's Longest War United States and Vietnam

America's Longest War: United States and Vietnam 1950-1975," by George C. Herring. Specifically, it will discuss three topics from Chapter 6, and then explain each according to what the author writes. It will cite specifics from the chapter and explain them. The Vietnam War is being compared increasingly to the current war with Iraq, and as this chapter clearly shows, there are many reasons for the comparison. President Johnson began fighting an uphill battle as public opinion about the war began to swing against it, just as President Bush is facing growing opposition to the war with Iraq. America's Longest War The President's Decisions." President Johnson, partly on advice from such advisers as Clifford, Westmoreland, and Bunker, decided in late 1967 that new forces should not be sent to South Vietnam, and the country should be more prepared to fight on its own. The author writes, "Johnson's advisers agreed that from…...

mla References Herring, George C. America's Longest War United States and Vietnam 1950-1975. New York: McGraw/Hill, 2001.

Watch Film The Longest Hatred Guiding When

watch film "The Longest Hatred," guiding When discussing the way that anti-Semitism originated, it is crucial to note that this sentiment manifested itself in a number of different realms of life. Specifically, these include religious, political, economic and scientific areas of thought and study. As this list implies, the most prominent of these factors that affected the beginning of the anti-Semitic movement began with religion. It is perhaps one of life's great ironies that Jesus Christ was Jewish. He was crucified by the Romans, who later on -- for political reasons -- embraced Christianity in the coming centuries after the death of Christ. In order to propagate this religion within the Holy Roman Empire and around the world, it was necessary to shift the blame of the crucifixion of Christ away from the Roman Empire that was now promulgating the religion named after him. The most effective way to do…...

America's Longest War

Vietnam Herring, George C. 1996. America's Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950 -- 1975. New York: McGraw-Hill. George C. Herring has laid out a comprehensive history of America's involvement in Vietnam. n addition to describing the events as they unfolded in Vietnam, Herring has provided detailed information of how the military operated and interacted with both presidents and Congress, and how U.S. foreign policy affected events. He also addresses how President Lyndon B. Johnson's management approach to the Vietnam War affected how it was conducted and details about the controversy over the war among the American people. Thus, this book is more than a simple chronological list of events. Woven throughout, Herring shows the reader the larger context within which the war took place. While Johnson is often blamed for the escalation of the war, resulting in a rising tide of anger among Americans against the war, the history of the…...

mla In spite of Johnson's tendency to micro-manage, according to Herring the President did not have a coherent plan and established differing policies for fighting in the North as compared to fighting in South Vietnam. He also looked at incursions into neighboring countries, such as Laos, as separate issues. Herring reports that Johnson was greatly distressed by the growing number of U.S. casualties but did not see a way out of the conflict, and that that Johnson eventually boxed himself into a corner. He tried to defeat the Viet Cong militarily but could not, and did not have enough of a military advantage to force a negotiated settlement. It was left to Richard M. Nixon, elected President in 1968, to eventually end the Vietnam War. The Nixon administration at first believed that if they could support the South Vietnamese government for two years or so, they would be able to defend their country on their own, and was greatly angered by war protesters in the United States. Herring's book makes the events that took place during the Vietnam War understandable by providing a larger historical context as a backdrop. By doing so, he helps the reader make sense of a difficult time in United States history.

Long-Term Financial Planning FedEx Corporation FedEx Corporation

Long-Term Financial Planning FedEx Corporation FedEx Corporation was established in 1971 and the company has four distinct business segments that include FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, FedEx Office and FedEx Freight. Over the years, the company has obtained 6-year of CAG (compounded annual growth of 5%). However, the company is likely to obtain similar CAG of 5.9% over the next 8 years based on current economic environment. (FedEx Corporation .2010. The WACC (weighted average cost of capital) is the average interest rate that a company should pay in order to secure a project. Moreover, WACC is the average rate of return that a company must earn from its current assets to satisfy investors, shareholders and creditors. Since FedEx Corporation is always trying to create value for shareholders, the paper calculates the WACC of the FedEx to evaluate the company ability to generate returns from its assets. Estimation of WACC of the Company The WACC of the…...

mla Reference FedEx Corporation (2010. Annual Report.USA.

Long-Term Relationship You Owner Ceo a Large Business

Long-Term elationship You owner/CEO a large business idea concept phase full production, a short window due robotics machinery department Contract Financing Contract is a form of payment; or rather it is an unauthorized government distribution of funding to a contractor before accepting supply of goods or services offered by the government. Contract financing excludes debit payments, payments for incomplete acceptance or charter or rental payments. This is because payments of invoices on cost style contracts do not qualify as contract financing. Therefore, contract financing primarily applies to fixed price contracts. The primary intention of contract financing is to help the contractor in handling costs incurred during the performance of the contract (DOD, 2012). In addition, provision of this financing covers the amount needed for quick and efficient performance of the contract. The order of preference for contract financing suggests that for every government financing provided the contractor should not acquire private contract financing…...

mla References Department of Defense. (2012). Performance-Based Payments. Retrieved from http://www.acq.osd.mil/dpap/cpic/cp/docs/Performance_Based_Payment_%28PBP%29_Guide.pdf DCAA. (2012). Defense Contract Audit Agency. Retrieved from http://www.dcaa.mil/DCAAM_7641.90.pdf Bubshait, A.A. & Al-Atiq, H.T. (1999). ISO 9000 Quality Standards in Construction. Journal Of Management in Engineering, 41-46.

Long-Term Strategy Patton and the

Instead of trying to build a brand, Pfizer hoped to 'buy into' the next big drug solution, and failed in its Patton-like strategy of focusing on the goal, and trying to leap over the many hurdles in creating its own new drug. In contrast, the athletic shoe store Foot Locker has shown a successful Eisenhower-style approach by focusing on tightening its budget and cutting costs. Although streamlining is not a sexy 'big picture' strategy, by shying away from seeking market domination and taking a conservative strategy, Foot Locker showed a fourth quarter profit, despite a dismal market overall in the apparel industry. "Foot Locker announced another wave of store closures and a revamped management structure that combines the Lady Foot Locker chain with its three other brands. [CEO] Sterne Agee said it was 'essential' for the company to reduce its store base in the U.S. By at least 300 stores…[but]…...

mla References Jannarone, John. (2010, March 3). Big Pharma best skip course in Medivation. The Wall Street Journal Online. Retrieved March 3, 2010 at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703862704575099991122047042.html?mod=WSJ_business_IndustryNews_DHC Kell, John. (2010, March 3). Foot Locker swings to profit. The Wall Street Journal Online. Retrieved March 3, 2010 at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703862704575100010642743540.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews

Long-Term Employee Productivity

Long-Term Employees: Long-Term Employees, Sacred Cows? There are those that believe that long-term employees become sacred cows of an organization. They have staying power not because of what they do but more because of who they know. Does this impact a corporation's bottom line? It can, but not in a positive way. A corporations ultimate success is dependent upon it's ability to hire and retain long-term employees that are great, competent and motivated outside of the function of the task at hand. For a company to lead and excel in any industry it must hire the right kind of people for the job. These people are by nature self-motivated, skilled and naturally inquisitive and hard working. These are the type of employees that ultimately stay with a corporation for a long time. They are the true initiators of change and the individuals most likely to accept and work change to their advantage.…...

mla References: Clarke, G. (October, 2001). "Good Questions, Great Answers." Fast Company, Issue 51, 90. Collins, J. (2001). "Good to great: Why some companies make the leap ... others don't." Harper Collins.

Long-Term V Short-Term Investments Short-Term

Both short-term investments and long-term investments have advantages and disadvantages. One of the main advantages that short-term investments have is their potential for quick growth as they are only expected to last a couple of weeks to a few months. These types of investments allow a company to have more control over their money. On the downside, short-term investments carry a higher risk and have demonstrated a higher rate of fluctuation as compared to long-term investments (Mussi, 2007). An advantage of long-term investments is that they have the ability to "gain small amounts of money over a long period of time. The slow-but-steady pace of long-term investments allow for a much greater degree of stability and a much lower risk than short-term investments (Mussi, 2007). Long-term investments that benefit from this growth and stability include savings and retirement funds as these investments mature over the years. Because these types of investments…...

mla References The ASPIRA Association. (n.d.). Short-Term and Long-Term Investment Options: Facilitators Manual. Retrieved 17 July 2012, from www.aspira.org/files/user/u1/Inv_Fac_M5_V3_FR.pdf CNN Money. (2012). Investing your money basics. Retrieved 17 July 2012, from http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson4/index.htm Long-term investments. (2012). Investopedia. Retrieved 17 July 2012, from http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/longterminvestments.asp#axzz20vK110dQ

Long-Term Memory

Long-Term Memory Memory Demonstration Analysis One of the most unreliable elements of our cognitive processes is the system known as the short-term memory (STM). This is the second memory system, and tries to recall brand new information that is not stored within a more permanent place in our thinking process. The first demonstration that was utilized was the digit span and was meant to test the short-term memory of the taker. This was a test where there were an incremental number of digits flashed on screen for the test taker to remember. The test started at two digits and ended at eight. It is easy to remember the series of digits when there is only a few of them. However, the more digits involved in the demonstration, the harder it was to remember their order. The fact that it was so hard to recall the digits when more were presented shows how…...

mla References MacKay, David J. (2011). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Memory. Inference Group. Web. Retrieved October 22, 2012 from http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/jmb86/memory.pdf

Long-Term Settings and Services

Long-Term Settings The health of the person usually starts declining with every passing day after 65 years of age and as Mrs. Smith is 82 years old, she is also suffering from some problems. She is in mid stage of dementia because of which she suffers from recent memory impairment, hypertension and mental confusion. Due to dementia, she has already been in problems several times. Like, once she left the pan over the stove and also fallen number of times due to syncope. Moreover, she forgets to take her medicines on time. So, she needs an attended that takes care of her medication, diet and exercises and must not be left alone or unattended at home. In an old age, a person is in need of company more than any medication. Healthy routine and happiness is the best treatment for various diseases. However, Mrs. Smith lives alone at home during the day…...

mla Bibliography AHRQ. (n.d.). Choosing Long-term Care. Retrieved from Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality: http://archive.ahrq.gov/consumer/qnt/qntltc.htm Brodaty, H. (1988). 'Minimal brain damage in the Adult II: Early dementia'. Patient Management, August, 127-150. Better Health Channel. (2011). Dementia -- Support Services are available. Retrieved from Better Health Channel: http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Dementia_support_services_are_available-open Shea, D.E. & Reilly, M.S. (1999). An Action Plan for Dementia. Dublin 2: National Council on Ageing and Older People.

Long-Term Effects of a Widespread Disaster

Long-Term Effects of Adverse Nature Long-term Implications of 2004 Indian Ocean Disasters Long-term effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean Disaster 2004 Indian Ocean Disasters Indian Ocean is the third vastest water body in the world wide, casing an average of 68.556 million km2. It is the mass of water body around Africa, Asia, the Southern Ocean and Australia. It has four main accessible waterways, the Suez Canal (Egypt), Bab el Mandeb (along Djibouti and Yemen), the Strait of Hormuz (along Iran and Oman), and the Strait of Malacca (Indonesia and Malaysia) among other minor ones. The ocean has been attributed to many economical advantages ranging from providing a means of transportation, food, recreation and for the extraction of valuable mineral resources. However, the ocean has major confluences with terrific and adverse water disasters such as disasters, tsunamis, aftershocks, earthquakes among others. 2004 Disaster In 2004, the Indian registered the worst disasters ever recorded in history. An…...

mla References Ramalanjaona, G. 2011. Impact of 2004 Tsunami in the Islands of Indian Ocean: Lessons Learned. Emergency Medicine International. Vol 1, Issue 1. Pg 1-3. Daly, P., Feener, M. R and Reid, A.J.S. From the Ground up: Perspectives on Post-Tsunami and Post -- Conflict Aceh. Chicago: Institute of Southeast Asian.

Long-Term Debt 1st Student According to Cleverley

Long-Term Debt 1st Student: According to Cleverley, Song and Cleverley (2011), there are four options for health care organizations for finding long-term debt financing. These four options are tax-exempt revenue bonds, Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured mortgages, public taxable bonds and conventional mortgage financing. Tax-exempt revenue bonds are issued against the facility's revenue and these are a low-cost source of debt financing. FHA-insured mortgages need to be approved, which is a tricky process. The approval allows the hospital to have mortgage insurance that lowers the cost of borrowing for hospitals. Public taxable bonds are a typical corporate bond issued with an investment bank as underwriter to the public markets. Conventional mortgage financing often involves placing the mortgage with an investor, but the drawback is these usually cannot cover entire projects. A health care firm can increase its equity in three ways. The first is through retained earnings, the second from contributions and the third…...

mla References: Cleverley, W., Song, P. & Cleverley, J. (2011). Essentials of Health Care Finance. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishing

Long-Term Productivity in Business Workers and Machinery

Long-Term Productivity in Business orkers and Machinery Productivity is important to every kind of business. This does not mean that every possible bit of work has to be squeezed out of every single worker until they drop into an exhausted heap on the assembly line. Indeed, this would certainly not be productive because having to replace on a continual basis workers who quit from being exhausted - not to mention having to settle disability suits - is hardly the goal of any business. Productivity means getting the most out of one's machines and workers on a long-term basis. Sometimes this means that everyone has to put in overtime. Sometimes this means that people need to spend an afternoon staring out the window and thinking up new ideas. It all depends upon the business involved and the stage of a project that business and that worker is at. Something that every business can benefit…...

mla Works Cited Ackoff, Russell & Patrick Rivett. A Manager's Guide to Operations Research. New York: John Wiley, 1963. Anton, C. And Anton. D. ISO 9000: 2000 Survival Guide. San Francisco: AEM Consulting Group, 2000. Brunsson, N. And Jacobsson, B. A World of Standards. Oxford: Oxford University, 2000. Buffa, Elwood. Operations Management. New York: John Wiley, 1976.

Long-Term Capital Management

Long-Term Capital Management: The Original Enron? Three years before energy industry giant Enron Corp. sought protection from creditors and came under the harsh light of scrutiny for the complex web of off-balance sheet deals that masked the firm's huge debt, a very similar scenario unraveled among some of Wall Street's most celebrated financial players. ut while Enron unsuccessfully sought eleventh-hour aid from the power brokers it has bankrolled in Washington D.C., a "who's who" of global financial institutions stepped up to bail out hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) in September 1998. Not coincidentally, the bankers arguably had more to lose from the impending collapse of LTCM than they faced in the more recent debacle. While they are, of course, very different institutions, the mistakes made by LTCM and Enron are strikingly similar. The near collapse of LTCM ultimately taught bankers around the globe to pay closer attention to the hedge funds…...

mla Bibliography 1. Shirreff, David. "Eve of Destruction," Euromoney, Nov. 1999, http://www.euromoney.com/public/markets/risk/em.98.11.1.html 2. Warde, Ibrahim. "Crony Capitalism: LTCM, a Hedge Fund Above Suspicion," LeMonde Diplomatique, Nov. 1998 3, 10. Koller, Joe. "LTCM Speaks," Derivatives Strategy, April 1999. http://www.derivativesstrategy.com/magazine/archive/1999/0499fea1.asp 4. ibid.

Long-Term Effects of Bullying the Issue of

Long-Term Effects of Bullying The issue of bullying has garnered increasing publicity in the media, as it is more widely acknowledged to be a serious problem and is not just a matter of 'boys being boys' or 'girls being girls.' A number of shocking cases of students who committed suicide as a result of being bullied motivated President Barak Obama to create a federal task force on the subject which cumulated in the first National Bullying Summit in August 2010. The purpose of the summit was to gather information to understand how to prevent bullying; to find better ways to intervene when it is taking place; and help students recover from the emotional damage caused by bullying. Current existing research suggests that victims of bullying are more apt to suffer from depression and social isolation (Farrington, Loeber, Stallings, & Ttofi, 2011; Klomek, Marrocco, Kleinman, Schonfeld, & Gould, 200; Nansel et al., 2001;…...

mla 72% of college students self-identified as the targets of bullying during their K-12 years (Chapell, Hasselman, Kitchin, Lomon, MacIver, & Sarulla 2006). College health clinicians must be aware of long-term effects of bullying to be able to anticipate any mental health issues which arise during the transition of adolescents from high school to college (Jantzer, Hoover, & Narloch 2006). The current study will contribute to the existing literature on the phenomenon by specifically focusing on the long-term aftereffects of bullying on young adults. Social and psychological disturbances that manifest themselves during the college years and afterward must be fully comprehended by clinicians and researchers to better design both remedies and treatments (Ireland & Power, 2004; Schafer et al., 2004; Duffy & Nesdale, 2009). Summary Curtailing bullying and remedying its aftereffects remains an issue for schools and workplaces (O'Connell, Calvert, & Watson 2007). Bullying not a discrete problem: its can continue to haunt the victims many years later (Losel et al. 2012). Bullied college students may be inhibited in their professional and personal aspirations as a result of the psychological trauma of bullying and this victimization can continue to affect them later in life (Kshirsager, et al. 2007). This study will specifically explore freshman college students' perceptions of the long-term effects of bullying and perceptions of the severity of bullying, stratifying the opinions by gender and ethnicity. It will also seek to determine the aftereffects of being a bully and if this leads to dating or marital violence or a greater likelihood of participating in workplace harassment (Currie & Spatz Widom 2010; Farrington, Trofi & Losel 2011).

Foreign Characteristics in Abraham Cahans \"A Sweat-Shop Romance\"?

What survival of the fittest mean in reference to natural selection, can you provide a detailed outline of the cell cycle phases in mitosis.

Cell Cycle Phases in Mitosis Overview Mitosis is a type of cell division that results in two identical daughter cells, each with the same number of chromosomes as the parent cell. Mitosis is divided into four distinct phases: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Prophase Prophase is the longest and most complex phase of mitosis. The chromatin condenses into visible chromosomes. The nuclear envelope breaks down. The spindle apparatus forms, consisting of microtubules that extend from the centrosomes to the chromosomes. The centrosomes move to opposite poles of the cell. Metaphase Metaphase is the shortest phase of mitosis. The chromosomes line up at the equator....

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This 1,288-Word Run-On Sentence by William Faulkner Broke Records
The current record holder for the longest english sentence is Jonathan Coe for his staggering 33-page, 13,955-word sentence in The Rotter's Club, 2001. Though the record has been broken, Faulkner's legacy lives on. William Faulkner was featured in 1983 Guinness Book of World Records for this 1,288-word sentence from Absalom, Absalom!
When William Faulkner Set the World Record for Writing the Longest
It is the extraordinary sensory quality of his prose that enabled Faulkner to get away with writing the longest sentence in literature, at least according to the 1983 Guinness Book of World Records, a passage from Absalom, Absalom! consisting of 1,288 words and who knows how many different kinds of ...
Longest Text Ever
Last updated on July 13th, 2024. Knockton's Potato LTE - 581,778 characters, started on June 2nd - 2022, active. Holds the record for being the longest on this list. The Pink-ish Pickle LTE - 283,502 characters, started on February 13th - 2020, active. Mckenzie's LTE - 282,993 characters, started on March 4th - 2020, active.
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The Longest Essay Ever: 'Search for a Method' by Jean-Paul Sartre • The Longest Essay Ever • Discover the epic 'Search for a Method' by Jean-Paul Sartre, a 7...
The World's Longest Sentence (5237 words)
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Advanced Length Essays. The Extended Essay: Predominantly assigned during bachelor's degrees, these types of essays usually fall under 1,500, 3,000, and 5,000 words. The Dissertation: The final project of both bachelor's and master's degrees usually caps around 10,000 or 15,000 words. The Thesis: The most extensive and complex type of ...
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Verse by the Yard
Essay Verse by the Yard. The longest poem in the world will be written by horny robots. BY Izzy Grinspan. Originally Published: April 17, 2008. ... Most of the world's longest poems are epics, written collaboratively over long periods of time by many, many people. This is, of course, a description that could apply to the Benrik poem, albeit ...
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Longest Paper Ever. Decent Essays. 3186 Words. 13 Pages. Open Document. Mlomeister has given me a link to this site. One day I am not going to get so angry at these types of things. It's a fact of life and an age-old issue, one that is almost pointless to fight and refute because it is an incredibly emotional topic and requires a lot time and ...
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Revised on June 1, 2023. Most college application portals specify a word count range for your essay, and you should stay within 10% of the upper limit. If no word count is specified, we advise keeping your essay between 400 and 600 words. You should aim to stay under the specified limit to show you can follow directions and write concisely.
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Kelidar. Length: 950,000 words. Author: Mahmoud Dowlatabadi. Year Published: 1984. Original Language: Persian. Source: wikimedia.org. The novel Kelidar is so long that it had to be divided into 10 books! The story is set in Iran from 1946 to 1949 and clearly depicts the local tensions that lingered following World War II.
What's the Longest Word in the World? Here are 12 of Them
11. and 12. Euouae and Psst. Euouae and psst are the longest words comprised entirely of either vowels or consonants appearing in a major dictionary. Euouae, a medieval musical term, is ...
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They should not write essays significantly below the maximum word count. August 7, 2024. University of Pennsylvania Supplemental Essay Prompts: 2024-2025. The University of Pennsylvania has released its essay prompts for the 2024-2025 college admissions cycle. Check out the school's many essays!
What the Longest Study on Human Happiness Found Is the Key to a Good
Fifty-eight out of 10,585 days. Of course, this is assuming a lot of good fortune, and the real number is almost certainly going to be lower. Since 1938, the Harvard Study of Adult Development has ...
Essays · Best of 2021
Dancing Through New York in a Summer of Joy and Grief. "Part of the joy of social dancing, especially out in a broader public beyond the family home, is that we will never be able to identify all the faces that spin by, the hands that nudge our backs to pass.". Carina del Valle Schorske New York Times Magazine.
Longest Essays: Examples, Topics, & Outlines
View our collection of longest essays. Find inspiration for topics, titles, outlines, & craft impactful longest papers. Read our longest papers today! ... effects of the 2004 Indian Ocean Disaster 2004 Indian Ocean Disasters Indian Ocean is the third vastest water body in the world wide, casing an average of 68.556 million km2. It is the mass ...