Quality Over Quantity: Why Chasing a Word Count in Your Dissertation Literature Review is a Mistake

Dissertation students often become obsessed with word counts, especially when it comes to their literature reviews.

They constantly compare their progress to that of their peers and feel the need to write as many words as possible.

However, this habit of trying to write as much as possible can seriously damage your literature review and put your entire dissertation at risk.

Firstly, it's important to understand that the number of words written is not an indicator of progress. Anyone can write thousands of words of nonsense, and it won't matter if it doesn't meet the criteria used to assess the dissertation.

What matters is the quality of the work, not the quantity.

The examiner doesn't care how many words you wrote, when you wrote them, or that you were ‘ahead’ of everyone else in the Word Count Olympics.

They care that what was submitted meets their criteria for assessment.

Therefore, the focus should be on quality over volume.

Quality over volume.

By prioritizing quality, you will ultimately produce better work than if you are solely focused on writing as many words as possible.

The quality of your work will help you write concisely and effectively.

When it comes to word count, you will naturally reach the required length by focusing on quality first and foremost.

To achieve quality, focus on developing a well-structured outline.

This means creating headings and bullet point summaries of relevant academic literature that deals with a particular issue or idea underneath that heading.

By creating an outline literature review to work from, you incude all the relevant information without getting bogged down in unnecessary details.

To start creating an outline literature review, go back to your dissertation title or question and identify three main headings that relate to your research.

For example, if the dissertation title is "Experiences of imposter syndrome among trainee solicitors in the top five London city law firms," the main headings could be "Imposter Syndrome," "Trainee Solicitors," and "Top Five London City Law Firms."

From there, build your bullet-points by searching for relevant academic literature, critically reviewing it and developing summary points underneath each heading.

Do not start writing up your literature review in full yet.

Don’t do it!

Here’s why…

It would be a waste of time.

The literature review is likely to change and evolve over time as you gain more knowledge about the topic.

You will have to revisit and revise it multiple times.

If you have a big. bulky, written up literature review, that will be difficult to make changes to - whether that’s taking things out, putting things in or moving things around. When you have concise, snappy bullet points, it’s way easier to work with!

There is no point in writing it up until you’ve collected and analysed your data.

So, tempting as it is, resist the urge!

In conclusion, chasing a word count is a dangerous game to play when writing a dissertation literature review. Instead, focus on quality over volume and ignore your peers when they try to word-count shame you. Yes, they may have more words than you right now, but I can pretty much guarantee that those words are nowhere near the quality that yours will be once you’re done!

Next steps

Have you already got a few thousand words written, but the structure is all over the place!

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