How Long Should an Essay Entry Be?

There's no standard length, so pick a limit that suits your prompt and your judges. If you're unsure, we'd start at 500 words, long enough for an argument and short enough to read 100 of in an afternoon. Do the sum before you launch: 200 entries at 1,000 words each is 200,000 words to read.

A shorter limit suits younger entrants and answers typed on a phone. A longer one suits a scholarship or a story prompt, where you want depth. (We don't have Gleam data on which length gets more entries, so we won't guess at one.)

To enforce your limit in Gleam:

1. On the How to Enter tab, add an Answer a Question action with your prompt.
2. Switch on Validate Answers and set a Max word count.
3. Under Advanced, switch on Mandatory so nobody enters without an essay.
4. Put the limit and the deadline in the action's Instructions and in your terms.

Want a formatted file instead? An Upload action takes documents, with Allowed Upload Types and a File size (MB) limit. It doesn't count words, so state the limit in your instructions and check it when you judge.