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what happens if you go over a word limit?

hello (:
I'm currently just finishing writing the final draft of the first part of my AS AQA English Lit B coursework...it's an essay on Amadeus by Schaffer.
anyway, my teacher told me the word limit was 1500, but that you could go 10% over, so that the total maximum was 1650. I checked on the spec. and it says 1200-1500.
my first draft of this essay was somewhere around the 2400 word mark, which I know is way too long, but I've always been the sort of person that has written too much! Anyway, now (with help from my teacher and a lot of ruthless chopping on my part) I am down to 1730 ish, which is still 80 words longer than the maximum.
so what do I do? do I risk it, hope that it doesn't get sent away for moderation and just leave it as it is? What would happen if I got caught having an essay that was too long?
do I take what I have to my English teacher and ask her to help me cut out the last little bit (I've gone through it just now and I can't find any to cut off myself!!)? the deadline is tomorrow, but my English teacher is understanding, haha.

thank you for reading this, I'm really unsure what to do! It's the first bit of AS coursework I've done, so I'm worried!

Reply 1

harlar

Try to trim it a little more - even just taking out auxiliary words or unnecessary parentheses. However, if you're like me and you can never, ever see anything else to chop, why not get a fresh pair of eyes? They'll be able to read it themselves and omit anything that isn't essential. Good luck.