The present disclosure includes systems and methods for supporting polar codewords with variable polar codeword lengths. Variable codeword length codewords are communicated using an n-bit encoder/n-bit decoder having n inputs and n corresponding outputs. Each input and each corresponding output is associated with a bit index. A set of bit indices to be shortened are selected. The encoder encodes n input bits to obtain n output bits. Each output bit that is associated with a bit index from the set of bit indices to be shortened is ignored. A codeword is generated from all of the remaining output bits.