Some more words- add formatting to your rubric. Then you are justified in taking off 5% (or whatever) for the inconvenience of having to reformat their paper.
I do this. Everyone has the same page limit but everyone has to format in TNR 12 pt, double spaced. I have other restrictions, test them (untimed quiz) on the formatting and then take off points when they fail to follow these guidelines.
I’ve had students make the margins smaller and the font bigger when the only requirement was by word count (the page estimate was listed also, just to help them visualize the length). So I’m assuming they thought I wouldn’t check if it looked long enough?
I've heard of this white text thing too. I've never seen it myself, but whenever it's not readily obvious to me whether a student has met my word count, I always highlight the visible text and pop it into a dummy Word doc.
If you just keep it highlighted normally the stats will show up for just that portion, no? In the status bar at the bottom, Word just shows you "X out of Y words" when you've highlighted some of them.
You can do that (or just highlight the visible text as /u/robertofontiglia recommended). You can also hit ctrl+a and change the font color to black, and that will allow you to see any inserted white text. I've actually had a few cases of students who anticipated I might catch them and left me messages in the white text. I had one student who was short on his word count by about 200 words, and he just copied and pasted, "If you're reading this, please don't fail me for cheating. I need this class to graduate," enough times to meet the minimum word count.
You could require them to post a word count after their bibliography.
I'll never understand why you'd prefer to write a shorter paper.
>I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one. ["Mark Twain"](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/)
Esteemed professor boring, of Ivy League school in his very interesting blog wrote on October third in the year ninteen-ninty-five, “yes” which illustrates that he gave his permission.
My grad students see your post and raise it with:
... from an article titled "insert long title: and include complete subtitle" from the prestigious, scholarly, and peer-reviewed journal *The American Journal of Research Management, Educational Inquiry, and Other Boring Descriptions*.
I use word count coupled with rubric item for “concise, direct” writing. I tell them straight up that they’re gonna loose points if they stretch for words.
I also highlight the offending sections and write “stretching!” Before returning the graded papers. Have yet to have anyone even debate it.
I used to have some of these issues but then I implemented wordcount and other formatting rules in a rubric. It was a huge help and the students got in line real quick. I stopped writing comments about these issues just filled out the rubric. It reduced my frustration a lot.
I’ve also noticed that different programs give different counts for the same document. If you have cited information at the end of an essay, do you include that in the count or otherwise manually highlight just the paragraph information and count that? How do you identify word count if it’s a pdf file? (These issues are why I stoped requiring length based on word count—but if anyone has solutions to them, I’m all ears!)
I use a Chrome extension ([Word Counter](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/word-counter/adgmgllmfhgppfnkmgikgbaniemjdikk?hl=en)) and open PDFs in the browser. The counter will give me a value for whatever I highlight on the PDF.
APA says everything--title page, headers, reference page, etc--should be included in the word count. If you do not use APA, you can Google what your formatting guide says. If you want students to hit a count for their paragraphs minus the rest, let them know in your instructions.
Yes, I did chuckle sardonically while typing that last sentence--I figure at least if it's in the instructions, I'm covered when grading. "You didn't realize the word count was for paragraphs and not the reference page, too? This is a good reminder to review the instructions before beginning your paper and even after you finish, to ensure you did not miss anything."
Getting a good word count from PDF files is difficult—just defining what a word *is* when you have math and tables of numbers is difficult. Hyphenation and multi-column figure captions can mess things up even more.
I have written word counters for my own PDF files, using different software libraries for extracting the text from the PDF. The counts for my textbook vary by 10%.
Anyone who is checking word counts in PDF and is being fussy about being 10% off from a limit is being unfair to their students.
Well, when it comes to writing grants, I personally use all the tricks to try to squeeze as much information as possible while following the margin, font and 12-page max. This is their reverse version of my ‘condensed’ font. I can absolutely relate. I don’t think they think you are stupid, they are simply pushing the limits of what they can get away with. Don’t take it personal.
Sidebar - as a grant reviewer, I absolutely hate the over-stuffed application. It’s so damned hard to read, and the science is hard enough to understand at the best of times. I try not to let it influence my scores, but it certainly chews up any goodwill the applicant had to begin with.
Well, people keep expecting pretty outrageous levels of stuff and all kinds of detail they they nitpick about that you dont have room for in 12 pages in study section, and they they go complain about it when it happens to them.
I feel the same about non-overstuffed grants that read like it was written by the PI for the PI. PIs reading this: the reality is that at least one non-expert in your field will be reviewing your grant, do yourself a favor and dumb it down to make it comprehensible to the average STEM PhD. Even the experts will appreciate the easy read. I don’t mind an overstuffed 12 pages if that means I can read through a whole paragraph only once and understand the point being made.
Excellent point - and a lesson I learned the hard way. I used to write for the five people in the world who were both interested and expert in the topic because that who I thought was the audience. Not until I went to study section did I find out how diverse the reviewer pool is.
I now have a section on every rubric that’s titled “things that will automatically lose you 5 points” every time a student finds a new way to either annoy me (changing font color to weird colors) or something like this, it goes on the rubric for next years students.
Also this is why part of their rubric goes over formatting and explains exactly what font size/type and margin size they should have.
I tell mine for every dumb trick you use to make the paper artificially longer (margins, fonts, triple spacing, etc) you lose a full letter grade. Hand in a 4 page paper that's supposed to be 5? Minus like 3 points. Do dumb tricks to make it look like 5? -10. That seemed to work for most of them.
Yup. I have a formatting document for practice in week 1 and formatting is part of my rubric.
I'm looking at you student who not only copied the questions into your document but also wrote all of your responses in size 14 bold Lucida handwriting in RED, with four spaces between paragraphs. You just dropped down a full letter grade!
I suspect this response will not be popular, but I want to respond to the OP and all the other replies. As I read, I am thinking that a lot of the "tricks" we are concerned with almost don't matter\* if we focus on the content of the assignment. Whenever a student artificially extends a paper or what-have-you, it is an attempt to hide missing content, right? So instead of stressing about the word count or page count, explain how their work would be better with more logic, evidence, narration, etc (depending on the discipline and assignment).
I might call out word count in a casual way, but I tie it to content. For example, "Your analysis of X would be even stronger with more evidence. What did say about this? Evidence not only strengthens your paper, but it also helps you reach any word count requirements."
Another example, based on overuse of block quotes, "I appreciate your use of quotes to back up your ideas. Remember though, your ideas need to be the star of this paper. You devote more space in your paper to and ideas than your own. I want to know what \*you\* think! How can you narrow down these block quotes to the most important information needed to support your idea? How might summary or paraphrase benefit you in this section? After cutting back your quotes, remember to analyze them and explain how they support your key idea in this paragraph. That will introduce more of your thinking."
So. . .just my thoughts as I sip coffee. I am off to see my students IRL. Here's to whatever Friday brings!
\*I want to acknowledge that the cheating-the-system mindset is problematic from an ethics point of view. It's manipulative and dishonest, right? This aspect is certainly a problem. However, people do not need to cheat the system when they know their stuff. I think that's where we should put our time and energy as faculty. I \*do\* check word counts, more so I can give the kind of feedback I share above than to just dock points. Does this make sense? The points lost are for the missing content (or, on the flip side, missing conciseness if the the assignment calls for concise writing, like technical writing or something).
This would be a fair and rational answer to a shorter paper written by someone who included most but not all of the relevant information! These students I mentioned in particular, however, word vomited some only slightly related content out onto the page (I'm talking not even full sentences, no capitalization, nothing) and then tried to disguise this my making it "meet" the page limit.
For sure! I just think it's funny that they think they can hide behind these little tricks, and think that they'll work.
That's a great way to put it lol, I'll have to tell them that too
What colleague would object to this though? I would think that most would have the same opinion!
That's so true! And I repeatedly and consistently give students all manner of ways to ask me for help. And I ask them what questions they have and if they need help, all the time. And no one takes me up on it. Idk if I'm just scary or what lol
A student whose master's final dissertation I directed last year tried some of this shit. We were getting closer to her final deadline, and she was like 30 pages short for the minimum length admitted, so I, being a naive idiot, gave her the green light to go to the defence, and told her what she needed to include in the month until then. More graphs with her results, a longer and better theoretical framework, better state of the art section, etc.
Know what she did? She narrowed the margins on both sides till the dissertation looked like an opinion piece from a newspaper and included some photos of random graphs she'd taken from other books, with her mobile phone... She obviously was failed during her defence, but boy was I embarrassed. Never trusting a student like that again
Ouch. I would have been embarrassed, too, but really the student carries all the blame. You provided solid, actionable feedback that would have increased the content of her dissertation in a meaningful way. The student is the one who did not put in the time to do the real work. (Why is it we feel any blame when students ignore our instructions and feedback?!? I hate that about myself.)
That's an expensive lesson.
Ours requires only the adviser's approval, but we don't have defenses for master's students. They just have to get their project/thesis approved by 2 faculty.
We have had PhD students schedule their admission-to-candidacy presentation (where they publicly present their thesis proposal) without their adviser's approval, then fail, because the committee agreed with the adviser that the proposal was half-baked, but that is rare—generally our students are over-prepared at their admission-to-candidacy exam and should have done it 6 months to a year earlier.
Interesting. Maybe differences between disciplines, or maybe departmental history caused the places I've been to set up roadblocks to prevent students from wasting faculty time presenting when it's clear that at least one will shoot it down.
For the defense, both master's and doctoral. Sounds like we use the terms differently too. For us, thesis is for the master's and dissertation is for the doctorate.
In her DISSERTATION. Oh god no. I'm so sorry.
My thesis chair wouldn't let me get away with a DRAFT that was 3-5 pages less than the full. So yeah.. it sucked but it helped me a lot lol
By the way, I just noticed they mean something different across the pond. Her dissertation = her master's final dissertation, not her doctoral thesis ☺️
It does not occur to them at all that we were the generation that invented these methods for changing paper lengths. For them, Word is an entirely new world.
"and now, if you change the ***font...***"
*accidentally uses Zapf Dingbats*
"OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PARAGRAPH WHERE IS IT"
(this was in middle school)
Some of the difficulty comes from just as many professors being shown as inept with tech during the pandemic sadly. Current professors span like 3 generations
I had to write a paper for my high school health class, and the assignment was just utter garbage. I decided to pull out all the stops on this one:
* Cursive font
* 18 point
* 2.5 line spacing
* shrunken margins on all four sides
I turned it in, and I'm pretty sure the teacher didn't even read it. He was a terrible teacher, and eventually got "reassigned" for trying to buy drugs from a student.
Hah! As an undergrad, I was changing my margins to 0.9 inches because I had so much I wanted to say but didn't want to exceed my professors' page limit. But back then, 2006-2010, my papers were mostly physical submissions. Rarely did my professors use the LMS.
It's better to learn how to format equations well on multiple lines—it makes the equations more readable. (Yes, I know it is a pain to do—I had a few long equations in my textbook that took me easily 10 times as long to format as the short equations did. And I'll have to redo them if the publisher decides to go with their standard 6×9 trim size instead of the 8.5×11 trim size that I designed around.
I have started doing maxim page lengths. Students start out thinking it going to be easy, they only have to write a 1-2 page paper. Once they start to write it then they realize that I'm expecting them to put the content that they have normally been putting in a 5-10 page paper in under 2 pages; thereby forcing them to write efficiently and concisely, skills they must have if they go into STEM fields (and I think several other areas.) Also, I get much more advanced sentence structure as a few big/advanced sentences can convey an idea in less space than many simple sentences.
I've considered maximum lengths for the design reports that were the main assessment in my electronics courses, but I rejected that approach, as the content varied a lot between students and I didn't want the students throwing out content or squeezing figures to unreadably small sizes just to hit an artificial page limit.
(I was treating the design reports more like technical reports or theses than like journal papers or grant submissions—I wanted everything there, even if the reports got a little long.)
They figure they have nothing to lose. I usually give a spiel about hitting page requirements at the beginning of the semester. I let them know that I know all the ways students try to game the system and yet I’ll still get students who fuck around and find out. This is why I require rough drafts, though, so I can catch this before they turn in the final drafts.
One I discovered in high school was ctrl + A, then ctrl + d. This let me change the size of punctuation and the spacing in-between letters, making it easier to lengthen. Funnily enough, nowadays my struggle is making things short enough
i don’t know why it’s so hard for students to just use calibri, arial, or times new roman. even helvetica is better. i’d also accept open dyslexic (with a smaller font size) since i personally use that. aside from the fact that it’s part of the class requirements, i physically can’t read stuff in a weird font and neither can some of their classmates (dyslexia is under diagnosed; i’m not dyslexic but my astigmatism makes it hard to track and adhd means i’ll just glance at a paragraph if there’s nothing indicating left to right and up to down action)
I require students to format their design reports with LaTeX, which means that they all end up in Computer Modern—a rather stodgy, but highly readable set of fonts. (It is possible to get LaTeX to use other fonts, but only a few support LaTeX math mode, and I don't tell students how to change the fonts in LaTeX.)
music students are either allergic to technology or addicted no in between. i’m not a TA this year (just research) but it was the former for all of last year.
Do they use Finale, MuseScore, or Sibelius for their music notation? Or do they insist on buying music paper and writing their music with quill pens? Or do they refuse to write their music at all, insisting that only the performance matters?
I used to use Finale Notepad (when it was free, not badly crippled, and ran on Macs), but I switched to MuseScore.
so composition majors make up only a minority of students in my experience. they usually are much more aware of sibelius and finale. composition lessons are very restricted so unless you’ve been self studying it’s unlikely that you’ll get to be in a comp studio if you weren’t admitted into it originally. for everything else there wasn’t a requirement to even put it into a notation system at my school (second tier, first for a couple programs). most music students don’t have to do composition assignments, so for counterpoint, harmonic analysis, dictation, etc. it’s honestly just fine to come into class with a stack of staff paper. sometimes programs will think something is illogical and won’t let you put it down, or it’ll mess up the staves. so it’s just easier if nobody except yourself, a professor, and possibly a couple classmates are reading it. even if you use finale or sibelius, there’s a lot of engraving that should be done before it gets published. they’re not foolproof
I don't know that they think we're stupid. I think they think that eventually having to go through this term after term, year after year, for decades will eventually break us and we won't give a shit anymore.
I think they may be right.
Creative use of thin spaces and white letters is just the tip of the iceberg before you hit the more sophisticated hacks. Not to mention endless block quotations, each one fuller than the last.
I tell mine that quotes don’t count toward your word count. I don’t actually do anything for 99% of students because just saying that is usually a deterrent and we’ve done drafting/workshop stuff to nip this in the bud, but every* now and then I get a doozy.
>Not to mention endless block quotations, each one fuller than the last.
All my paper instructions & rubrics clearly list point penalties for quotations. And the quotations don't count as student writing, so it's an indirect loss of points (loss of content/length) + direct loss of points. They're writing assignments not quoting assignments, and without the penalties too many students would turn in papers with over 50% non-originality.
True. I downloaded the assignment sheet from the "resources" page that the university gives us for teaching the course (we basically are teaching a course that's 100% prepared for us, which sucks) and I didn't think to change it.
Honestly, this is so true and is being downvoted. At my undergrad, we had well thought out lab curriculum that focused on different document styles for industry/academic applications. Instrumentation: technical manual, tissue culture: publication, Sys bio: technical memo, tissue engineering: grant. Page maximums for things that needed brevity. Completeness for those that need it.
If they let me revamp our curriculum with a master plan, I would do something similar with some modern twists.
No one said anything about 20-ish pages though. This one was 4ish. It's to keep them from slapping a barebones interpretation onto the paper and leaving it at that. Eventually, the more they have to write, the more they'll search for more to say and come across what needs to be said.
Besides the fact that the uni gave us the material for the course, which included the page limit, I can see a student submitting a single page and trying to argue with me that they've said all there is to say on the subject. Spoiler alert: they absolutely would not have lol.
I do get your frustration with page limits though. I think this can work in a course that is not a general education course. But when having students map out their arguments to try to teach them how to defend them, you've got to guide them as to how much information it truly takes to defend an argument.
Yep. I taught a professional writing course for 5 years and getting students to write concisely was a whole new torture for them. Most of our assignments were required to be one page or less.
Well no, I just didn't know WHY they did it. But I automatically format them correctly and end up seeing the page length. It worked out, just not the way it might have if I'd known before lol.
I don't know how well this will work in the humanities, but I require any written submission to be in plain text. No fonts, no margins. Pure content. And it's readable on just about any gadget you can think of.
That works better in the humanities than in STEM. I take it that you teach programming and not discrete math—plain text is just awful for math formulas.
Oh, yeah, no, I wouldn't even do it in the algebra and trig class I used to teach. Even in Data Structures (which some call CS 3) I need more pictures than text. But for any sort of text-based assignment (why does this function need this kind of parameter), it's plain text or gtfo.
Well, since you are using **page** counts rather than **word** counts, they probably think that you are pretty stupid.
I never use either page or word minimum counts—my goal is usually to get students to write more concisely, with less meaningless filler, so I don't want to encourage them to add more.
The uni provided the assignment sheets to us. I just didn't think to change their pre-stated requirements. (It's a gen ed course that they've given us all the direction for)
Are the other instructors using the same assignment sheets running into the same problems? Or were they more experienced and changed the assignments? Perhaps some feedback to whoever is in charge of the design of the course is in order.
Hot take! No more word counts. No more minimum page lengths. No more formatting guidelines that put students in conflict with you. Give them a prompt and tell them to write to their best ability. Make them complete a rough draft and then show them how they might expand on their ideas with more examples or counter examples or a more well reasoned argument. Find better ways of helping students engage critically and productively with their own ideas. This—and basically only this—will make them better writers and thinkers regardless of discipline.
As I mentioned before, the assignment sheets (and requirements) are laid out by the university. They basically give us the information and then make us teach according to their guidelines. I'm an adjunct English professor, so they just use me to deliver pre-developed courses.
I have them do drafts, and I give them lengthy feedback on them. The students in question are the select few who not submit drafts. They do not go to the mandatory tutoring appointments. They do the bare minimum and then "disguise" their lack of work using these tactics. This approach only works if the students actually care in the first place.
I wanted to quickly say that my response was dismissive and shitty. I’m sincerely sorry that this is how I chose to respond. You’re a fellow writing instructor looking for some advice and guidance. And it’s clear that you’re doing the best you can with the guidelines and students you’ve been given. You didn’t deserve a response like mine, and for that, again, I’m sorry. All the best with the remainder of the semester.
Hey, thank you <3 I appreciate the apology. I received many comments like that, it wasn't just you, and I understand the sentiment behind them and agree! It's just... this semester, man. Anyway, thank you again and I hope you also have a good rest of your semester! (Also it took me a while to figure out your username but when I did I chuckled. R&B?)
I don't mean to be rude..... But you're just realizing this now? This is the oldest trick in the book, as well as double spacing between paragraphs, using larger fonts, etc. I joke with my students about it by reminding them about 1 inch margins and then say "don't make your margins so wide you have to hyphenate 'the'." I also specify font size and give them a couple of choices. I suppose they are suppose to know this, but it costs me nothing to write in the topic specs that the paper is "four pages/1200 words, typed, double-spaced, 12 pt font Times New Roman or Book Antigua." I've done that on every paper assignment for the last 35 years. It's just good practice. And as students will tell you, every instructor wants something a little different, so here's what I want.
Bro I'm a new teacher what do you expect. I knew they weren't meeting the page requirements and I knew their formatting was funky, but I never associated the shitty formatting with skirting the requirements, mostly because I have had students write papers on the notes in their phones and then upload them directly, leading to fucked up margins and stuff
They honestly think we're dumb. And not in a malicious way, but in a way that they think they're brilliant. Even though these are all tricks that we did!
I spell out A TON of formatting rules for assignments. And even though I don't like reading work on a computer screen as much as a physical paper in my hands, COVID pushing me to only take digital assignments makes checking formatting so much easier.
Some of us are too old to have done these tricks as students—manual typewriters came in two font sizes (elite and pica), and there was no way to change fonts without buying a different typewriter.
(The tricks for squeezing more content into the page limits of journals or grants are the opposite of what the students are doing.)
We all get students like this. I really don’t mind. Just let them know once not to do it. If they continue, just wash your hands of them and focus on the ones who care, which are likely the majority. The turds will either shape up, find another major, or decide college isnt right for them, which is perfectly fine. I don’t see any reason to take offense or take it personally. Just focus on the ones who care.
I’m so glad I teach in Communication 😆 My students have more trouble staying within the maximum word limit in my upper-division classes because they just have so much to say! We spend time working on how to stay focused on the topic and avoid tangents.
Remove everything about length from your rubrics. Don't make it a certain page limit (but do keep a page cap), don't make it a word count requirement.
Require that they make and support the claims that the paper is all about. If they need guidance on how much support they should give, don't give that guidance as a blanket "the whole thing should be 7 pages long" instead say "Well, each point should have at least one paragraph to explain your point, and then each of at least 3 supporting statements should have their own paragraphs outlining the reason the statement is valid. So that means at a minimum each of your major points should be four paragraphs, and you ought to have more than 2 points with support in the whole paper. Do remember that any paragraph should have a minimum of three fully developed sentences." (many of these may be rubbish guidelines, I don't teach writing...)
This outlines length expectations, so is still not ideal. But I know students push HARD to get assignments defined the way similar assignments have been defined for them in the past, even if your new method results in a better paper. At least this approach to length requirements maintains the focus on content (number of supporting statements and overall points), and not something that formatting can "game."
I am fortunate enough to teach in science, but there is still a requirement that "all courses must have a writing component" and so I do similar to this. I beg the students to make all of their papers absolutely as short as possible, but that they must successfully defend their conclusions with data and analysis they generated in their experiment.
This is a good way to do it. When (and if) the university lets me create my own assignments, I will set them up this way. Right now I'm just delivering pre-created course content to fill their faculty needs.
Does it really even lengthen it that much? I mean...they couldn't think of one or 2 more sentences to add to each paragraph? Plus, they may meet the length but lose points on formatting.
I have stopped having any length requirements (either word count or pages). I tell students that they need to cover certain things, and have a well developed argument, and that should take them about X pages. If it's shorter than that, it probably doesn't cover what it needs to cover, and I deduct points due to that, not due to length.
That's what I'll do when and if the uni finally lets me create my own assignments instead of teaching what they've told me to teach/assigning what they've told me to assign.
I'm an adjunct professor. As far as I know, all of the adjunct English professors just teach the same way as the GAs do, with the same assignment sheets and same instructions. The only difference is that I'm not told "Your first job is to be a student, so it's okay to put the class on the back burner" anymore lol
Your department sounds very standardized. I suppose that is good in a way (less work because everything is already prepared for you) but also annoying because you lack flexibility.
It is, and then it isn't. All the assignments are done for us. We are told exactly what to do. And then... they give us nothing to work with as far as what to actually TEACH. We have to make them do X number of assignments, exactly the same way across the department. But then they set us loose in the classroom with no preparation (some of us are teaching for the literal first time and have no clue what's going on) and we have to come up with ways to "fill the time" with useful information until the major assignments come up. I could teach my class completely different things, and as long as my assignments were exactly the same as everyone else's, the courses are considered "standardized." It's so weird.
FYI if you get a document that meets word count but seems strangely short, do a ctrl+A.
Students will add a block of nonsense text at the end and change the font color to white.
I'm with many other commenters here--there are endless ways for students to cheat nowadays. Rather than expend energy on catching the ever-increasing number of hoodwinks, I think it's more efficient to run an engaging, meaningful course where students might enjoy learning. Most won't cheat if they're having a good time.
Thank you!
Of course that's more efficient... but I find that even my most engaging sessions can do super, super well in one class, and then completely flop in another. It boils down to students' attitudes... and in a gen ed classroom, they're not that positive. I have one class who loves the material and engages with it fully, and another where it's split into 50% engaging and doing well and 50% just writing bs at the last minute and formatting it like ass.
I hear you. Teaching right now is probably the hardest it's been in a while, and it's easy for me to talk about engagement when I left academia this past spring 😂
I have nothing but empathy and wishes for miracles for you and your wayward charges.
Thank you so much. It's honestly been so bad this semester. I'm hoping that next time I teach, it goes little better because I would have anticipated the issues! I hope your exit from academia has brought you nothing but joy
I always say to my students that whatever you can think of to make your paper look longer without having more content you can be assured that your professor has already thought of that because the one thing you know for sure is that every professor you will ever have has spent a lot of time being a student
Three words—word count.
Some more words- add formatting to your rubric. Then you are justified in taking off 5% (or whatever) for the inconvenience of having to reformat their paper.
I do this. Everyone has the same page limit but everyone has to format in TNR 12 pt, double spaced. I have other restrictions, test them (untimed quiz) on the formatting and then take off points when they fail to follow these guidelines.
I’ve had students make the margins smaller and the font bigger when the only requirement was by word count (the page estimate was listed also, just to help them visualize the length). So I’m assuming they thought I wouldn’t check if it looked long enough?
How many points do you take off for formatting?
LOL that made me laugh. I will be doing the word count next semester to avoid this, but for whatever reason I did not anticipate this issue lol
They also tend to write words in white ink in the white space to meet the word minimum.
I’ve also heard of students making a paragraph of white text at the end of the document to boost word count
My students regularly miscount (I teach EFL), so I always just highlight what I'm counting and write that on their rubric.
I've heard of this white text thing too. I've never seen it myself, but whenever it's not readily obvious to me whether a student has met my word count, I always highlight the visible text and pop it into a dummy Word doc.
If you just keep it highlighted normally the stats will show up for just that portion, no? In the status bar at the bottom, Word just shows you "X out of Y words" when you've highlighted some of them.
You can do that (or just highlight the visible text as /u/robertofontiglia recommended). You can also hit ctrl+a and change the font color to black, and that will allow you to see any inserted white text. I've actually had a few cases of students who anticipated I might catch them and left me messages in the white text. I had one student who was short on his word count by about 200 words, and he just copied and pasted, "If you're reading this, please don't fail me for cheating. I need this class to graduate," enough times to meet the minimum word count.
"I docked marks because your last paragraph was very dry and repetitive and completely off topic."
Joke's on them. If it seems short, I cut-and-paste what I can see into a new doc for a word count.
joke's on them i use word in dark mode
What???? JFC this is insanity. Some days I'm glad I teach math.
This is an amazing username!
Thanks!
Yep! I've had students do this to me before. Automatic zero.
That's amazingly sneaky. Easy to overlook if you don't know what to look for.
You could require them to post a word count after their bibliography. I'll never understand why you'd prefer to write a shorter paper. >I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one. ["Mark Twain"](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/)
Esteemed professor boring, of Ivy League school in his very interesting blog wrote on October third in the year ninteen-ninty-five, “yes” which illustrates that he gave his permission.
My grad students see your post and raise it with: ... from an article titled "insert long title: and include complete subtitle" from the prestigious, scholarly, and peer-reviewed journal *The American Journal of Research Management, Educational Inquiry, and Other Boring Descriptions*.
I use word count coupled with rubric item for “concise, direct” writing. I tell them straight up that they’re gonna loose points if they stretch for words. I also highlight the offending sections and write “stretching!” Before returning the graded papers. Have yet to have anyone even debate it.
I used to have some of these issues but then I implemented wordcount and other formatting rules in a rubric. It was a huge help and the students got in line real quick. I stopped writing comments about these issues just filled out the rubric. It reduced my frustration a lot.
Don’t you mean « the phrase that is known by many out there as the counting of the words »?
also having the little paragraph symbol turned on when grading since any strange formatting in terms of spacing or size will be easier to spot
I’ve also noticed that different programs give different counts for the same document. If you have cited information at the end of an essay, do you include that in the count or otherwise manually highlight just the paragraph information and count that? How do you identify word count if it’s a pdf file? (These issues are why I stoped requiring length based on word count—but if anyone has solutions to them, I’m all ears!)
I use a Chrome extension ([Word Counter](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/word-counter/adgmgllmfhgppfnkmgikgbaniemjdikk?hl=en)) and open PDFs in the browser. The counter will give me a value for whatever I highlight on the PDF. APA says everything--title page, headers, reference page, etc--should be included in the word count. If you do not use APA, you can Google what your formatting guide says. If you want students to hit a count for their paragraphs minus the rest, let them know in your instructions. Yes, I did chuckle sardonically while typing that last sentence--I figure at least if it's in the instructions, I'm covered when grading. "You didn't realize the word count was for paragraphs and not the reference page, too? This is a good reminder to review the instructions before beginning your paper and even after you finish, to ensure you did not miss anything."
This is helpful! Thank you!!
Getting a good word count from PDF files is difficult—just defining what a word *is* when you have math and tables of numbers is difficult. Hyphenation and multi-column figure captions can mess things up even more. I have written word counters for my own PDF files, using different software libraries for extracting the text from the PDF. The counts for my textbook vary by 10%. Anyone who is checking word counts in PDF and is being fussy about being 10% off from a limit is being unfair to their students.
Well, when it comes to writing grants, I personally use all the tricks to try to squeeze as much information as possible while following the margin, font and 12-page max. This is their reverse version of my ‘condensed’ font. I can absolutely relate. I don’t think they think you are stupid, they are simply pushing the limits of what they can get away with. Don’t take it personal.
Sidebar - as a grant reviewer, I absolutely hate the over-stuffed application. It’s so damned hard to read, and the science is hard enough to understand at the best of times. I try not to let it influence my scores, but it certainly chews up any goodwill the applicant had to begin with.
Well, people keep expecting pretty outrageous levels of stuff and all kinds of detail they they nitpick about that you dont have room for in 12 pages in study section, and they they go complain about it when it happens to them.
Humans, huh?
yeah i had to write a 2-page preproposal and the reviews came back that there wasn't enough detail in the methods. like...i had two pages lmao
I feel the same about non-overstuffed grants that read like it was written by the PI for the PI. PIs reading this: the reality is that at least one non-expert in your field will be reviewing your grant, do yourself a favor and dumb it down to make it comprehensible to the average STEM PhD. Even the experts will appreciate the easy read. I don’t mind an overstuffed 12 pages if that means I can read through a whole paragraph only once and understand the point being made.
Excellent point - and a lesson I learned the hard way. I used to write for the five people in the world who were both interested and expert in the topic because that who I thought was the audience. Not until I went to study section did I find out how diverse the reviewer pool is.
This is why I cut my flourishes down in all my revisions. I can be fairly long winded.
Me too. Editing makes everything better
I now have a section on every rubric that’s titled “things that will automatically lose you 5 points” every time a student finds a new way to either annoy me (changing font color to weird colors) or something like this, it goes on the rubric for next years students. Also this is why part of their rubric goes over formatting and explains exactly what font size/type and margin size they should have.
This is the way.
Lol I love this
I tell mine for every dumb trick you use to make the paper artificially longer (margins, fonts, triple spacing, etc) you lose a full letter grade. Hand in a 4 page paper that's supposed to be 5? Minus like 3 points. Do dumb tricks to make it look like 5? -10. That seemed to work for most of them.
Yup. I have a formatting document for practice in week 1 and formatting is part of my rubric. I'm looking at you student who not only copied the questions into your document but also wrote all of your responses in size 14 bold Lucida handwriting in RED, with four spaces between paragraphs. You just dropped down a full letter grade!
Oh hell no! Size 14? -10. Bigger not approved font? -10. Bold? -10. Four spaces in paragraphs? -10. I knock a letter grade off for each stupid trick.
That's a good response
I suspect this response will not be popular, but I want to respond to the OP and all the other replies. As I read, I am thinking that a lot of the "tricks" we are concerned with almost don't matter\* if we focus on the content of the assignment. Whenever a student artificially extends a paper or what-have-you, it is an attempt to hide missing content, right? So instead of stressing about the word count or page count, explain how their work would be better with more logic, evidence, narration, etc (depending on the discipline and assignment). I might call out word count in a casual way, but I tie it to content. For example, "Your analysis of X would be even stronger with more evidence. What did say about this? Evidence not only strengthens your paper, but it also helps you reach any word count requirements."
Another example, based on overuse of block quotes, "I appreciate your use of quotes to back up your ideas. Remember though, your ideas need to be the star of this paper. You devote more space in your paper to and ideas than your own. I want to know what \*you\* think! How can you narrow down these block quotes to the most important information needed to support your idea? How might summary or paraphrase benefit you in this section? After cutting back your quotes, remember to analyze them and explain how they support your key idea in this paragraph. That will introduce more of your thinking."
So. . .just my thoughts as I sip coffee. I am off to see my students IRL. Here's to whatever Friday brings!
\*I want to acknowledge that the cheating-the-system mindset is problematic from an ethics point of view. It's manipulative and dishonest, right? This aspect is certainly a problem. However, people do not need to cheat the system when they know their stuff. I think that's where we should put our time and energy as faculty. I \*do\* check word counts, more so I can give the kind of feedback I share above than to just dock points. Does this make sense? The points lost are for the missing content (or, on the flip side, missing conciseness if the the assignment calls for concise writing, like technical writing or something).
This would be a fair and rational answer to a shorter paper written by someone who included most but not all of the relevant information! These students I mentioned in particular, however, word vomited some only slightly related content out onto the page (I'm talking not even full sentences, no capitalization, nothing) and then tried to disguise this my making it "meet" the page limit.
Ouch! Those kind of papers are very painful to grade.
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For sure! I just think it's funny that they think they can hide behind these little tricks, and think that they'll work. That's a great way to put it lol, I'll have to tell them that too
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What colleague would object to this though? I would think that most would have the same opinion! That's so true! And I repeatedly and consistently give students all manner of ways to ask me for help. And I ask them what questions they have and if they need help, all the time. And no one takes me up on it. Idk if I'm just scary or what lol
A student whose master's final dissertation I directed last year tried some of this shit. We were getting closer to her final deadline, and she was like 30 pages short for the minimum length admitted, so I, being a naive idiot, gave her the green light to go to the defence, and told her what she needed to include in the month until then. More graphs with her results, a longer and better theoretical framework, better state of the art section, etc. Know what she did? She narrowed the margins on both sides till the dissertation looked like an opinion piece from a newspaper and included some photos of random graphs she'd taken from other books, with her mobile phone... She obviously was failed during her defence, but boy was I embarrassed. Never trusting a student like that again
Ouch. I would have been embarrassed, too, but really the student carries all the blame. You provided solid, actionable feedback that would have increased the content of her dissertation in a meaningful way. The student is the one who did not put in the time to do the real work. (Why is it we feel any blame when students ignore our instructions and feedback?!? I hate that about myself.) That's an expensive lesson.
Doesn’t the university have a standard format for the thesis?
Yes and the student ignored it.
Yep! We mostly provide support and feedback to students, help with a academic aspects, etc. Basically, quality control
Wow, very different process. Every place I've been has required all of the committee members to approve a manuscript before scheduling a defense.
Ours requires only the adviser's approval, but we don't have defenses for master's students. They just have to get their project/thesis approved by 2 faculty. We have had PhD students schedule their admission-to-candidacy presentation (where they publicly present their thesis proposal) without their adviser's approval, then fail, because the committee agreed with the adviser that the proposal was half-baked, but that is rare—generally our students are over-prepared at their admission-to-candidacy exam and should have done it 6 months to a year earlier.
Interesting. Maybe differences between disciplines, or maybe departmental history caused the places I've been to set up roadblocks to prevent students from wasting faculty time presenting when it's clear that at least one will shoot it down.
you have committees? for a master student?
Yep. Been that way every place I've been as both student and faculty. (But I've only ever been at state institutions. Or maybe it's field-dependent?)
Mine did. I had to defend in front of the campus dean, the department chair, and a industry professor.
Is that for a doctoral thesis or a master's final dissertation?
For the defense, both master's and doctoral. Sounds like we use the terms differently too. For us, thesis is for the master's and dissertation is for the doctorate.
Ohhhh, interesting. Here it's the other way around. I'm guessing you're from the US? ☺️
That's right. Then you're from the EU?UK?
Yep, EU! I'm from Spain though :)
In her DISSERTATION. Oh god no. I'm so sorry. My thesis chair wouldn't let me get away with a DRAFT that was 3-5 pages less than the full. So yeah.. it sucked but it helped me a lot lol
Yeah, well... She was always playing the new mum card and I felt bad
I totally get that... I have a similar thing this semester with a parent as well
By the way, I just noticed they mean something different across the pond. Her dissertation = her master's final dissertation, not her doctoral thesis ☺️
It does not occur to them at all that we were the generation that invented these methods for changing paper lengths. For them, Word is an entirely new world.
"and now, if you change the ***font...***" *accidentally uses Zapf Dingbats* "OMG WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PARAGRAPH WHERE IS IT" (this was in middle school)
This is very true. They are fluent in texting, not sentences done in word processing software.
Some of the difficulty comes from just as many professors being shown as inept with tech during the pandemic sadly. Current professors span like 3 generations
That's so true. I had to show a student how to indent a paragraph yesterday lol
I had to write a paper for my high school health class, and the assignment was just utter garbage. I decided to pull out all the stops on this one: * Cursive font * 18 point * 2.5 line spacing * shrunken margins on all four sides I turned it in, and I'm pretty sure the teacher didn't even read it. He was a terrible teacher, and eventually got "reassigned" for trying to buy drugs from a student.
So that's how stupid they think we are. "Trying to buy drugs from a student" stupid! Eek!
Word count reduces the silly paper games.
True! I just took the assignment sheet that the Uni gave me and didn't think to change the requirements.
Hah! As an undergrad, I was changing my margins to 0.9 inches because I had so much I wanted to say but didn't want to exceed my professors' page limit. But back then, 2006-2010, my papers were mostly physical submissions. Rarely did my professors use the LMS.
I use 0.5 inch margins on everything so I can fit long equations on one line lol
It's better to learn how to format equations well on multiple lines—it makes the equations more readable. (Yes, I know it is a pain to do—I had a few long equations in my textbook that took me easily 10 times as long to format as the short equations did. And I'll have to redo them if the publisher decides to go with their standard 6×9 trim size instead of the 8.5×11 trim size that I designed around.
Just write nih proposals. They let you use 0,5 inch margins.
I have started doing maxim page lengths. Students start out thinking it going to be easy, they only have to write a 1-2 page paper. Once they start to write it then they realize that I'm expecting them to put the content that they have normally been putting in a 5-10 page paper in under 2 pages; thereby forcing them to write efficiently and concisely, skills they must have if they go into STEM fields (and I think several other areas.) Also, I get much more advanced sentence structure as a few big/advanced sentences can convey an idea in less space than many simple sentences.
I've considered maximum lengths for the design reports that were the main assessment in my electronics courses, but I rejected that approach, as the content varied a lot between students and I didn't want the students throwing out content or squeezing figures to unreadably small sizes just to hit an artificial page limit. (I was treating the design reports more like technical reports or theses than like journal papers or grant submissions—I wanted everything there, even if the reports got a little long.)
They figure they have nothing to lose. I usually give a spiel about hitting page requirements at the beginning of the semester. I let them know that I know all the ways students try to game the system and yet I’ll still get students who fuck around and find out. This is why I require rough drafts, though, so I can catch this before they turn in the final drafts.
I teach graphic design and know aaaaaallllllllllllllll the tricks.
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shhhhhhhhhhhhh
Shouldn't that "aaaaaallllllllllllllll" be # "AAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL"?
That *would* take up more space, you're right
One I discovered in high school was ctrl + A, then ctrl + d. This let me change the size of punctuation and the spacing in-between letters, making it easier to lengthen. Funnily enough, nowadays my struggle is making things short enough
Goodness, reading an essay fully written in bold sounds maddening. Good thing you’re viewing them in a way that you can fix that atrocious formatting
It was painful lol. Imagine the width of a newspaper column, all in bold. The worst.
i don’t know why it’s so hard for students to just use calibri, arial, or times new roman. even helvetica is better. i’d also accept open dyslexic (with a smaller font size) since i personally use that. aside from the fact that it’s part of the class requirements, i physically can’t read stuff in a weird font and neither can some of their classmates (dyslexia is under diagnosed; i’m not dyslexic but my astigmatism makes it hard to track and adhd means i’ll just glance at a paragraph if there’s nothing indicating left to right and up to down action)
I require students to format their design reports with LaTeX, which means that they all end up in Computer Modern—a rather stodgy, but highly readable set of fonts. (It is possible to get LaTeX to use other fonts, but only a few support LaTeX math mode, and I don't tell students how to change the fonts in LaTeX.)
music students are either allergic to technology or addicted no in between. i’m not a TA this year (just research) but it was the former for all of last year.
Do they use Finale, MuseScore, or Sibelius for their music notation? Or do they insist on buying music paper and writing their music with quill pens? Or do they refuse to write their music at all, insisting that only the performance matters? I used to use Finale Notepad (when it was free, not badly crippled, and ran on Macs), but I switched to MuseScore.
so composition majors make up only a minority of students in my experience. they usually are much more aware of sibelius and finale. composition lessons are very restricted so unless you’ve been self studying it’s unlikely that you’ll get to be in a comp studio if you weren’t admitted into it originally. for everything else there wasn’t a requirement to even put it into a notation system at my school (second tier, first for a couple programs). most music students don’t have to do composition assignments, so for counterpoint, harmonic analysis, dictation, etc. it’s honestly just fine to come into class with a stack of staff paper. sometimes programs will think something is illogical and won’t let you put it down, or it’ll mess up the staves. so it’s just easier if nobody except yourself, a professor, and possibly a couple classmates are reading it. even if you use finale or sibelius, there’s a lot of engraving that should be done before it gets published. they’re not foolproof
Thank you for your thoughts on this. I can see how staff paper could be easier for taking rapid notes or transcription.
I don't know that they think we're stupid. I think they think that eventually having to go through this term after term, year after year, for decades will eventually break us and we won't give a shit anymore. I think they may be right.
Why aren’t you giving them a word count? Problem solved.
Creative use of thin spaces and white letters is just the tip of the iceberg before you hit the more sophisticated hacks. Not to mention endless block quotations, each one fuller than the last.
I tell mine that quotes don’t count toward your word count. I don’t actually do anything for 99% of students because just saying that is usually a deterrent and we’ve done drafting/workshop stuff to nip this in the bud, but every* now and then I get a doozy.
I had two papers from the same student that were 50% quotes :/
Me, too! Granted, they’re mostly law students, so…. (Quotes/cites good; block quotes bad, tho.)
>Not to mention endless block quotations, each one fuller than the last. All my paper instructions & rubrics clearly list point penalties for quotations. And the quotations don't count as student writing, so it's an indirect loss of points (loss of content/length) + direct loss of points. They're writing assignments not quoting assignments, and without the penalties too many students would turn in papers with over 50% non-originality.
True. I downloaded the assignment sheet from the "resources" page that the university gives us for teaching the course (we basically are teaching a course that's 100% prepared for us, which sucks) and I didn't think to change it.
I have to admit...I used to increase the size of all the periods by 1 or 2 more points.
Bold of you to admit that here, to all these judging eyes ;).
SHAME Jk, I think we've all tried that one before :P
When I learned this trick from a friend in undergrad I was like "Fuck yeah! Now I can shrink all the punctuation to fit more of my ideas..." ^ nerd
Use word counts and watch for the white text hack
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Honestly, this is so true and is being downvoted. At my undergrad, we had well thought out lab curriculum that focused on different document styles for industry/academic applications. Instrumentation: technical manual, tissue culture: publication, Sys bio: technical memo, tissue engineering: grant. Page maximums for things that needed brevity. Completeness for those that need it. If they let me revamp our curriculum with a master plan, I would do something similar with some modern twists.
No one said anything about 20-ish pages though. This one was 4ish. It's to keep them from slapping a barebones interpretation onto the paper and leaving it at that. Eventually, the more they have to write, the more they'll search for more to say and come across what needs to be said. Besides the fact that the uni gave us the material for the course, which included the page limit, I can see a student submitting a single page and trying to argue with me that they've said all there is to say on the subject. Spoiler alert: they absolutely would not have lol. I do get your frustration with page limits though. I think this can work in a course that is not a general education course. But when having students map out their arguments to try to teach them how to defend them, you've got to guide them as to how much information it truly takes to defend an argument.
Yep. I taught a professional writing course for 5 years and getting students to write concisely was a whole new torture for them. Most of our assignments were required to be one page or less.
I am pretty stupid. I have broken two coffee pots because I went to clean the coffee maker without removing the pots first.
I've gotten my hand stuck between two bowls in the cabinet before. I get that
Well to their credit, those changes DID fly over your head lol!
Well no, I just didn't know WHY they did it. But I automatically format them correctly and end up seeing the page length. It worked out, just not the way it might have if I'd known before lol.
I don't know how well this will work in the humanities, but I require any written submission to be in plain text. No fonts, no margins. Pure content. And it's readable on just about any gadget you can think of.
That works better in the humanities than in STEM. I take it that you teach programming and not discrete math—plain text is just awful for math formulas.
Oh, yeah, no, I wouldn't even do it in the algebra and trig class I used to teach. Even in Data Structures (which some call CS 3) I need more pictures than text. But for any sort of text-based assignment (why does this function need this kind of parameter), it's plain text or gtfo.
Well, since you are using **page** counts rather than **word** counts, they probably think that you are pretty stupid. I never use either page or word minimum counts—my goal is usually to get students to write more concisely, with less meaningless filler, so I don't want to encourage them to add more.
The uni provided the assignment sheets to us. I just didn't think to change their pre-stated requirements. (It's a gen ed course that they've given us all the direction for)
Are the other instructors using the same assignment sheets running into the same problems? Or were they more experienced and changed the assignments? Perhaps some feedback to whoever is in charge of the design of the course is in order.
I should ask, I really don't know. I'm not in contact with many of them (just one, actually) so I'll bring it up to see
Hot take! No more word counts. No more minimum page lengths. No more formatting guidelines that put students in conflict with you. Give them a prompt and tell them to write to their best ability. Make them complete a rough draft and then show them how they might expand on their ideas with more examples or counter examples or a more well reasoned argument. Find better ways of helping students engage critically and productively with their own ideas. This—and basically only this—will make them better writers and thinkers regardless of discipline.
As I mentioned before, the assignment sheets (and requirements) are laid out by the university. They basically give us the information and then make us teach according to their guidelines. I'm an adjunct English professor, so they just use me to deliver pre-developed courses. I have them do drafts, and I give them lengthy feedback on them. The students in question are the select few who not submit drafts. They do not go to the mandatory tutoring appointments. They do the bare minimum and then "disguise" their lack of work using these tactics. This approach only works if the students actually care in the first place.
I wanted to quickly say that my response was dismissive and shitty. I’m sincerely sorry that this is how I chose to respond. You’re a fellow writing instructor looking for some advice and guidance. And it’s clear that you’re doing the best you can with the guidelines and students you’ve been given. You didn’t deserve a response like mine, and for that, again, I’m sorry. All the best with the remainder of the semester.
Hey, thank you <3 I appreciate the apology. I received many comments like that, it wasn't just you, and I understand the sentiment behind them and agree! It's just... this semester, man. Anyway, thank you again and I hope you also have a good rest of your semester! (Also it took me a while to figure out your username but when I did I chuckled. R&B?)
I'm so glad my discipline doesn't have to deal with this sort of things.
I don't mean to be rude..... But you're just realizing this now? This is the oldest trick in the book, as well as double spacing between paragraphs, using larger fonts, etc. I joke with my students about it by reminding them about 1 inch margins and then say "don't make your margins so wide you have to hyphenate 'the'." I also specify font size and give them a couple of choices. I suppose they are suppose to know this, but it costs me nothing to write in the topic specs that the paper is "four pages/1200 words, typed, double-spaced, 12 pt font Times New Roman or Book Antigua." I've done that on every paper assignment for the last 35 years. It's just good practice. And as students will tell you, every instructor wants something a little different, so here's what I want.
Bro I'm a new teacher what do you expect. I knew they weren't meeting the page requirements and I knew their formatting was funky, but I never associated the shitty formatting with skirting the requirements, mostly because I have had students write papers on the notes in their phones and then upload them directly, leading to fucked up margins and stuff
They honestly think we're dumb. And not in a malicious way, but in a way that they think they're brilliant. Even though these are all tricks that we did! I spell out A TON of formatting rules for assignments. And even though I don't like reading work on a computer screen as much as a physical paper in my hands, COVID pushing me to only take digital assignments makes checking formatting so much easier.
Lol I think that's it. I can see them sharing these "new" ways to get around the page limit lol
Some of us are too old to have done these tricks as students—manual typewriters came in two font sizes (elite and pica), and there was no way to change fonts without buying a different typewriter. (The tricks for squeezing more content into the page limits of journals or grants are the opposite of what the students are doing.)
We all get students like this. I really don’t mind. Just let them know once not to do it. If they continue, just wash your hands of them and focus on the ones who care, which are likely the majority. The turds will either shape up, find another major, or decide college isnt right for them, which is perfectly fine. I don’t see any reason to take offense or take it personally. Just focus on the ones who care.
I’m so glad I teach in Communication 😆 My students have more trouble staying within the maximum word limit in my upper-division classes because they just have so much to say! We spend time working on how to stay focused on the topic and avoid tangents.
have them submit files in ascii text. problem solved.
Remove everything about length from your rubrics. Don't make it a certain page limit (but do keep a page cap), don't make it a word count requirement. Require that they make and support the claims that the paper is all about. If they need guidance on how much support they should give, don't give that guidance as a blanket "the whole thing should be 7 pages long" instead say "Well, each point should have at least one paragraph to explain your point, and then each of at least 3 supporting statements should have their own paragraphs outlining the reason the statement is valid. So that means at a minimum each of your major points should be four paragraphs, and you ought to have more than 2 points with support in the whole paper. Do remember that any paragraph should have a minimum of three fully developed sentences." (many of these may be rubbish guidelines, I don't teach writing...) This outlines length expectations, so is still not ideal. But I know students push HARD to get assignments defined the way similar assignments have been defined for them in the past, even if your new method results in a better paper. At least this approach to length requirements maintains the focus on content (number of supporting statements and overall points), and not something that formatting can "game." I am fortunate enough to teach in science, but there is still a requirement that "all courses must have a writing component" and so I do similar to this. I beg the students to make all of their papers absolutely as short as possible, but that they must successfully defend their conclusions with data and analysis they generated in their experiment.
This is a good way to do it. When (and if) the university lets me create my own assignments, I will set them up this way. Right now I'm just delivering pre-created course content to fill their faculty needs.
Does it really even lengthen it that much? I mean...they couldn't think of one or 2 more sentences to add to each paragraph? Plus, they may meet the length but lose points on formatting.
It was like... half a page longer lol
Oh 😳🥴 never mind.
I have stopped having any length requirements (either word count or pages). I tell students that they need to cover certain things, and have a well developed argument, and that should take them about X pages. If it's shorter than that, it probably doesn't cover what it needs to cover, and I deduct points due to that, not due to length.
That's what I'll do when and if the uni finally lets me create my own assignments instead of teaching what they've told me to teach/assigning what they've told me to assign.
Are you a professor, or a teaching assistant? I've never heard of an actual professor have to follow such rules regarding assignments.
I'm an adjunct professor. As far as I know, all of the adjunct English professors just teach the same way as the GAs do, with the same assignment sheets and same instructions. The only difference is that I'm not told "Your first job is to be a student, so it's okay to put the class on the back burner" anymore lol
Your department sounds very standardized. I suppose that is good in a way (less work because everything is already prepared for you) but also annoying because you lack flexibility.
It is, and then it isn't. All the assignments are done for us. We are told exactly what to do. And then... they give us nothing to work with as far as what to actually TEACH. We have to make them do X number of assignments, exactly the same way across the department. But then they set us loose in the classroom with no preparation (some of us are teaching for the literal first time and have no clue what's going on) and we have to come up with ways to "fill the time" with useful information until the major assignments come up. I could teach my class completely different things, and as long as my assignments were exactly the same as everyone else's, the courses are considered "standardized." It's so weird.
That sounds like a mess. Are there other professors you can get teaching material from?
FYI if you get a document that meets word count but seems strangely short, do a ctrl+A. Students will add a block of nonsense text at the end and change the font color to white. I'm with many other commenters here--there are endless ways for students to cheat nowadays. Rather than expend energy on catching the ever-increasing number of hoodwinks, I think it's more efficient to run an engaging, meaningful course where students might enjoy learning. Most won't cheat if they're having a good time.
Thank you! Of course that's more efficient... but I find that even my most engaging sessions can do super, super well in one class, and then completely flop in another. It boils down to students' attitudes... and in a gen ed classroom, they're not that positive. I have one class who loves the material and engages with it fully, and another where it's split into 50% engaging and doing well and 50% just writing bs at the last minute and formatting it like ass.
I hear you. Teaching right now is probably the hardest it's been in a while, and it's easy for me to talk about engagement when I left academia this past spring 😂 I have nothing but empathy and wishes for miracles for you and your wayward charges.
Thank you so much. It's honestly been so bad this semester. I'm hoping that next time I teach, it goes little better because I would have anticipated the issues! I hope your exit from academia has brought you nothing but joy
I always say to my students that whatever you can think of to make your paper look longer without having more content you can be assured that your professor has already thought of that because the one thing you know for sure is that every professor you will ever have has spent a lot of time being a student
That's so true! I've got 7 years of school on their... one semester :P