Surprisingly Increase Your Essay Size
Apr 23rd, 2007 by Usman
Several hours have passed before your eyes as you stare upon the clock. In front of you is an eight page paper that needs two pages more by tomorrow. Ideas such as using smaller paper or changing the font size come through you head. You don’t want to get caught though and risking getting a failure. Does this describe you often? Recently, I discovered a straightforward, undetectable, and effortless way to increase the number of pages in your essay. This technique is very applicable for those of you who are college and high school students, and after being mastered, only takes a couple of seconds to do.
What is this “technique†that I’m talking about? Essentially, this technique makes your period size bigger. It enlarges the period size unnoticeably and increases the sentence size in doing so. All you have to do is type up your essay, then stop halfway at your ending point. So if you have to write a 4 page essay, stop at 2 pages. Go back and find every period you can. Assuming your school follows MLA Standard Format, and you have to use Times New Roman 12 font, then go ahead and change your period font size to 14. Don’t change the text size, just the period size up to fourteen. You will see a considerably significant “bounce†in your sentences; enough to create almost a third of a page difference. If you are using double space, it makes more of a difference, almost half of a page taken up.
If you think your teacher’s eyes are not well enough to see the difference at all, you may even want to try 16. But be careful, don’t make every period a size 16, just a few, leave the rest 14 because it makes almost no variation from a size 12 periods. Furthermore if you still need more pages, you can increase the size of commas or semicolons. The more pages you have, the more pages this technique will add on. For example, if you have a 1 page paper, it’ll probably make it only 1.10 pages. However, if you have a 10 page paper, it’ll probably get it to around 13-14 pages. What’s amazing is that the size difference between a 12 font period and a 14 font period is less than a millimeter, yet it yields great results.
There is also another way to complete this task. It is additionally quick and simple. All you have to do is open up your text document, then first off click CTRL+F. Then there should be a tab that says “Replace”, click on it. After that you should see a box that says “Find and Replaceâ€, type in a period there where it says Find What, and another period where it says Replace With. Now before clicking OK, look to the bottom of that “Find and Replace†box and you should find a tab that says “More†(Be sure to have the cursor on the Replace With part, not the Find What part, otherwise it will tell Microsoft Word to find a size 14 period when there is none). Click on that, and then find another tab that says “Formatâ€, in this tab click on Font, and set it to size 14. It is as trouble-free as that.
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Whether it’s for an English class or even Physics class (that’s a tough class…that I’m taking) this technique will help your paper become longer. It’s so stealth-like that it would take a magnifying glass to catch on, or if you sent the word document via e-mail instead they might find the font size is different, so it’s better to print the article off. Astonish your teachers with a full length essay with our helpful technique.
Wow, this is really handy. I’m currently doing a HUGE project over a few months and this will help soooo much. Thanks!
Sounds like a pretty clever idea! (great for me: im a chronic procrastinator) would it be as unnoticeable for commas? single/double quotes?
Thanks for the tip
I have tested out commas before, and they are not noticeable, that is at 13 font, at most 13.5 (perhaps a bit risky though). But quotations are definitely out of the question. They look like 2 commas enlarged, so are slightly noticeable.
Wow! I’ll keep this in mind next time I’m doing a project or essay. Thanks Usman.
This assumes you use Word to compose your essays. If you use a real page layout program, such as Adobe InDesign, you can adjust the kerning of the letters to increase the space between letters slightly. You can also increase the width of the font without increasing the height – which is how they determine point size. 12pt times with a horizontal scale of 103% is still 12pt Times.
what purpose does requiring a mandatory paper length serve? brevity and argument ought to be grading criteria.
We don’t live in a large town and most of the people don’t know what Adobe is, so they require the papers to be done in Word not Adobe InDesign, but thanks for mentioning that, I may have to check it out.
“This assumes you use Word to compose your essays. If you use a real page layout program, such as Adobe InDesign, you can adjust the kerning of the letters to increase the space between letters slightly.”
You can also do this on Word. Select all of the text that you wish to work with, right click and chose “Font,” and then select the second tab on the top, “Character Spacing.” It has scale, spacing, position, and kerning. Also, when adjusting the font size, keep commas and apostrophes to 13-pt. Anything over that is very noticeable, as was stated above by Usman.
You can kern in word. Choose Ctrl+A to highlight all your text. Next, select the Format menu. Choose Font from the dropdown menu. When the Font the Font box comes up, click on the Character Spacing tab. In the Spacing dropdown box, choose expand. In the By box, enter 0.3. This will kern the text across your entire document, and it will be virtually undetectable. I find the 0.4 and above look a little to “spacey,” but you can try larger spaccing for individual words.
Adobe? No one uses adobe except the idiots that use macs.
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awesome!!!! works great
That’s cheating! I would have never thought of that. My mind doesn’t think that way.
So, if I put a 14 period on a part of my body, will it make it seem Larger?
I’ll keep that in mind the next time I grade your paper…
I’ll just select “all”, format it all to 12 pt, standardize the format exactly the same, and grade it that way.
Move along, please, and no cheating!
I usually have the opposite problem…any tips for shrinking it down to the maximum number of words?
Henry, if you have to ask that, it will probably do the opposite for you . . .
I’ve never encountered length problems in all the time I’ve spent writing research papers for undergrads. The best way NOT to run out of stuff to write is a SOLID outline. I’ve been writing grade A papers and even thesis materials and I’ve yet to encounter a length issue. You guys just need a solid, well-organized outline. Once you have that, the paper writes itself. Think of it as a series of logical related questions that all feed your thesis.
Is this a joke, and is anyone stupid enough to fall for this?
I always thought most (sensible) universities asked for a specific word count anyway, not a number of pages. If my essay was 10 pages, I could just set it to size 36 font and argue that it was 10 pages no matter what they said, because they didn’t specify what font size to use. I exaggerate but you get my point.
It just seems like a really lame way of doing it, and also, teachers really aren’t dumb. Given that they mark your essay on content over length, (especially in English) unless you’re, you know, in pre-school, then you’re going to be marked down for not including all the information, or in depth argument/critique/analysis you could have.
So yeah, kudos if this is a very amusing joke; if it’s not, then it’s kinda lame.
@ Wordranler, will have to try that sometime.
@ Henry, yes.
@ Grace, most teachers can’t recognize the diff. between 12 and 14 period sizes because they are too busy analyzing the essay to grade it.
@ Jennifer, maybe, but I do this way and I got A+ on most essays, it just depends on who you are, not all of us are intellects!
Grace: you are right, this is a joke. These other posters are only pretending to be idiots. None of them are actually stupid enough to use a silly trick like this to pad the printed size of their writing in order to avoid having to pad the intellectual heft of it.
i’m using this the first chance i get.
I have pulled an all nighter to right a paper over platonic theory that had to be 8 pages. And i do go to one of the top universities in the country. Most of my profs give a page length and specific guidelines on margins and fonts, but at the same time most just want a hard copy so this actually worked to give me a little more room. I didn’t get an extra 3 pages but it certainly helped pad my paper a little more. thanks!
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. I tried it on some text from the lorem ipsum generator. This made practically no difference. Anyone dumb enough to rely on this deserves whatever grade they get.
For God’s sake, at least use File Destructor.
Good to know this since I am a teacher. Just do your damn work and stop being lazy people. How hard is it that you spend more time figuring out ways to cheat instead of writing the paper. I would give you a automatic zero on the paper.
Well Mike, if you’re a teacher you should know better to ask for quality instead of size.
Seriously Mike, how lazy are you that you can’t evaluate a paper on its academic merits, but instead arbitrarily rely on length? As long as the topic is adequately addressed, I would say that 9 times out of 10 the student who needs less space is the brighter one.
Also “a automatic zero”, how about, an automatic zero. The only people lazier then students are the people trying to instruct them.
Janel says, “And i do go to one of the top universities in the country…”
Right. And you also say you pulled an all-nighter “to right a paper over platonic theory…”
Excellent. Anything that helps us dodge real work is godsent!
I was writing a paper when i stumbled this page, so I used the trick on the periods and commas and got at least 6 extra lines. Not a huge difference, but length is my only weakness. And I, too, attend one of the top universities in the country. This is my only class that specifies length in pages instead of words, so perfect timing!
great stuff-a paper should be graded on brevity, clarity, and quality. these shortcuts should suffice for the time, however.
The fact is, at least in college, most professors don’t even care about length. Craft a solid argument, write the paper in support of the argument, re-read a few days later for refinement, and you’re set. Readers: don’t listen to this guy. There are no shortcuts in life. Attempting this kind of nonsense will only hurt you later.
There’s another problem with this technique. If you don’t have a period on every single line of your essay (which is somewhat common), it will make the line spacing wonky – some lines will appear further apart than others. If you think a professor won’t notice something like that, you’re dead wrong. You could increase the size of your commas, too…but this all seems an awful lot of effort to avoid the required work.
Really, though – page lengths are usually specified to prevent essays that are too LONG, not too short. And very few teachers past high school will penalize you for writing an essay that is shorter because it’s concise, razor-sharp, accurately written, and dense with facts. It’s more common to get a shitty mark for writing a half-assed essay that’s 3 pages too short (with 14-point-font periods) because you were out getting hammered the night before it was due.
That being said, when an essay with a harsh, “no exceptions” page-length requirement is assigned, the prof isn’t JUST looking for quality of academic work, density of argument, or concision. They’re also looking to see if you can follow a simple set of instructions. This website makes it obvious that there are many people out there who will go great lengths to avoid doing just that.
I can sympathize with people using this if they’re struggling with high-school courses – some people AREN’T academics, and a high school diploma is a basic requirement for success in adulthood. But by the time you’re in University, if you’re still falling back on this sort of device to get by, you should probably think about trade or vocational school instead.
you are missing the point, entirely.
Don’t listen to rich, I have tried this on each paper, for me I usually have 2 page double spaced papers due in Honors English 10. Alright I write 1.3-5 pages of quality work, then I use this trick (14pt on Periods and 13pt on Commas) and I get 2 pages, I end up getting usually A- to an A+, never less.
I will attest to the sheer brilliance of this tip. I’m in my last semester of undergrad work and I can’t think of a paper off the top of my head that I haven’t used this technique on.
You would like to think that college professors don’t put an emphasis on length, but sometimes they have to. At Cleveland State we have something called “Writing Across the Curriculum” which is basically a writing requirement that says you have to write 20 pages in 3 separate classes to graduate. And certain classes are what we call WAC classes, that fulfill those requirements.
I also have never had any problems with line-spacing or offsets or anything like that. I used left-hand alignment on all my papers, MLA format, and everything looks completely normal.
And if you really want to be facetious and talk about using larger font sizes, you need to familiarize yourself with MLA format, or any other standard format for that matter, which requires a specific font, size, and spacing. So setting you font to size 36 and trying to argue that you met the page requirements is a straw man argument at best.
Many people have commented that the student that can be the most concise in making their points is usually the brightest, which I agree is true. But teachers and universities insist on silly requirements and this tip is designed to help those students maintain their concise style while still following directions.
How do you do this for the Mac program IWorks? I just switched from word and this is such a helpful tip!
Guys…guys…guys….
I see it is entirely possible for a student to write a perfect essay for a class but have it half a page or a page to short. Some teachers are stubborn, and very biased as many of you may already know. But the thing is, people from all over the spectrum of personalities, disorders, and ideals can use this idea. For some, it may be a bad idea to use this, as it could culture a bad habit in the future. For others, it may be a one time thing that people just needed to use for that stubborn teacher. For me, my teacher is 70+ years old and doesn’t even read my paper, just simply checks the length.
All I am trying to get across is you can just come on here and instantly think that everyone here is an idiot for using this *cough* *teachers* *cough*. It is just a simple technique that can be used for good or bad, or for something that will never affect that persons life.
This isn’t cheating, it is simply being smarter than the average bear. Don’t work so hard in life, learn how to make life work for you.
Then everything becomes easier and clear.
I completely agree. I think people are getting the wrong idea here, I am not trying to say skip out on quality work, conversely I tend to be an over achiever myself, I’m just saying if you have a 1 pager due and you write 3/4 of a page of quality work and then use this method to make it 1 page, kudos, you do a good job, a little less effort, and get the same great grade: A+!
I do not understand why some people have a problem with this. It is the best solution out there. You rant on about quality this and quality that, but This helps keep the quality of the paper. Do you guys realize how musch bull crap I have to put in just to make the right lengh. That takes away the quality of the paper. I don’t think I should have a crappy grade just because it was not long enough. Sometimes there is not anything left to write, and that might mean falling short two pages. The trick helps keep the quality, and have the quantity.