Times Newer Roman is a Font Designed To Make Your Essays Look Longer (theverge.com)

Chaim Gartenberg, writing for The Verge: Times Newer Roman, a font from internet marketing firm MSCHF (which you may remember from the Tabagotchi Chrome extension). Times Newer Roman looks a lot like the go-to academic font, but each character is subtly altered to be 5 to 10 percent wider, making your essays look longer without having to actually make them longer. According to Times Newer Roman's website, a 15-page, single-spaced document in 12 point type only requires 5,833 words, compared to 6,680 for the standard Times New Roman. (That's 847 words you don't need to write, which is more than twice the length of this post!)

Comments

Re:Absurd

[goose-incarnated]

The words "thorough" and "brief" are subjective: 2000 words might be "brief" to you but "excessive" to someone else.

Your students were trying to get you to agree to an objective measurement. That you could not see that, nor see the value in being objective rather than subjective, means that you were a poor educator.

As a lecturer you have to ensure that the students have measurable goals. You cannot do that if you give them subjective constraints - they can't read your mind to know what "brief" and "thorough" is supposed to mean in the context of that assignment.