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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!)
The academic fonts are Computer Modern.
Times New Roman is for people who use Microsoft software, not academics.
I followed TFA and the font looks like the author simply increased the size by half a point. If you are trying to make your paper seem longer, it will probably sound like you are trying ot make your paper seem longer.
This will not help, especially if the person grading is paying attention. So what if they accuse you of changing the margins or spacing instead of identifying the actual isssue? You were most likely given a list of acceptable fonts, and Times I'm Lazy was not on that list.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
I'm not sure it's educators who really want to grade papers that way. I taught an intro-level college class and assigned a paper as a class project. I told the students that I was grading on content and described those expectations. I didn't assign a page limit and told them they needed to cover their topic thoroughly without adding fluff. Students didn't like the expectation of a brief but thorough paper and I received a lot of push back. Students would say things like "I understand, but how long does it really need to be?", indicating they wanted a page or word length guideline. I assume they got this expectation in high school. I explained that outside of academia, people want thorough but brief reports and I was preparing them for the real world. They didn't want to accept my explanation. I'm not sure it's educators who want these limits. I think students want them so they know the minimum amount of work they have to do.
Trojan Newer Roman condoms look a lot like regular condoms, but each is subtly altered to make your penis look 5 to 10 percent bigger, without having to actually make it bigger. "Trojan: Rome wasn't built in a day, but it will feel that way."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
What kind of sick person would try to trick people into thinking people are reading more than actually are?!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
... as we say in spanish speaking countries.
All of us played with margins, spacing, and fonts (to the extent possible) to make an essay look bigger, from the times of Typewriter, even going so far as to chose the typewriter to use among the three in my house to suit my needs, the most uncofortable one (but with bigger type) for essays with a set minimum # of pages, or the most confortable one for longer essays, or when there was no preset limit.
That's why, with the advent of computers, smart teachers request the work as a PDF and count words, not pages. Yes, a word count is also open to abuse, but less than # of pages alone.
Myself, I put a minimum AND maximum limit, both on pages AND on words.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Based on the posts I think you've made, you'll view anything that doesn't include a specific length guideline (e.g., write an eight page paper) as unreasonable. Your position isn't reasonable and it's inconsistent even with other academic expectations. For example, there's no length guideline on a thesis or dissertation. If you don't provide enough content, your committee will review your work unfavorably. If you add lots of fluff and extraneous content, your committee also won't view that favorably. Are dissertations and theses inherently unfair as well?
I encouraged students to insert pictures inline to make the paper more readable. That alone renders any length guideline meaningless, especially because figures can be expanded or shrunk to meet the goals of the students. I suggested that a paper that was two or three pages was too brief, but that a paper towards 15 or 20 pages would have been unnecessarily long. I just didn't put a specific number on it.
Thorough means they address all the topics on their outline, which I approved. Brief was explained as not adding fluff. I gave them an example along the lines of, if they're writing about a tornado event, they should discuss the conditions for their specific event but they don't need to provide general meteorological background on how tornadoes form. Basically anything that's not specific to their event is unnecessary.
In the real world, you're not looking for your employees to write a certain number of words or paragraphs. Unless you're a publisher where space matters, you'd be a lousy supervisor. Instead, you care that they give you the information you need and that it's accurate. You also don't want them to waste your time on stuff that doesn't matter.
The academic fonts are Computer Modern.
Rubbish. In my field we use Comic Sans for our most important discoveries...but that is because we are more interested in the information than the font it is written in.
The grading of any paper is somewhat subjective. Unless you're looking for a specific correct answer, it's subjective. The grading of any essay is subjective.
At no point were the students graded on length. They were graded on addressing all of the points in the outline, which they turned in and got approved. That's what being thorough means. Because I reviewed all of their outlines, they were given a specific definition of what that means.
Brevity meant providing information specific to that event, rather than inflating the paper by providing unrelated information or content related to general meteorological processes rather than their event. An example is that you don't need to tell me generally how a tornado forms, just what specifically happened in their event.
It would have been unreasonable to have a length requirement that isn't disclosed to students. They were given guidance along the lines of that the paper should be at least a few pages long, but 15 or 20 pages is almost certainly too long. One would interpret that to be a range of 5-15 pages or so. I strongly encouraged them to be toward the lower bound of that rather than the upper bound, emphasizing brevity. I gave them guidance about length, just not a specific target like eight pages. I specified that it should be single spaced. I asked them to insert pictures inline, and required them to number each one and reference it in the text. But if a paper happened to be 4.5 pages long rather than a full five pages, I wouldn't have taken any points off on the basis of length. If they fully addressed all of the topics, they could have received a perfect score.
I didn't want students to think they had to add fluff to make a paper five pages if they had written a quality 4.5 pages and addressed everything. Educators shouldn't demand eight pages and give a student a poor grade for writing a compelling paper that's only 7.5 pages. That's silly. I consider it a bit like refusing to give a student any credit for an assignment that's due at midnight, turned in at 12:03 AM, and is of high quality.
I didn't include specific details in previous posts to keep my comments relatively brief. To be clear, about the only thing I didn't do is put a specific number on it, such as eight pages. I actually addressed all of this in a lengthy document that was distributed at the start of the semester.
That's because with subtle enough tweaks, it's impossible to measure without having measurement error. The best margin to tweak is actually the right hand margin as long as you leave the Justification set to left (never fully justified). Left margin if you're in a RTL place, and again, never fully justified. This makes the right margin almost impossible to measure because word wrapping and the like ensure no line actually makes it all the way.
As for point sizes, remember a point is 1/72nd of an inch. Half a point up or down is 1/144th of an inch. If you use an inkjet printer with not good quality paper, the ink overrun will hide it quite well. Plus a lot of fonts you use will have different heights anyways - just printing out 12 point sized text in various fonts will reveal a variety of font heights.
You reserve the good quality paper for your cheat sheet to an exam where you can reduce the font size down to 4 or 5 points and with a laser printer on good quality paper makes it too easy to read. (Even regular copy paper works well enough with a laser).
Ha! I think the key takeaway is the final statements: "You give them a requirement that you don't really expect them to meet and they turn in something that doesn't really meet the requirement but looks like it does. That's how you prepare them for the real world."
Yep. This is how 50-75% of business managers manage. Is academia similar? I imagine so, (enter your own MBA joke here).
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
...of electronic paper. Imagine all those extra virtual pages being needlessly created and clogging up desktop trash cans.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
But that's where the problem is... you implicitly imposed a minimum length on the students without actually telling them what it was. How, reasonably, should a student know what expectations are upon them unless they are told in quantitatively measurable terms?
In the real world, you don't need such quantitative descriptors because people hopefully have enough experience by then to gain an intuitive understanding of how much or how little they need to write to convey their position adequately, but while one is learning, they don't necessarily yet have the background to intuitively recognize it.
Developing an intuition for how much or how little you need to write to convey your point across is something you can only learn by trying, and probably failing a lot along the way... and even if they don't do well in the draft, that doesn't mean they aren't learning something from it.
It's pretty cool that you're getting students to do that though... I wouldn't give in on giving them a page count or paragraph count, even if they ask for one... just help them develop that intuition that you seem to realize that they are going to need in the real world, and make it explicitly clear that's what you are trying to do.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It looks like I'll have to get that tattoo on my dick redone.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
You had type? Coddled, pansy-ass wimps the lot of ya! We were still dreaming of a day for a written language, having to stamp figures into the mud on the bank of the river and wait for it to dry while dodging lions and ostriches trying to eat us. And we were happy about it!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Correlation does not equal causation. Is he good because he had that policy, or in spite of it?
I've had very good professors who were quite lax with assignments. Though my definition of "very good" refers to how much I learned from them, not how many other students they failed.