80 Comments
A brilliant, brilliant friend of Bwog’s just informed us (well, reminded some of us) of this little life-changing trick:
If you’re writing a paper and need another page or two but have nothing more to say (surely, we can all relate!), you should bump up all the periods to size 14 font. It’s impossible to tell (on the page or printed out) if the paper is double-spaced, and it results in an extra page of text. Right before our eyes, the history paper of a friend grew from 7 to eight and a half pages. It was breathtaking.
Happy highlighting!
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80 Comments
@UGH OMG if professors get wind of this and say something about it, as they tend to do about, say, fucking with the margins, i’m blaming bwog. stop popularizing this shit on the internet!
@uuummm no to be an experientialist, but i know both and the anthro grad student not only knows more in new york city than 212 and times square, but he also gives a damn. so i think the opposite.
@well that doesn’t mean he’s smarter than the Physics-Math major, and he will most likely be less productive.
@DISCRIMINATION Page limits are just another manifestation of the bias, discrimination, and outright racism at Columbia against people who are numerically-challenged. This has been a problem for generations, with roots running as far back as the days of slavery, and as deep as the highest echelons of the administration. I condemn President Lee C. Bollinger for never speaking out against this most intolerable practice.
@I give you An epic fail.
@wait what specifically is the socio-economic bias of a standardized test? is it that rich kids get more preparation, or is it the contents of the test itself?
like, i remember uproar when one of the vocabulary words was ‘regatta,’ but is there anything more significant than that?
@Two Points: 1. Standardized tests are not the best solution. However, if you any of you has a better idea please let the world know!
2. Why the hate on grad students? Most aren’t much older than seniors, and they’re a hell of a lot smarter than most undergrads.
@well In case you haven’t noticed, grad students, particularly B-school and Law School students, have a huge superiority complex, when in fact most are socially awkward and unemployed.
They try to be very exclusive and think they a God-given right to access to all the facilities undergrads do, while restricting our use of buildings like Uris. So yes, fuck grad students, their ridiculous egos, and their pompous attitude. And sorry but I don’t think an Anthro grad student is smarter than a Physics-Math undergrad double major, for example.
@Fair Enough The big exception is B-school students. Pretty much any business school student who hangs around campus other than classes is a douche.
Notice I didn’t say ALL grad students are smarter than ALL undergrads. Of course there are exceptions.
@Naive So it adds an extra half-page for each big period? AWESOME!
@umm... actually, standardized tests ARE subjective. that is, in the way they are created– they bias towards a certain type of education and socioeconomic background.
@alumnus yes, they are biased towards a real education. Not claptrap curricula designed to build self-esteem.
@Academic Honesty Page limits are not the equivalent of standardized tests. If you are saying that you can write an absolutely BRILLIANT essay, page minimums are the least of your worries. All this does is create a cycle of rampant cutting corners because people are too lazy to go ahead and do their actual assignment as it was assigned.
If you’re resorting to squeezing margins and changing font/space sizes, that action alone speaks worlds about the quality and substance of your paper. Do you really think that yours is THAT good? It is? Well then go write another fucking page.
@... eh. i’ve turned in short papers (shy 0-1.5 pages) to no ill effect. i’d rather turn in a good paper that falls short on pages than shit on my hard work by padding it with utter bullshit (either rhetorical or typographical).
this strategy has served me well.
@I got it! It’s like a reverse surge! That’s a strategy they’ll never see coming
@me too Yeah I’ve turned in things that were 1-2 pages below the stated number and it doesn’t matter. The only time it matters is when the page minimum is under 6. Obviously one is not going to hand in 2 pages for a 4 page paper. But when it gets to 8-12 page range, nobody really really cares because when you write that much for either a TA or prof that is going to read (maybe) all of it, you better just have a damn good argument and clear prose for them to care to keep reading. Notice how the first several pages always have many marks and notes, as do the last few, but the 3rd to last NEVER has any writing on it….by the time they’ve seen 6 pages, if they get where your paper is going, they skip and go to conclusion.
oh. and guess who is writing this.
@it's weird when you’ve been talking about something just recently and then it shows up on the bwog. WHO IS SPYING ON ME?
@huh HOW DO YOU MAKE ALL PERIODS 14 FONT WITHOUT GOING THROUGH AND CHANGING EACH MANUALLY?
@in word go to edit>find and then put in a period and click the “highlight all” option and press ok. all the periods should be highlighted and from there just change the size. thanks bwog :)
@FATFAT wala
@why do grad students hit on the undergrads. there’s not even anything worth hitting on
@well fuck off our undergrad blog, you worthless wanker, and go back to your state school.
@Teachers don’t give a shit about how many pages your paper is unless it exceeds or doesn’t meet the page minimum
@Anonymous you, sir, speak the truth
@wait... so they don’t care about page length unless it’s not EXACTLY what they want? somehow that sounds like caring.
@....... THANK YOU, CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!
@Anonymous lol
@unrelated has phi beta kappa been announced yet, Bwog?
@this person should go fuck itself.
@WHAT like page counts aren’t arbitrary? what if you’re just concise? don’t add fluff to your paper.
@the band fucking sucks. orgo night is stupid
@Use Book Antiqua. It does take up more space, but it also just looks so much nicer than Times New Roman.
@seriously? i am unsure if undergrads don’t have exams in the morning or what, but the band is annoying.
@grad hey grad or Gs, whichever one you are, if you don’t like our undergrad tradition, then get the fuck out of our undergrad library. The only reason we can never find seats is because people like you take up our space.
@What? What 37? Undergrad? I thought Butler was Columbia’s library… You know… Like the University, not the College?
I mean, if you want somewhere only the undergrads hang out, go study in JJ’s place.
@no... no seriously, grad students and Gs students are creepy as hell. get a life. and don’t hit on the undergrad girls.
@ugh I fucking hate the stupid freshmen ruining the primal scream tradition.
@fuck the band i hope they get rained on real good
@a few idiots in John Jay apparently don’t know it’s 12:19
@So . . . a primal scream attempt in the Van-Am quad just failed miserably.
@umm It’s supposed to be Sunday night, isn’t it?
@yeah it’s sunday, not today.
@either a lot of people are being skewered, or they’ve confused primal scream for being today instead of sunday.
@teeheeehee! poor confused freshmen.
@I only heard two people screaming simultaneously… the rest took their turns
@your mom i use comic sans
@... oh ya, and this must make Yatrakis very unhappy
@disappointed I think that this is absolutely disgraceful. Encouraging people to essentially cheat on their papers is incredibly unethical. The limit of a paper is there for a reason, and I am disgusted by people who try to scrape by on less than the required minimum. You people make me sick.
@coming coming down off that caffeine high?
IT HURTS DON’T IT
@victoria i feel ya brotha.
@shut up. get off your high horse and get over it.
sometimes you don’t have anything else to say and yet still need to meet the arbitrary page count requirement.
@know what? Go fuck yourself. Verbosity isn’t required for brilliance. Page minimums are the equivalence of standardized tests.
@yeah? Standardized tests are pretty fucking useful. One reason is because, unlike grades, they are free from subjective opinion, and another is that they are less dependent than grades on the time and effort applied by the student. Most people can apply a lot of effort once during a 3 hour period even if they don’t have enough interest to do so over the course of several months, and it’s hard to leverage too much of a better grade through test prep.
So I guess page limits are imperfect but useful and necessary.
@actually standardized tests are detrimental to the education system in this country.
pressure from threat of losing funding causes teachers to focus only on the information that will be on the test and how to say and do the right thing to score well. it completely undermines a broad education, because art, history, foreign languages, music, and (prior to high school) science are ignored. english and math become the only priority in the classroom, so that the students can be prepared to pass the test.
it also creates an intense pressure on school children. there is so much pressure to pass the test, that they freak over them, and feel like failures if they don’t pass with flying colors. at the age of 7.
and agreeing with #63, standardized tests are also socioeconomically biased.
not to mention that children with learning disabilities and special needs are expected to pass with the same grades as children without disabilities.
case and point, they suck.
@case in point yes. standardized tests are socioeconomically bias. But I’m going to go ahead and hope that those who have a better education do better on standardized tests. The change that we have to implement is giving a better education for those who need it.
@you know it OBAMA MAMA
@well pretty sure those are mainly problems with how they are implemented.
and there are a lot of benefits.
are you actually suggesting having no standardized testing at all? because that would lead to a whole host of other problems.
@well when an under-funded school is threatened with further under-funding, that’s what’s going to happen.
there really aren’t any *benefits* to standardized testing. yes, they’re a useful assessment and necessary to gauge school performance, but i wouldn’t really call them beneficial.
and i was not suggesting there be no standardized testing. i’m suggesting that there is entirely too much weight applied to the results of standardized testing, because the pressure hurts the education system. one test cannot accurately gauge the performance of every student and every teacher.
@alex fuck you!
youre one of those kids who did all the lit hum reading probably.
@apple users use cambria
@genius hahahahaha
@WTF So now that bwog has done THAt, no one will be getting away with it anymore. Professors read bwog people!
Also, this is the oldest trick there is. Welcome to last century “tipster”
@What do I do about a paper that’s too long?
@you could use garamond
@garamond my verbose self loves garamond.
@Long-winded folks Also change your margins from 1.25 to 1 or smaller
@technically margins are supposed to be 1 inch anyways
@learned foote submitted this.
@... that would make sense, i figured that the wall street journal editorial seemed a little short
@dean yatrakis submitted this, and is waiting with your expulsion papers.
@i've seen inconsistent line spacing when this happens.
another solution is to go to font > character spacing > scale and change from 100% to a bit higher. it’s also pretty obvious to a professor who’s looking for it, but not any more so than the 14 point periods.
@boo sad sad sad. write the friggin paper.
@Bwog, Thank you. Although I might not need this for my current paper, this is brilliant, and so is #4’s idea. Yay for Microsoft Office’s absurdity.
@Hey Bwog all these people are too serious. barack obama used this trick all the time. it’s a columbia tradition
@Hey Bwog The dump called. It wants its trash back.
@can tell I’ve been busted for this. Much better: go through and change all the spaces to size 15 font (Word’s find replace will do it), it’s not as much a boost, but it’s much harder to detect.
@WTF?! Who the hell are you? Who does this?
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we were still in middle school and wrote papers to meet some kind of arbitrary page count. Professors don’t give a shit how many pages your paper is; they care about the strength of the argument and whether they can read it.
Well, except for political science classes.
@hey number 3 wtf who the hell are YOU? have you, I dunno….EVER taken a class here at Columbia? EVERYONE requires page minimums.
@been there this is the oldest trick in the book. works for me every single time
@oh hey it’s your sense of integrity calling. let me know whenever you feel like owning up to your own actions.