If your professor wanted papers longer than 8 pages, s/he could have made the minimum length 9 pages. You’ve met the length requirement, so there’s no reason to mess around with the font. Typically in grad school you are not expected to go on for as long as you possibly can, otherwise instructors would be stuck with a pile of 40+ page papers for every assignment. They want you to say things as briefly as is reasonable.
It’s probably not going to be a big deal either way, but I figure there are two likely reasons why your instructor didn’t specify a font: either s/he takes it for granted that a grad student is going to know that 12-point Times New Roman is the norm, or s/he doesn’t care what font you use as long as it isn’t something totally crazy. If you don’t know the instructor’s intent, it’s safer to assume the former. That way there’s no risk of looking like a rube or a slacker.
Again, it’s unlikely that your font choice will make much difference as long as your paper’s content is solid, but since you don’t actually need to pad the length then why risk annoying your instructor/grader?
When I was an undergrad, the state had just passed some law or rule of some sort that you had to write X number of words or pages or whatever during your undergraduate years. I think it was called the Gordon Rule (Google says that’s correct).
Anyway, I was graduated and went to work at P&G. There they had something called the “One Page Memo”. It was their opinion that anything worth saying should be able to be condensed to one page (sometimes you’d attach supporting documents). Maybe a sort of business version of “Brevity is the soul of wit”. I found it ironic that in school we’d essentially been taught to stretch out our writings, then in real life told to be concise with our ideas.
If I were an instructor I’d probably set an upper limit on the length of a paper, but want to see your ideas communicated as briefly as possible yet still be convincing. If you’re going into academics then perhaps it’s best to be as expansive, but if you’ll be working in a non-academic setting you’ll need to learn to keep it simple yet effective.
I’ve corrected tons of papers and there’s nothing that annoys me more than having to read a paper that is too long. Give me concise and to-the-point papers, please! If anything, I think you’d be hurting your chances of a good grade by making your paper look longer.
When I was taking driver’s ed in high school, we often had to write a summary of one of those classic film strips (similar to “The Decapitation of Larry Leadfoot” and “Alice’s Adventures through the Windshield Glass”). The teacher graded them solely on the length of the paper–less than 1/2 page was an F, and a full page was an A. He couldn’t be bothered to actually read the things.
As pseudotriton ruber ruber notes, you could have fleshed out the paper yourself in the time you’ve devoted to worrying about it here.
I assume, then, that when you took money to write papers for undergraduate cheats, you did them in Pica? Maybe the OP should just email you with a cash offer.
Some of you people are reading way too much into this question. It took a minute to write this OP. How much could I have fleshed out my paper in a minute?
If my memory serves correctly, I didn’t have font and margin requirements until grad school (of course in high school, and part of undergrad, I was using a typewriter).
Wow, you’re kind of a black & white on this!
I’d think it’s only dumb if the teacher has a problem with it. IOW, if you use a 12 font, and 1 & 1/2 inch margins, it can be overlooked. If you’re using a 36 font, and 3 inch margins… maybe no so much.
How is it dumb and obvious? I’m following the margin rules she’s specified (1 inch on all sides) and I’m following the font size she’s specified (12 point).
She did not specify a specific font and the difference between Times New Roman and Arial creates a pretty big difference in total length while still following the rules.
Yes. In the good old days, an “8 to 10 page paper” would have meant 8 to 10 pages typewritten, in whatever font your typewriter used. So, by that logic, if your paper takes up enough pages in a Courier font, I’d say you’ve done your duty.
And if your professor is mentally challenged, he’ll never notice these clever devices, either! Also don’t forget about using super-wide margins. We tend to let all this super-sophisticated stuff elude our notice.
Look at the OP–you’ve always had to try really, really hard to get up to the minimum word-count. That’s your problem, right there. Professional writers almost always have to try really hard to do the exact opposite–we tend to have too damned many ideas requiring much more space than we’re given by our editors, so we’re mentally editing the dumb stuff out as we compose, eliminating fatuous phrases, summarizing tangential ideas–in short, we guard against verbosity, the very quality that your OP complains you have a hard time achieving. Here’s a clue: verbosity is not a virtue. Succinctness is. The funniest complaint I get from students is “I was going to express some really good ideas but I ran out of space,” like I’m going to fail them if they wrote some brilliant stuff but went 150 words over my minimum (read that word again carefully) word count. I usually ask them to point out the spot where they were on the verge of writing a brilliant sentence.
I’ve always interpreted page limits to mean starting the minimum page. That is, an 8-page paper must start to include text on the 8th page. By my interpretation, which has served me well through coursework for 3 degrees, you have already overachieved.
I would not, however, use Arial for a whole paper. In general, body text should be in a serif font like Times New Roman and headline text in a sans-serif font like Arial. It would be visually annoying to read a whole paper in Arial.
I don’t see it as an ethical question. I see it as a tactical question and as a tactic I’d advise against it.
When I was a senior in college, one of the required classes was a seminar that was specifically for the purpose of teaching us how to write term papers for grad school.
When I turned in the rough draft, I was a few pages short of the required length. When the professor returned it to me, he mentioned that I had used an elite typewriter, and he explicitly told me to use a pica typewriter for the specific purpose of stretching the page count.
I was astonished. But if the professor said it was OK, I figured it was OK.
ETA: In another class a professor told me “Your essay is a little short. I’m not going to tell you you need to BS more, but you need to BS more.” Isn’t academia great?
Just from my own experience, when I grade a stack of 40 papers, all with roughly the same margins and font size, the one or two papers with slightly larger margins or larger font size really stand out.
Viewed alone, I would probably not notice the difference. Sitting on my desk with 39 other papers for comparison – yeah, it kind of jumps out at me.
