# What's the longest paper you've ever written? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 22, 2011, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534 "2011-01-22T02:52:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/1 "2011-01-22T02:52:27Z")
Be it for a class or a job or just for fun, what is the longest paper/essay you’ve ever written? ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/2 "2011-01-22T02:57:52Z")
For class or work? Not too long, just 15 pages or so. ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/3 "2011-01-22T02:57:52Z")
I’ve authored several engineering documents that have gone over 300 pages, and a collection of personal anecdotes that is a cumulative 175 pages in length. ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/4 "2011-01-22T02:59:41Z")
My dissertation was 225 pages. (Heh. First said “225 words” which is a pretty standard length for the things I write these days.) ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/5 "2011-01-22T03:17:42Z")
PhD dissertation was around 300 pages. I have a draft of a paper right now that I wrote in one long session last weekend (first draft, mind) that clocked in at 29 pages double spaced when I came up for air (about 3 solid hours of writing). It will be tightened and edited down on the one hand as a 20 minute conference paper (so a lot of editing) and tightened and fleshed out as a publication (so a lot of editing, but in reverse). Am editing a paper for publication that is currently 65 pages, again double spaced, that will be edited down to 8,000 words or so. There’s another paper I’ve got floating around that’s somewhere around the 50 or 60 page mark, but that one will probably be split into two otherwise it’s going to go from being too long for an article, and too short for a book. Actually, anymore I have to think in word-count rather than page length, as publishing requirements range anywhere from 900 words (short book review) to a max of 8,000-10,000 words (journal article.) I enjoy researching, writing, and editing – which is good, considering what I do for a living! – and I have to admit sometimes being a bit surprised that I can write copious amounts quite easily and with much enjoyment, considering I was ‘that kid’ in grade school who wrote really big, with poetry margins, every other line, front of the page only, and still struggled to write five page essays. As I tell my students, while long papers look impressive, the ones with the shorter word count requirements are more challenging. If I assign a three-page paper, I want roughly three pages, not 50! PS Dunno if this counts as a ‘paper’ but God knows how long my diary is, as I have kept it daily since 1 January 1976 (and a couple of aborted diaries in 1974 and 1975 (about half a year for the latter). ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/6 "2011-01-22T03:20:58Z")
I think 26-50 is the longest for actual writing, for work. Plenty of my reports/papers also have a lot of attached charts and graphs and things like that, which sometimes push them up to about 100 pages, but I’m not counting those because it’s not as if I have to sit there and think about how to write them. I work in education, so most of my longer work writing is documenting some sort of issue related to policy and then making recommendations, and depending on the project, I’ll go into different levels of detail. For most, the recommendations are more general, so the typical paper is probably more like 10 pages. The long ones are when part of the assignment is to propose the actual operational structure of how the recommendations would be implemented. Yeah, it’s about as interesting as it sounds. I don’t think (I hope) many people read them from beginning to end, it’s more like creating a record so that other staff members can refer to the sections that impact their offices. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/7 "2011-01-22T03:24:09Z")
Wrote and published a guidebook to China that was a couple of hundred pages. Does that count? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/8 "2011-01-22T03:28:17Z")
I’ve written several white papers that were over a hundred pages. When I was a programmer/analyst I regularly wrote documentation that was over a hundred pages (and this doesn’t include the code). -XT ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/9 "2011-01-22T03:40:28Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > Wrote and published a guidebook to China that was a couple of hundred pages. Does that count? I think writing a book falls into a different category of writing than papers/essays. ---
**Author:** ![ErinPuff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dbc845/32.png) [@ErinPuff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ErinPuff)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/10 "2011-01-22T03:43:20Z")
My undergrad thesis was about 160 pages. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/11 "2011-01-22T03:59:34Z")
My master’s thesis was about 65 pages. I have a copy sitting on my shelf in my office, mocking me 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/12 "2011-01-22T04:06:11Z")
I once wrote a 33 page report for work but some of it was maps and diagrams. ---
**Author:** ![rhubarbarin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eb9ed0/32.png) [@rhubarbarin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rhubarbarin)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/13 "2011-01-22T04:12:54Z")
I’ve never written a paper - I didn’t do schoolwork growing up (barely flunked my way to the 11th grade, then left). ---
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/14 "2011-01-22T04:14:13Z")
Dissertation was 224 pages. And I still wanted to write more. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kapri](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4491bb/32.png) [@kapri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kapri)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/15 "2011-01-22T04:22:20Z")
My Master’s thesis was about 65 pages long. I’ve also written quite a few books, ranging from 48 to about 220 pages long, but when I voted I didn’t think they counted as “papers,” even though they are nonfiction and required tons of research. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/16 "2011-01-22T04:39:17Z")
I wrote a couple school papers that were around 20 pages or so. I don’t think I’ve ever needed to produce anything longer than 3 or 4 pages since I entered the workforce. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/17 "2011-01-22T04:59:26Z")
My master’s degree is in a non-academic topic, so I didn’t have to write a thesis. yay! God forbid I should ever go back to graduate school. The longest paper I had a hand in was a 30-page original research paper into anti-human trafficking policy in the Philippines. My research group had five people, so the truth is that I only wrote about a fifth of the paper, but it was still wayyyyyy more work than any other paper I’ve ever written, since we actually went to the Philippines and interviewed government officials and NGO representatives and that sort of thing. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/18 "2011-01-22T06:05:49Z")
In high school, my English teacher one year allowed us to do an extra credit book report. Minimum six pages for X points and each additional page was worth additional points. He has some format where you had to describe each character physically, emotionally, spiritually, etc etc. The first semester I was failing the class and wrote a 65 page book report (I sort of cheated and wrote it on a trilogy). Went from an F to an A well above the point ceiling. Hand written on college rule too, for whatever it’s worth. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 7:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/19 "2011-01-22T07:15:16Z")
My Ph.D. disseratation was over 100 pages. I’ve written quite a few reports over 25 pages, and several over 50. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/20 "2011-01-22T10:07:08Z")
I’ve certainly written technical manuals and textbooks that have run up to 300 pages, but I think the longest academic paper I’ve ever written was about 35 pages. So I picked the 26 to 50 page option. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534.md?page=2)