# 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:** 2
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 12:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/21 "2011-01-22T12:09:08Z")
Does translation count? Because I’ve done some 200+ page documents; mostly financial statements and stuff. Other than that, the longest thing I ever wrote for college was 15,000 words. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/22 "2011-01-22T12:47:07Z")
PhD dissertation was well over 100 pages. ---
**Author:** ![Student\_Driver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3da27b/32.png) [@Student\_Driver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Student_Driver)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/23 "2011-01-22T13:56:37Z")
Just for undergrad… I had a group project for a business writing class that was about 75 pages (and the project instituted some much-needed changes in a university program, so the work wa worthwhile), and my math capstone (a statistical analysis of an approach to teaching a symbolic logic course to math-phobic students, which reinforced the status quo in the end) was 165 pages or so. The math capstone ended up being bound in leatherette for at least one presentation, which made me feel pretty cool. ---
**Author:** ![auRa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@auRa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/auRa)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/24 "2011-01-22T14:13:38Z")
My Master’s thesis is ~110 pages, I probably need to trim it down 10 or so. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/25 "2011-01-22T14:22:32Z")
20 pages or so. A training document for new hires at a GIS data conversion shop. ---
**Author:** ![Waxwinged](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@Waxwinged](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waxwinged)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/26 "2011-01-22T15:30:17Z")
Graduate thesis of 50 pages, currently working on a fiction story/(essay?) that’s going on 200. ---
**Author:** ![Panurge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@Panurge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Panurge)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/27 "2011-01-22T15:32:45Z")
Master’s thesis was 165 pages + appendices (around 90 pages, IIRC). This was the maximum limit for size at the time (it’s even lower now). I had to cut out around 100 pages. ---
**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, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/28 "2011-01-22T16:29:52Z")
> [@Waxwinged](#): > > Graduate thesis of 50 pages, currently working on a fiction story/(essay?) that’s going on 200. Fiction/stories/books don’t count as papers for the purpose of this poll. ---
**Author:** ![wheresmymind](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/91b2a8/32.png) [@wheresmymind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wheresmymind)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/29 "2011-01-22T16:42:08Z")
Master’s thesis was about 100 pages, although that includes ~10 pages of charts, figures, tables etc, and a similar amount of works cited. In addition, the first 10 pages or so are all standard title pages, table of contents, etc. The required formatting stretched it out too - double spaced, big margins, chapter/section titles, etc. It was actually pretty short and sweet as far as theses go. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/30 "2011-01-22T16:44:14Z")
Dang. I was thinking my master’s thesis projects, which consisted of two research papers of not more than 20 pages each. But then I remembered the project for the collection development class, which was about 55 pages long. So now my vote is wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/31 "2011-01-22T16:45:54Z")
Guess I win so far…my D.Phil dissertation at Oxford was 316 pages. More impressive to me, I suppose, was that it contained over 1,000 footnotes. ---
**Author:** ![stpauler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@stpauler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stpauler)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/32 "2011-01-22T16:47:46Z")
My longest was 30 pages in a foreign language (German) about the environmental effects of the reunification of Germany. In hindsight, I am amazed how much research I did without the internet back in 1991. Not sure I’d be up for that these days. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/33 "2011-01-22T18:37:35Z")
57 pages as a Word Document, 22 as published in a journal. I’m not counting the dissertation since it’s just a collection of published papers. ---
**Author:** ![WarmNPrickly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d78d45/32.png) [@WarmNPrickly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WarmNPrickly)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/34 "2011-01-22T18:40:57Z")
> [@Duke](#): > > Guess I win so far…my D.Phil dissertation at Oxford was 316 pages. > > More impressive to me, I suppose, was that it contained over 1,000 footnotes. You know, a woman I graduated with had a \>400 page dissertation until you looked at it. It was about 350 pages of computational and crystallographic data printed out in the prescribed format. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/35 "2011-01-22T18:43:37Z")
I had to write a 25 page paper when I was a sophomore in high school. In two more years of high school and countless college classes since then, I don’t think I’ve ever been required to write something even half that long. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/36 "2011-01-22T18:45:35Z")
^^ Hey, tables don’t count. 😃 My thesis was ~120 or so. However, I heard somewhere that novels are 50k+ words. 30k-50k would be classified as a “novella,” while under 30k would be “short story.” (Something like that, don’t have a seizure.) So, I tried to see how long I could get a story, and it’s not easy. I believe I gave up at ~35k words. ~250 words/page, that’s around 140. ---
**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, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/37 "2011-01-22T18:50:39Z")
> [@Duke](#): > > Guess I win so far…my D.Phil dissertation at Oxford was 316 pages. > > More impressive to me, I suppose, was that it contained over 1,000 footnotes. I’m over at my mother’s house, where my dissertation is kept enshrined (God knows I don’t want to see it again), and it’s 317 pages. 😛 However, you win with the footnotes! I received my PhD from the second grad school I attempted; I left the first one because my would-be advisor there was certifiable. He was proud of the fact that he accepted no less than 500 pages for a dissertation, and that one guy had managed a _three volume_ dissertation (somewhere in the vicinity of 800 pages)\* :eek: From what I understand, around 300 is really the limit for humanities’ PhD things; as one colleague put it, ‘No newly minted grad student has more than 300 pages’ worth of stuff to say.’ \*According to student legend, the student who did this only did it to take the piss, and to prove that the advisor was useless. Dunno, I can think of other ways to prove a point – like bailing out of the program for a better one, as many other students had done! ---
**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, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/38 "2011-01-22T18:54:13Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > However, I heard somewhere that novels are 50k+ words. 30k-50k would be classified as a “novella,” while under 30k would be “short story.” (Something like that, don’t have a seizure.) > > So, I tried to see how long I could get a story, and it’s not easy. I believe I gave up at ~35k words. ~250 words/page, that’s around 140. Stories don’t count, though, which is why I’ve omitted the 100,000 word/300 page story I’m still working on etc. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/39 "2011-01-22T20:04:21Z")
I think my longest paper in university clocked in at around 75 pages, double-spaced, with footnotes. My longest article was around 65 pages, double-spaced, with footnotes. If I’m remembering correctly, my longest brief, filed with a court, was over 100 pages; double-spaced, but no footnotes - cites were included in the text. ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2011, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534/40 "2011-01-22T20:20:37Z")
The longest paper I wrote by myself was about 15 pages. Groups which I have been part of have written far longer papers than that, however. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-longest-paper-youve-ever-written/568534.md?page=3)