That’s one reason I loved my ethics professor. For our final project, someone asked if there was a minimum page count.
He said, “Nope. If you think you can fully cover the topic in one page, you’re free to take that risk.”
We also had to do chapter outlines that had to fall within a range of 5 lines, which was usually just slightly over 1 page. It was far more challenging to fit the summary into such a small space, and it was way more beneficial to us than having a minimum requirement.
Kids these days with llms will never know the struggle of filling a word / page count .
Filler language will be a lost art, that hereto for, will not be practiced by our posterity in the coming generations of chatgpt indoctrinated youths. I do indeed struggle to weep for its demise though.
Screw filler language. Increase the font size of all punctuation by 1pt.
Some teachers caught on so we had to go to 12.5. Could always fuck with margins, line spacing and kerning to make up for it, though!
Ours caught on to the line spacing and margins part which is why I switched to punctuation size. Kerning is one they never picked up on, though.
W e t h o u g h t w e w e r e s o c l e v e r .
That’s an art, I for the love of god, could never get. Why use many word when few word do job?
Ah, the beauty of verbosity lies in remembering to smell the roses along your travels. What good is it to forgo the meandering path, playing in the sun’s warmth with your prose along the road less traveled? Take the time to water your garden of verbiage, and revel in the beauty as it begins to bear fruit! Merely dipping your toes into the sea of writing may feel cold and fleeting, but you’ll be surprised how much that can change when you decide to take the leap—to swim heatedly amongst the current.
I could’ve also said “writing is fun when you spend more time with it,” but that doesn’t feel the same, does it? We don’t have to constrain ourselves to the gray doldrums of a grocery list when we use our voices in writing. We can choose to spread our wings; we can choose to have fun, to make art.
Oh I completely agree and saw what you were doing. Just not something I could do. Could never fill a page limit without doing analysis or something else. Always awe-d me tbh. I guess language isn’t my art maybe and that’s fine.
It depends on how much you’re expressing with it. There’s a difference between being concise and not having anything to say. I think the former is a great virtue. Whittling your text down to the minimum which can still convey what you want forces you to really understand the content. Of course, if you want to add emotional depth you’ll still need more words than you would for raw information.
Yeah, that’s very true. Writing should be structured, concise, and flow well, as opposed to being a disjointed mess of empty paragraphs. It’s not that more words is inherently better, but more of a reminder that writing can be a fun and creative activity, and you can impart that joy onto others too. I actually left a pretty big hole in my reply for the sake of humor, which is the overarching context of the meme being a school assignment. You addressed it thoughtfully, but I was waiting for a silly response along the lines of:
Sir, this is a 6th grade essay about George Washington.
Arbitrarily shoving words where they don’t belong, into a premise you aren’t interested in writing about, isn’t ever going to be a fun time. If anything, it might put folks off of writing in the same way that dry school book assignments can for reading. When you spend more time with writing though, something you’re generally interesting in talking about, more words tend to come out—and that’s usually a good thing! Concise is not inherently minimalist, nor is it required to be devoid of emotion. Find your voice, let the words flow, and you’ll likely end up painting a more complete picture of what you want to convey.
Bring back in person essay and short answer exams. Pencil to paper. Technology started to solve problems that didn’t exist when kids started getting their own laptops in schools. We were fine having them at home and in the library. Classrooms were for thinking, learning, reading, and writing. The physical act of writing helps to digest and internalize thoughts and ideas. You betcha you’ll remember something more reliably if you write it down instead of typing it.
My favorite one was increasing the font size for the ending dot on all paragraphs .
So subtle and efortless to do yet very practical.
Who is mikey
You should not use contractions in essays anyway
Perchance
Ya’d’nt?
is the correct form y’all’dn’t’ve or y’all’d’ven’t
What if it’s an essay on the use of contractions in modern society?
It is*
Or the first person
Thou shalt not count to four, thou shalt not count to two unless proceeding to three
When/where I was in school, that wouldn’t have counted. They counted only words >= 3 letters and excluded ‘the’.
I’m not so sure people writing essays know that’s a thing unless AI tells them so.
What a weird comment
Sorry. It seemed to make sense at the time.
