#386 Double spacing your essay so it takes up way more pages

Neil Pasricha

Congratulations!

You just doubled the size of your essay in about three seconds.

You get an A for

AWESOME!

69 thoughts to “#386 Double spacing your essay so it takes up way more pages”

  1. See, my teachers require all essays to be double space, so we just increase the size of the punctuation marks by 2pt. It takes up more space than you would think ;D

    1. Ditto to all of the above! It really does expand your paper a lot more than you’d imagine it would.

  3. I simoply hate double spacing, it increases the page count and therefore more pages to read.. you know its all psychological :p

    2. ah, but this all depends on point of view! More pages to read, but much less time needed to write those pages!

      And yeah, all my teachers (except a couple, or for a couple assignments and most of those it’s just a matter of not saying which one they prefer) say double space so that they can mark in the lines or make it easier to read or something. However, now printing double sided makes it waste the same amount of paper, so you’re not killing trees!

      1. Except making it double-sided doesn’t make it waste the same amount of paper, because you could have just as easily made the non-double spaced paper double-sided and saved even more paper.
        -1 for environmentally unfriendly inefficiency.

      1. Dostoevsky used a great deal of dramatic irony throughout Crime & Punishment, as can be well illustrated on pages 4 through 245:

        “[block quotes 2/3rds of the book]”

        In conclusion, Raskolnikov’s spiritual rehabilitation mirrors the potentional for the moral redemption of humanity.

        *picks up phone*

        “Yo dudes.. I finished my essay.. Keg stand at my place in 10 minutes!”

    3. My profs require double spacing, and I always do that absolutely last because although allegedly it’s “easier to read” I literally cannot read anything in fucking double space. It’s like “Where the fuck did the rest of the sentence go? and why is my single paragraph suddenly taking up an entire page? Seriously, line breaks in double space are fucking evil. Trying to do a bibliography for APA is impossible. I can never tell where one line ends and the next begins.

  7. I would always write as much as my paper as possible and then double space it because I felt like I had just failed but then double space and I was done and felt AWESOME!

    1. Haha! My old roomie did this, too! She was like, “No no, seriously, it’s the best to write it all single spaced and then highlight and make it double space … it seems like you wrote so much more in an instant!” She did it every single time she wrote a paper.

  8. I am writing a college paper right now. This puts a smile on my face! I can’t wait until the moment i finish this (probably at 6 am) and double-space it at the very end :)

  10. I can increase mine by tenths of a line and it’s awesome! Its not easy to tell that it’s 2.1 lines, but it can extend the essay by those few extra lines to fill up a page. And on single spaced required essays it’s just as awesome. :)

  11. Writing an essay write now, and if only I was allowed to do it, it would save me so much time! But I have to count my words and 1.5 spacing (close to 2 though)

  12. I totally did this last night/this morning! I had a big philosophy due and ran out of ideas about 2 pages from the minimum assigned. So I just hit the ol’ double space, increased the font size and mission accomplished

  13. All my papers were required to be double spaced (thanks, APA format …), but students are sneaky. I learned lots of underhanded ways to make a paper appear longer. 2.2 spacing, increasing the size of the punctuation, changing the font, making the font 13 instead of 12, increasing the margin size ever-so-slightly, etc.

    Wow, that makes me sound really lazy. Ha! I didn’t usually have a problem meeting the minimum requirements, but when I did, I’d reach into the bag o’ tricks for one of those magical, paper-extending wonders.

    1. Hmmm.. one has to wonder, Laura.. if you spent as much time writing your essay as you spent figuring out all of these tricks… ;)

      I’m just saying!

      (btw: for those of you who’ve managed increasing the size of the punctuation, is there an easy way to do this in Word? I can’t imagine you did this manually).

      1. Yes! Find/replace.

        I really am a super paper writer, for the most part. The problem was never that I couldn’t write enough, more like I’d wait until way too late to start. I never got less than an A on a paper, though … But thanks for the advice, Dad. ;)

        1. Don’t get smart with me.

          I know that when I was your age, we didn’t have this fancy stuff like find/replace.. we just had typewriters and white out, and we were happy!

          I’m just saying that a little hard work never hurt anybody.

          And that lawn isn’t going to mow itself, you know! And do it right, or don’t do it at all.

          Now I don’t want to hear a peep out of you, so I can get 5 minutes of peace and quiet.

          ;)

          Signed,
          Dad

    2. Good idea, but doesn’t work for online classes! I suppose if you save it as a PDF, but instructors like to leave notes on the work so it should stay in Word format- and then voila- busted!

  14. Some of my teachers would give us an option to type or hand write our papers (but they had to be neat). A lot of kids would hand write the papers and write huge. I’m talking like 3 words a line. It took a while for the teachers to give a minimum of so many words instead of pages.

  16. I wish. Am in college atm, all our assignment guidelines state that only 1.5 spacing is appropriate, you actually lose marks (10%) for wrong spacing and paragraphing. Dammit!

  17. …or when your professor doesn’t specify what font you need to use and you can use courier new. makes your paper waaaaaaay longer!

    1. When my professor didn’t specify font, I’d usually go with wingdings..

      That might explain why I didn’t do very well on my papers..

  19. Wonderful! But, might I caution those of you reading that every professor can tell when you change the margins and make a triple space an essay. One inch margins in 12 point font. Seriously!

  20. I wait until the very end of my paper to double space. It gives me a false sense of accomplishment… and I’m okay with that.

  23. I very much dislike double spacing. To me, it feels like cheating… Teachers always ask for size 12 font and double spacing, but sometimes I like to try and get away with size 10 font and .5 spacing… (hee hee)

    1. I agree, because it wastes a lot of paper. But I have too, or else my teacher will take like 10 points off the paper.

  24. I always try to delay this moment as long as possible, so that it gets even more awesome :D

  27. oh gosh justtttt did that haha. finished writing my paper.. clicked the little double space icon on the tool box and BAM haha it looks like i’m oh so productive and verbose. and now i’m here seeing this… makes me incredibly happy. you’re always spot on with these and being able to make me smile. thank you!

  28. sadly, this definitely does not work in university (mine anyway)… but definitely awesome while it lasts, nonetheless! <3

  29. I clearly remember in grade 8 handing in a half page in science class. The teacher asked to expand my answer to make it a full page. I enlarged the font and increased the spacing and voila! I got full marks without adding another word! Awesome!

  30. I usually would change the font from 12 to 12.5 you barely can tell. Also, when I was doing my research project, the book we had to base on had different types of fonts we could use. My whole class figured out that Courier New was the one that took most space, and you could tell everyone was actually using that one.

  32. AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! Gotta disagree with you on this one…

    I teach Philosophy, so I’m more concerned with quality than quantity.

    I HATE when students use up paper for no reason. “WHY ARE YOU KILLING TREES??? The content needs work. You just spread madness and nonsense over three pages instead of two.”

  34. Actually, proper formatting techniques, like those that should be used on any paper for a class, require that the entire document should be double spaced.

  35. For law school, page limits morphed into word limits. BUT, I always write my briefs single spaced until the very end–when I switch it all to double spaced. That last step means my paper is complete. Awesome :)

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  43. I just finished my final for my summer class. It was 16 pages single spaced. It’s an online class and she comments on the paper through word. I can’t use any fancy tricks. :-(

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