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[Escaped Lunatic]

I never created original papers for anyone, but my editing skills earned quite a good reputation.  When asked, "Can you lengthen or shorten it?" I always told my clients to keep their version between 1/2 and twice as long as the target and I'd make it fit the desired page count perfectly while keeping all my little adjustments subtle enough to pass any quick checks on margins, line spacing, etc. that the smarter professors would do with a ruler.

Some years later, MS Word introduced a "make it fit" feature that pretty much automated all my careful adjustments, leaving me with only grammar, spelling, and rewording to worry about.

[gzwriter]

EL, I think you're talking about MS Word for Windows version 1.0, circa 1992.

[MK]

Do they really state assignment length in 'number of pages' in the US?  In the UK it's almost always number of words (and you can be penalized for using the wrong font/size).

[Fozzwaldus]

Do they really state assignment length in 'number of pages' in the US?  In the UK it's almost always number of words (and you can be penalized for using the wrong font/size).

Yes, but that's because the British are monosyllabic and you have to set minimum word-counts. Americans can say twice as much with half the words. Just one of the myriad idiosyncrasies.

Uh... hmm... not a very nice comment or am I reading snipey-ness into an attempt at humour?

Man I wish I'd read that hockey thread before it was shut down 

[dragonsaver]

Hopefully it was humour      

However, it was definitely 

[Escaped Lunatic]

EL, I think you're talking about MS Word for Windows version 1.0, circa 1992.

Sounds about right.  I did my edits in WordPerfect 4.2 and 5.1.   

Do they really state assignment length in 'number of pages' in the US?  In the UK it's almost always number of words (and you can be penalized for using the wrong font/size).

If it's turned in on paper instead of on disk, pages are a lot easier to count than words.  Of course, they'd check for the obvious - 13 point type, 1.5" margins, etc.  The professors never checked for 12.1 type, 2.05 or 2.1 line spacing, 1.1" margins, or ever-so-slightly increased spaces between letters.

[CaseyOrourke]

When I was in college, most professors set guidelines for their papers. 12 to 14 Calibri or New Times Roman font,single sided and double spaced.  We had a choice of footnotes or an annotated bibliography, but I found that they preferred the bibliography (they could remove or copy it and check the references as they read).  Since they knew how many words was on a page with those fonts, number of pages was easier to calculate.