How To Make Your Writing Longer

When you're writing a school paper and you've been researching and typing for what feels like ages but you still haven't reached your teacher's required page count, you start to get a little...desperate. In other words, you get a little creative while trying to hit the requirement, whether it's playing Microsoft Word gymnastics with different fonts and spacing or getting super fluffy with your descriptions. Still a few pages behind the limit? Don't worry, because I've got some tips to help you make elongate your paper so you can move on to more important things.

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1. Make sure you included everything you were supposed to. Before I give you the real hacks (and don't worry, I have plenty of those), look back at the rubric and make sure you included everything the teacher asked of you. If you forgot a whole section focusing on the counter argument that could be the reason why your paper is 2 pages shorter than the requirement.

Iguana, Organism, Parakeet, Amphibian, Reptile, Space, Fictional character,

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2. Load up on transitional phrases. Your paper isn't long enough, therefore it may be necessary to add some transitional phrases because they take up space. On the other hand, this could make your paper really wordy, however, it may be necessary. See what I did there?

3. Spell out your numbers. This way, a one character "7" becomes a five character "seven," and the bigger the number, the more characters!!

Child, Toddler, Product, Play, Toy, Ear, Smile, Baby,

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4. Ditch the contractions. Honestly, you probably should not even be using contractions in a formal essay, so if you're filling up your paper with don'ts, won'ts, and can'ts, switch them out for do not, will not, and cannot.

5. Make your header way longer than necessary. No detail should be spared. Put your Twitter and Insta handle if you must!

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6. Make your spacing larger. Your teacher def won't be able to tell the difference between double spacing and 2.5 spacing. *fingers crossed*

7 . While you're at it, expand the spacing between the characters. Yes, I'm talking between each and every letter.

8. Raise the font size from 12pt to 12.5pt. Shhhhhhh. Nobody has to know!

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9. Make all periods and commas 14pt. It sounds tedious, but simply command-f and search for the period, that way you can change all of them at once.

10. Put extra space around your (super long and bolded) title. It needs some space to shine and breathe, obvs.

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11. Change the font. You can't get too crazy or else your teacher will call you out, so you stick with something super similar to Times New Roman, but slightly bigger, like Bookman Old Style.

12. Start getting really descriptive about everything. How descriptive can you get about the evolution of electricity, you ask? Well, the answer is: Very. The howling wind gushed passed Benjamin Franklin at 30 mph on that cold, rainy night, pulling the string of his kite taught as it fought to stay in the sky and sent his grey hair flying up in the sky like silvery wisps. Some might say it's a bit much for a science paper, but your page count says:

Face, Facial expression, Skin, Nose, Head, Forehead, Pink, Eyebrow, Cheek, Chin,

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13. Add pointless quotes as filler. A Romeo and Juliet reference would fit perfectly at this point in my Biology research paper, right?

14. Replace all pronouns. Pronouns are your page count's worst enemy. Case in point: "They went to the store." 5 words. "Jennifer, Leslie, Carol, Reggie, DJ, Louise, and Tara's dog Sniffles went to the store." Fourteen totally legitimate words.

Cartoon, Animation, Technology, Animated cartoon, Vehicle, Toy, Car, Team, Games,

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15. Make your margins bigger. You have to be careful about the left and right margins, and the top can be tricky, but the bottom margin, you can practically make it as big as you want. And then you can...

16. Add a fancy footer with page numbers. Obviously, your teacher will appreciate your attention to detail and presentation.

17. Add a header with the title of your paper to every single page. Just in case your teacher forgets what your paper is about. You only want to help.

Hair, Facial expression, Nose, Hairstyle, Chin, Forehead, Smile, Happy, Neck, Brown hair,

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18. Make a separate cover page. Technically, the syllabus didn't say it couldn't count as page one.

Motor vehicle, Vehicle, Fictional character, Luxury vehicle, Obi-wan kenobi, Car, Photo caption, Subcompact car,

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19. But then your paper usually ends up looking like this:

Text, Font, Line, Document, Paper, Number, Parallel,

And you end up having to go back to stage one and actually figure out more stuff to write to reach the page count. But, you're leaving the font size at 12.5pt. That's just a given.

Noelle Devoe Entertainment Editor When I'm not holed up in my room going on a completely unproductive Netflix binge or Tumblr stalking Timothée Chalomet, I'm searching for awesome celeb news stories that Seventeen readers will love!

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