Tips to Make a Paper Longer (using page length requirements)

When you get an essay or writing assignment, there are almost always minimum or maximum requirements, so your teacher can ensure you don’t submit either a sticky note, or a full-length book for your research paper on dragonflies or whatever. When teachers set these requirements, they usually base it on either word count or page count to keep student submissions fairly standard. But let’s be here, we’re not all English majors. Even when you are an English major, you don’t always care about the topic enough to be able to write that full 3-page or 1500 word minimum. That’s where this list comes in handy. Having lived through some of the dullest essays known to man, I have been able to pick up on some handy tricks that might just save you the next time you’re out of things to write.

This post will specifically cover how to meet a page limit requirement. If your teacher gave you a word limit minimum, or if they have picked a set font, try my post on meeting word counts.

Also, please note that this article is assuming a few things. Usually when teachers do page counts, they’re asking for single spaced papers. Out of all the page count essays I’ve had to write, only one or two of them have been double spaced. If your paper is double spaced, then clearly some of these tips will need to be adjusted. Also, usually page count prompts are laxer with the font type. If yours is not, then hey, maybe that tip won’t work for you, but still look at the others because they might. Finally, I shouldn’t have to say this, but I am anyway: teachers are going to be more focused on content than page length. If you meet the minimum requirements but still failed the paper, don’t come crying to me, learn to be a better writer.

Now, without further ado, the tips:

Tip 1: Spacing

It’s pretty standard for teachers to specify single or double spaced. Typically, when they specify single spaced, they just don’t want double spaced, or vice versa. They’re not going to hunt you down if yours is the tiniest more spaced than someone else’s paper, but they might if it’s like 1.5 spacing or so. My work around for this is to just add a little extra space. Just the tiniest bit to give it that extra push. Try jumping up from single spaced to 1.15 spacing. See the difference:

Here we have the standard text

And here we have 1.15 spacing

The words are still tight together, but the small change has added quite a few extra lines.

Tip 2: Margin size

This kind of goes with spacing, but it doesn’t do as much damage. Playing with margin size should really only be saved for times when you’re really desperate for another line or two, if it’s a longer paper, or if it’s a matter of pushing a paragraph onto the next line. Like the regular spacing, you’re going to just add an extra decimal point of a change. Papers usually default to 1 inch spacing on all sides, but if you push in each side to 1.1 inch margins, that compression pushes the paper down into another page. Here you can see the change from one page to one and two lines:

As I said before, it’s not a lot of change, but in combination with other techniques or in very desperate situations, it can be a life saver.

Tip 3: Font Type

If your teacher doesn’t care enough to figure out how many words they want, chances are they aren’t uptight about fonts. If they don’t specify what they want in the prompt or syllabus, or if they say something like “any serif font” or “Times New Roman or similar,” then you’re in luck. Here are some great fonts that are a little bit larger and add those extra lines while remaining professional:

Palatino Linotype

Bookman Old Style

Sitka Text

If you ever have the opposite problem where you’re over the page count, try Garamond, Centaur, or Perpetua.

Tip 4: Font size

Most people have heard the tip to change the punctuation size to the next size up. It’s tedious and works by increasing the spacing, so you’re better off just changing the spacing, but I’ll include it anyway.

If you combine all 4 tips together in your paper, you can expand it to almost twice as long, as demonstrated here:

Original

All techniques

If you still need to add more, try the word count tips, or maybe you know your topic better lol.