As I work through the research papers of my students this term, I notice that the Europeans play with font size and margins just like the American students do… with this little change.
My students here have chosen to decrease the font size, and they have made the margins closer to a half-inch than to 1.25 inches. Also, instead of doublespacing, as I had asked, they have all chosen 1.5 line spacing. The result is that they have all produced longer papers, although they have managed to fit them within the uppermost limits that I prescribed.
What a switch!
Of course, I will not penalize this little deception. Most are not used to doing papers, and are more used to doing an oral exam at the end of the term that makes up 100% of their grade. Knowing this, and seeing the fear in their eyes at the beginning of term when I said that I expected a written paper, I kept the number of prescribed pages in a low range so as not to burden them on their first attempt. Now I find that every student has done more than expected.
Oh yes, there is an one American in the class. When I gave the assignment at the start of the Fall Term, he came to me and asked if he could write a longer paper, since the amount of pages seemed a little to short for him according to his experience. His paper is the only one with the correct margins, the correct doublespacing (you can see he is an old hand at this), and his paper too is double the length I prescribed.
What can I say? I'm very impressed.
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