Can you make a 2.25 page document shrink to fit 2 pages?

[cdedrick]

How do you shrink a document to make it fit? I have a 2 page paper due and
it comes out to be 2.25 pages. Without reducing the font size is there a
simple way to reduce the document to 2 pages?

Thanks

 

[Kenneth]

How do you shrink a document to make it fit? I have a 2 page paper due and
it comes out to be 2.25 pages. Without reducing the font size is there a
simple way to reduce the document to 2 pages?

Thanks

Howdy,

Depending on how you have things set now...

You might be able to do it with a combination of
manipulation of the margins, and line spacing.

All the best,

 

[Joe McGuire]

There are a number of ways. Editing, a/k/a pruning is the time-honored way.
As Shakespeare had Polonius remind us, "Brevity is the soul of wit." Could
that be the basis for the page limit? Presumably your prof did not set that
limit for purely selfish, if understandable, reasons, like "they don't pay
me enough to read more than 2 pages of student prose."

You could also take the legalistic approach, toss away the spirit of the
requirement in favor of the letter. It's the Gotcha approach to higher
education. You might shrink the spacing between lines or even the spacing
between characters to create at least the appearance of brevity, presuming
his or her prescriptions were vague enough to allow wiggle room. And maybe
there is a way to argue that the 2 page requirement did not so clearly
specify that only one side of the page was to be used. Narrower margins on
all four sides of the paper could be the basis for a free speech argument.
After all, you worked very hard on all those words, even the excess ones.

(Warning: Trying this on a hapless proff might be somewhat amusing. Should
your clever arguments get you through law school, trying to sidestep a page
limit with such shenanigans in a court of law could land you in some serious
trouble.)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

See http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/FitCopy.htm

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The courts can indeed be very sticky. I consulted on a case where a
plaintiff was suing on the basis that the defendant's brief was not as brief
as it should have been because the lawyers had used Exactly 24 points line
spacing instead of Double.

 

[Joe McGuire]

Wow. Talk about hyper-technical! I'm not totally sure I could make such an
argument with a straight face. In my experience the best briefs I have seen
have been, well, surprisingly brief. In my first real law job--as a deputy
attorney general, I proudly submitted a laboriously crafted draft of a brief
to oneof my mentors, himself the author of many successful Supreme Court
briefs. Thought I'd learn from a master. The result: Fully a third of the
brief disappeared! O the pain!.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

In this case I think the attorney lost, but he had contacted me on the basis
of reading http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/BottomLine.htm (I think that's
the one), in which I say that IMO "double" spacing is too spacey for point
sizes above 10 pts, and that Exactly 24 points is the equivalent of double
spacing on a typewriter. If the rules for briefs had been created during the
typewriter era and not updated for the computer age, he might have gotten
away with maintaining that 24 points was effectively "double" spacing, but
in fact the regulations were quite new and specified the font size (no
smaller than 12 points IIRC) and spacing, though they did NOT specify the
font, and I did point out that using a different font could drastically
affect the amount of text in the number of pages specified as the maximum.

I also stated my (totally uncalled-for and unwelcome) opinion that it would
make a lot more sense for the court to specify a word or character limit
rather than a page limit (since both statistics are easily obtained in
today's word processing software). None of this cut any ice with the court,
alas.