How to Cheat the Word Count

Many of the students I teach are finishing off their dissertations at the moment.

Recently I also had to submit a written paper to be assessed, for a teaching qualification. Previously, whenever I had to write long essays, or a BA dissertation, the mere thought of a minimum word count filled me with dread. This time, instead of worrying about the minimum word count, I had to be careful not to exceed the limit of 4250. In the end I honed it down–(without cheating) to 4249.

Since the paper had to be submitted as a Microsoft Word ".doc" document it occurred to me that,–if I was willing to take the risk, I could write as many or as few words as I liked (within reason). If I wrote too many words I could hyphenate lots of them and make the hyphens white; (essentially rendering them invisible)–or if the word count was too low I could add lots of white; text.–For-example if you-select this-sentence and-paste it-into Word-you’ll find-that it-adds up-to 21-words (half-its actual-count) whereas-if you-select what-appears to-be empty-space below-you’ll have-1000 words.

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However if you’re a student, I wouldn’t advise using this technique –-your teachers may have read this blog too!