[MTS]

Their fault for setting the assignment.

[Valgard]

Having marked a fair whack of paper and stuff in the part all I can say is thank you to people that actually stick to the word count as it makes my life much easier. There is nothing I hate more than wading through 5000 words when all you were meant to write is 1500. It is a complete waste of my time I have much better things to do such as spending time on here.

I also hate reading through the absolute drivel some people write for essays it is so annoying these people obviously haven't understood anything about the subject they are writing on.

Although when I was an undergrad I worked out that the best way of doing an essay that always got good grades was to take a paper and use that as your basis, then you reference where they reference so it looks like you used a lot more references than you actually did.

Currently can't do that as the PhD is different and needs more knowledge of the subject than the one paper can give you so more work is required.

[MTS]

In my course we lose marks if we go over the word limit - for philosophy I think it is 2% of our grade was deducted for every 500 words over the limit, and in Classics it is 5%. I think it's 'cos lecturers and tutors are sick to death of reading more than they have to, and it also makes the papers more even, in that whoever can enunciate their point better in the same amount of words gets the better grade, rather can who can say the most.

[Tiste Simeon]

What I always wanted to do when I was a student (I feel pretty old saying that!) and randomly put in a stupid joke/swear word/piece of erotic fiction in the middle of a sentence to see if anyone is actually reading it. I always wanted to do it and she caressed the strangers breasts, moaning softly, but was always too chicken to actually do it...

[Aptorian]

I once put in a rather obscene joke about a former priminister in a big assignment. My teacher was NOT amused.