mini-rant

I've noticed that numbers seem to form the basis of all prose assignments now.

I hear students talking about 'only another 4000 words to go'; job applications 'describe in 200 words'; comments limited to a number of words.

It creates the idea that writing is measured by volume rather than quality - especially in the case of student work. I don't remember ever having this sort of setup; you were asked to write about something and the expectation was that you would cover the topics needed in the style that was appropriate to you and length was irrelevant - you knew from the scope of the exercise whether it was a short response or a lengthy, in-depth one.

I can only assume with job apps that a lot of it is to go into some sort of automated review for keywords etc.

Over.

Posted By: camcan on June 17th 2010 at 11:33:37

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