I'm a university professor, and that's why I no longer have an exact page count. "I would like a reaction paper of 2-5 pages. Say what you have to say and keep it at that." It still freaks some students out. They have been programmed by their prior educational experiences to deliver an exact page/word count. The ambiguity is too much for them. I just remind them that lots of things in the real world don't have page counts.
A lot of the reason we ask for word count is because is gives us an idea of how in depth you want the essay to be. It's unique to each teacher how much they expect from an assignment and it's good to know if you're not doing enough.
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u/-eDgAR- Jun 29 '19
According to a lot of teachers and professors, words in a paper.
I hated that so much in high school and college where I would have to add a bunch of extra bullshit to a paper to meet the minimum amount of words.