a lot of three-paragraph posts don’t take nearly as much work (and I think don’t do nearly as much good) as a few five-page papers.
Most of your post makes sense, but I thought length minimums were widely considered a perverse incentive. If I make a three-paragraph post to a forum, the first draft was probably a lot longer; I wasn’t saving myself work by cutting it down.
They’re definitely a perverse incentive in terms of getting quality output, but in terms of writing practice I am not so sure. Certainly each additional paragraph is harder to write than the last, and my intuition tells me that this means that a medium-length paper provides some kind of practice/mental workout that a three-paragraph post does not. Of course it depends on how much fluff and bullshit your particular instructor allows in an essay (not that bullshitting isn’t also a useful skill).
Most of your post makes sense, but I thought length minimums were widely considered a perverse incentive. If I make a three-paragraph post to a forum, the first draft was probably a lot longer; I wasn’t saving myself work by cutting it down.
They’re definitely a perverse incentive in terms of getting quality output, but in terms of writing practice I am not so sure. Certainly each additional paragraph is harder to write than the last, and my intuition tells me that this means that a medium-length paper provides some kind of practice/mental workout that a three-paragraph post does not. Of course it depends on how much fluff and bullshit your particular instructor allows in an essay (not that bullshitting isn’t also a useful skill).