#finagling

Finagling

Mac Dictionary's definition:

|fəˈnāgəl|

verb [ with obj. ] informal obtain (something) by devious or dishonest means: Ted attended all the football games he could finagle tickets for. • [ no obj. ] act in a devious or dishonest manner: they wrangled and finagled over the fine points.

DERIVATIVES finagler |fəˈnāg(ə)lər| noun

ORIGIN 1920s (originally U.S.): from dialect fainaigue‘cheat’; perhaps from Old French fornier ‘den

(Note:  We are not endorsing this as a common practice, only as a last resort.  We only do this a maximum of once a semester, and only for ridiculously long and boring papers.  This is also in Microsoft Word settings, but I don't know the Apple equivalent.)

So you have to write something for school/work/whatever.  You've poured your heart and soul into writing this thing, and you've said what you have to say on the subject.  It's a decent length, but your teacher/employer/person insisted it has to be a certain arbitrary page length that you haven't reached yet.  It's the night before and you haven't even started on that thing that's due in two days.  What can you do?  Here are some simple steps to follow:

Pre-steps)  Are you positively sure you said absolutely everything there is to say?  Go back and make sure you can't stretch things out more.  Lose the contractions, spell out your numbers when you can, and extend your sentences as much as you can while still making sense.  The fewer of these you can use, the more likely you'll get away with it.

1)  Are you supposed to use a certain font?  If not, replace the font for one that has wider letters.  For example, instead of Times New Roman, use Cambria, Arial, or Bookman Old Style.  This can add over a page.

2)  Go through your paper and make all of your punctuation a size larger.  This makes the spaces between lines bigger.  It's not much for a single line, but it can accumulate over several pages.

3)  Change your font spacing settings to make the spaces between letters wider.  0.3 is about as large as you can get before it's obvious.

4)  Last resort:  Adjust your margins so they're just slightly larger than usual.  Anything up to 1.15" on all sides is barely noticeable, but will quickly push words down the page.  However, this is a trick that easily caught because it's popularly known.

Now turn in your paper and move on to the next thing.