Slackers of the World UNITE!

With school back in full swing, it will soon be essay writing season, and if you're like me, you procrastinate to the last minute.

When writing a paper on a procrastinator's schedule, it becomes increasingly important to make the work look not only un-rushed, but well thought out, because as you and I both know, the idea of doing your work in a timely fashion is completely ridiculous.

I have come up with a set of tips that will use space on a paper in the most effective ways.

Just think of me as your procrastinating enabler!

Tip 1: Margins Margins Margins

If you bring in your margins by a quarter of an inch, you can save almost a whole word per line. You have a line that would look like this:Today I fought a 4 foot tall leprechaun that screamed "your soup will be mine!" before he stole my wallet.

To a line that looks like this:

Today I fought a 4 foot tall leprechaun that screamed "your soup will be mine!" before he stole my wallet.

Remember, the key is subversion.

Tip 2: It's Still Legal

It is standard procedure to type your paper in size 12 font, but if you increase it by a half, it will hardly be noticeable. But as slacker wisdom would have it: if you're going to make the font size 12.5, then you're also going to want to make the punctuation 14.5, just to keep everything even.

Tip 3: Spacing Between Sentences

If you're a procrastinator, you should use your space bar as liberally as possible without making it look like the words are floating on an essay wasteland.

Tip 4: Change Lettering

This tip is one that will change the casual slacker into a full-blown procrastination artist. Times New Roman has been a standard, but now there are literally thousands of choices in fonts to choose from. Why should we be limited to just one?

The answer is we shouldn't. We should be free to choose whatever size font we like. The key is to find a font that will look like the dreaded Times New Roman, but be slightly larger. A good place to start is with the fonts entitled Book Antiqua and Palatino Linotype, and go from there.

Tip 5: Vocab , Get Some!

Now I know this tip seems quite un-slacker of me, but it works and it also helps to make an essay look well thought out and well constructed. Your best bet is to go and dust off your SAT prep book and look through it.

There are some useful words that you could use; some even have multiple syllables. Instead of quickly jotting down a word like "good," you could eloquently write the word "extraordinary." I should also mention that the cesspool known as the Internet has a plethora of great thesaurus-type resources, but it really comes down to which is easier for you.

Tip 6: Be Punctual

The greatest tip I could possibly give is to address the punctuation at the end of sentences. It is expected that you will type out your paper in size 12 font, but when it comes to the periods, exclamation points, and question marks at the end of sentences, you have a little more leeway.

Instead of having a period that's size 12, change it to size 14. Now depending on how lazy you're feeling that day, you can go larger.

With all these paper-changing techniques, a teacher may wonder why your paper looks slightly different. The best excuse is the most simple and slightly true one: I always say I have a different word processor than what everyone else uses—and that is partly true.

I use a program called Open Office mostly because it's free, but also because it's slightly different than Word. Does it really make your paper any different? Hell no, but it's a good enough excuse for your teacher to hear.

I hope these tips will help with the inevitable two am essay writing and if you have any other tips feel free to e-mail us at OutlookStudentPress@gmail.com.