Assuming that no student would willingly say "fuck you!" to a prof (I'm being generous here), I think said student misunderstood "presented in an honest way." Perhaps she thought 1.5 inch margins were indeed obvious and she's saying, "Hey, look, I know my paper's short."

Or maybe she didn't read the assignment carefully. That's more likely.

Btw, because I'm a medievalist with a dirty mind, I saw "fiddle...to achieve the illusion of length" and thought at first that the selected language came from dirty codger's syllabus! :)

How much do you talk about this in class? I always jokingly remind them that I'm up to their tricks with formatting (font size, margins, weird spacing) because when I was a student I tried most of them :) I also am sure to tell them that the page range is a guide that should give them a clue as to how big (or small) of an idea I'm expecting them to articulate, and that I don't mark off if they run a little short or a little long, because the page range is just a convenient way to give them a sense of what content I'm looking for. If the content isn't there, making the paper "look" longer isn't going to help.

Oh, we talked about it on the first day of class AND the day the assignment was distributed. It happens often, actually, and one student this semester even pulled me aside and claimed computer illiteracy to explain his huge margins.

("It's long enough anyway," he said. It wasn't).

But really, does anyone play with the margins in turning in a paper as an honest tactic? And obvious attempt at deceptive length is still a deception, no?

I also say, Dr. C. about what you do, that these are ballpark ranges, and that the illusion doesn't change the argument, and so with that in mind, I can only imagine this as dishonest. I say that in class, twice, and still the practice thrives.

That's so wild. I rarely ever have that problem anymore in my classes, but maybe my students are just less anal than yours and so don't worry as much about whether they hit the required length? It might be something about institutional culture and/or students' experience in previous classes. It IS an attempt at deception, but as I say, I remember doing the same thing and getting away with it in hs/college, so I'm thinking that they probably have experience where it's worked and not been viewed negatively?

I did it too as an undergrad (or, as Ann pointed out, I added in a couple more lines to my block quotes), and didn't recognize it then as being undergirded by an assumption that the professor couldn't tell the difference.

But that precisely WHY I point it out...it's one of those petty little dishonesties that we do all the time, and I like to keep my classroom as honest as I can...

I use word count in my classes, and this moves the focus away from page length to word count. I still, however, like you do, emphasize content, and if they have the correct number of words but still not content, they still will likely be disappointed (or at least not surprised) at the grade.
Good entry. Thanks.