Right so I am writing a law essay right now and I want to bulk it out a bit so I've been adding arguments here and arguments there that don't really mean much but it still doesn't look like enough.
I normally write in Size 10 Helvetica and on average my essays are 3 pages long but I boosted this one up to 11.5 Helvetica and spaced it at 1.5 and now I added an extra page. This is marvellous.
So.
What font do you use? What size is it? What line spacing do you use?
I'm pretty sure size 12 is the standard. Berlin sans is a nice font. You can use pretty much any font as long as its not ridiculous and please don't use comic sans for essays.
Helvetica is sans serif doesn't read as well for body, good for headers, I'd suggest a serif typeface for body of text. 50 - 70 characters per line, maybe 0.25 line space possibly 0.5.
I also use (for intros or starter thingies) Time New Roman and the Office 07 equivalent that goes with Calibri, which I can't remember the name of at the moment...
Arial 10, although I've taken to Calibri 11 since I got Office 2007 installed. Anything more than 12 and it looks like you're trying to make it look longer than it is.
Default spacing, although 2.0 when I'm doing language work.