My tutors just emailed me saying that in our final essays the bibliography now counts towards the word limit.

To put this in perspective, referencing one book could take anything from 20 to 50 words, especially for renaissance titles (which are on average lengthly sentences). 

Now that may not sound like much, but our tutors also told us to include at least 10 different critical sources, as well as several contemporary sources and alsothe set texts in question. In my case, that’s 500+ words for each essay since I have about 8 sources in each one. There are people with bibliographies of 1800+ words (because they’re insane, but that’s beside the point).

Since out word limit for each essay is 3000 words, that’s a pretty hefty chunk to have to edit around— and we can’t cut it down because not citing them properly is grounds for plagiarism, so basically, our essays are going to have to be cut down to about 1500 words or less (since any quotations also count towards the word limit).

Well Ok then, it’s not like each essay is 10% of my degree or anything. It’s not like I’ve only got a 5 days to do all this editing.