Short essays – are they long?

When it comes to student essays, is a very short essay short because it’s short, or is it short because it’s shorter than a long one? Dr Simon Bell, Ph.D., M.A., Pg.Dip., Pg.Cert., B.A (Hons), who is Course Director and Senior Lecturer in Graphic Design at the School of Art and Design, Coventry University, UK, asks just this question in the Proceedings of the 6th International Conference of Education, Research and Innovation Seville, Spain,18-20 November, 2013. (ICERI2013 Proceedings, pp. 961-968)

Note: Dr. Bell required his students to produce 128-word essays which were bounded by a square, possibly similar to the one above.

Bonus: A famous quote – variously attributed either to Mark Twain or Blaise Pascal or possibly Cicero :

“I apologize for writing you a long letter. I didn’t have time to write you a short one.”