Last Minute Polishes (and other Writing things to keep in mind)

Pssst..... hey undergrads..... I've got more writing tips for you.
After a weekend of seemingly non-stop grading, I've compiled a couple more ideas to keep in mind when writing papers to submit for a grade.  Things which I saw first hand knocked students' grades down at least a letter grade.

There's that cliche of "the first impression is the most important."
Think of your essay more as a overall impression of your work as a student scholar.  How can you MAKE the paper look better than it might actually be.   It's like polishing a resume, selling yourself.  What can you do to make things immediately seem better than they might actually be.

Here's a list of easy fixes.  Another list of things that take 30 minutes at most before you click submit at 2 am.  Look over these things to try to ensure you can't be deducted points for these reasons:

• Double check bibliographic citation.  Use an automated bibliography generator if you're OCD, but if that's the case- triple check that it's correct as well.  Make sure all your periods are there, commas, quotations, italics/underlining.  Page numbers!
• Same boat-- double check your footnotes.  Take out the extra spaces.  Include the SPECIFIC page number (really, it's worthless otherwise).
• Ensure your font, heading, margins are correct from the beginning-- don't set yourself up to reach 10 pages at 2 am, realize it was 1.25 margins, and then just give up from exhaustion.
• Go through and check to see if all of the musical works/books cited are italicized in the text.  Standardize your formatting in the paper.  If you capitalize a term, do so throughout.  If you use block quotes, make sure you do it properly, the same way, throughout the paper.
• Visually, images and their placement bother me.  If you don't resize an image and you have 1/3 of a page blank because of a page break- that's a problem for me.  Make it fit. Move around text if you must.  If you are going to discuss a poem extensively- put the whole text in an appendix.  Appendices are your friends.  If you have a TON of score examples that break up the text often, then put it all at the end.
• If instructors tell you a specific format, tell you to bold certain items in the text, to give certain subheadings, DO IT.  I'm all about originality and creativity in writing.  But not when there's 70 some odd papers to read. Follow the formula and let your argument be what stands out.
• If you absolutely have no time to proofread the entire paper, be sure you have a killer first and last paragraph.  Those are the sections we read 20 times.  Maybe not a discussion point found on page 7.  But especially the introduction is our way of re familiarizing ourselves with your argument.  Make it good, make it impact-ful.  Don't pad it with vague niceties-- tell us what you think- what you're arguing-- get to the point.
• One note, though: personally- I could care less if there's a cover page or a ton of fancy images.  Again, make your words stand for themselves straight off. That makes all the difference to me.

I'm reading another set of papers, this time from non-majors.  The same rules apply to 1 page background papers as it does 10 page formal research.  Professors may not have time to read every single word of every single paper (gasp, shock- I know).  But these overall visual things- the initial impressions are what stick with us in the long run.  Make an effort on these last minute polishes- fixing details.

Bonus tip time!!  Make sure you get the text to us in some format.  Many students came into class frantic: "my paper wouldn't submit on blackboard at 1049 am" [due at 1050].  But they didn't bother to email the document.  Or print a hard copy.  In instances such as these, I think professors are okay with being inundated with repetitive emails.  Send it on blackboard, via regular email, bring a hard copy, whatever needs to be done to get it in our hands.  At least that way we know you tried.  Then after the fact, you can submit it in the proper format.

By the way:

I am coming to grips with the fact that public education no longer prepares students for formal writing, and that, as instructors, we cannot fix all of the writing problems that we are faced with.  We do have to look over the colloquialisms and poor sentence structures at times.  However, I think it's unwise to just throw up our hands and give up on all fronts.  Baby steps, I say.  So I'll continue to post stuff here.