Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Mr. Welch's pet peeves for writing

Consider this a list of things to check for before turning in a paper.

[ ] Did you check your printer at least two days in advance so you could buy new printer cartridges, paper, printer cables, computers, etc?
[ ] Is your name (or ID in special cases) somehow attached to your paper, or will you be receiving a "0"?
[ ] Are you following correct paragraph layout for your writing type?
[ ] Have you checked your margins, line spacing, font size, and font face?
[ ] Have you properly formatted the titles of works under consideration?
[ ] Have you spelled those works correctly? What about the authors’ names?
[ ] Have you limited yourself to a maximum of one exclamation point per page? For formal papers, have you limited yourself to one exclamation point per paper, if any?
[ ] Does your paper start with a question? If so, will you enjoy repeating 5th grade?
[ ] Have you removed all slang, txt-speech, and other crimes against humanity?
[ ] "Could’ve" is NOT a contraction of "could of", it’s a contraction of "could have". Same for would’ve, should’ve, etc.
[ ] If this is a formal paper, have you removed all contractions?
[ ] Have you checked for gross errors?
[ ] Have you looked for logical fallacies?
[ ] If the letter "I" means a person, is the letter capitalized?
[ ] Have you proofread your pepper? (spelling)
[ ] Have you you proofread your paper? (repetition)
[ ] The paper, is it proofread? (passive sentences)
[ ] Is your paper proofreading? (grammar, subject agreement, verb tense)
[ ] Have you checked to make sure you aren’t repeating words excessively?
[ ] Have you formatted your quotation marks correctly?
[ ] Have you included citations? Are they formatted correctly?
[ ] Do you have a bibliography? Is it formatted correctly?

Download the .doc version of this file.

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