Know your deadline
Aim to finish your main research and writing a few days before the deadline – that way you have time to work on the presentation of your work, re-read and have your work proofread.
Assignment Presentation Basics
Use a suitable font (type-face). Generally san-serif fonts (like Arial) look best viewed on a screen and fonts with a serif (like Times New Roman) look better in print. Pick a standard font - nothing too fancy and definitely not Comic Sans - choose something which is easy to read.
Use a sensible point size 11 or 12 are usually best. Small point sizes make the document more difficult to read and large sizes make it look as though you are trying to hide the fact that you haven't written enough!
Include page numbers in the footer on all pages.
Use 1½ or double line spacing.
Use wide margins so that the marker has room for comments.
Use bold and italics sparingly and appropriately.
Include a title page and/or a table of contents if appropriate.
Include your name and/or student number (or other identification) in the header or footer as appropriate.
Re-reading
For the purpose of this page, ‘re-reading’ is something you do yourself, whereas ‘proofreading’ is something you ask somebody else to do for you. The aim of both methods is the same – to check your work and eliminate errors.
You should have aimed to have finished the writing stage of your work at least a couple of days before the deadline. That way, when you re-read it, the topics are still fairly fresh in your mind but you will see what you have written with fresh eyes, making it easier to spot mistakes.
Re-read your work slowly. Your work should read smoothly, be easy to follow, and should ‘make sense’; check that you have said what you meant to say and in as clear a way as possible. It is not normally appropriate, at this stage, to make serious edits to your work although it may be appropriate to re-order sentences or paragraphs. It can help to
read your work out loud – you are more likely to pick up on grammatical errors that way.
A Thesaurus can be helpful for finding other words with a similar meaning which perhaps may sound better in a particular context, or if you have overused one particular word or phrase. Remember also that although modern spell-checkers are very good, they are not fool proof. Spell-checkers have limitations and may not pick up words used in a particular context, e.g. ‘there’ and ‘their’, ‘to’ and ‘too’.
Proof-reading
If at all possible, get somebody else to read your work before you submit it. In most cases you will not need a professional proof-reader, somebody who has decent understanding of the language is really all you require. This could be a friend or partner, or perhaps a work colleague or other student.
Your proof-reader may very well pick up fairly obvious mistakes that you have overlooked. You may, for example, often misspell particular words - you may not be aware of this but it might be obvious to another reader. Your proof-reader might also find problems with the flow of your arguments and/or grammatical issues. Sometimes it can be difficult to accept any sort of criticism at this stage, remember, your proof-reader is doing you a favour. Listen to their comments – ultimately it will be up to you whether or not you change anything.