Before submitting or publishing your work, you should perform a thorough review to ensure you are representing yourself with your best work.
Spelling
Spelling is critical for communicating information. Slight variances in the spelling of the same word can have vastly different meanings.
Poor spelling can confuse your readers or may give the impression that you do not care about the quality of your work, or that you have rushed your work. Depending on the purpose of your submission, spelling mistakes may result in you not getting that job you applied for, losing marks in your Assignment, or possibly having dire consequences in the workplace.
If you are using a Spell Check tool, ensure you have the correct Language selected by Default. For example, did you know that Microsoft Office Professional has 18 different versions of English to choose from?!
It is possible that you may need to change the Language in your Control Panel too.
Many jokes have been created using a play on the different spelling but the same pronunciation of the same word. For example:
- These nuts are complimentary
- These nuts are complementary
Grammar
Similar to spelling, grammar is important as it helps your readers to comprehend your information. Poor grammar may be conceived as a lack of professionalism or education. Grammatical errors may detract from your main message, or confuse your readers. A minor grammatical error can result in a huge difference in meaning.
Avoid using text and verbal slang in your documentation, unless it is relevant to your purpose and/or audience.
As a minimum, check your use of commas, full stops, apostrophes, colons and semicolons, past tense and present tense, capitalisation of proper nouns, and so on.
Consistent Fonts and Formatting
Inconsistent formatting can detract from your message. Ensure your headings have the same font, size and other formatting such as bold, italic, underline.
Ensure your bullets or numbered lists have the same indents and that new numbered lists start from 1 (unless you want to continue numbering).
An easy way to ensure consistency of formatting in Microsoft Word is to create styles, or update existing styles, then apply them to your document.
Some fonts have better readability, whereas some fonts are associated with a particular type of information. For example, using Courier for Code blocks.
Logical flow of information
Your readers should join you on the journey of discovery via written word – whether you are writing a recipe, a short story, or a white paper.
A logical flow of information provides readers with clarity, understanding and comprehension. For Group Assignments, it is especially important to ensure each section flows, and different authors cannot be identified.