Common Essay Formatting Problems Checklist Before you submit your essay, check that you have avoided the most common structural and typographical errors.  Your essay has an introduction that clearly outlines your argument.  Your essay has a strong conclusion.  Key terms are defined using sources other than dictionaries and/or wikipedia  Every paragraph has a topic sentence, contains a central idea and a strong transition to the next paragraph/idea  Every claim made is supported by evidence from an academic or media text, as appropriate  All newspaper, film and book titles are in italics  All article and chapter titles are placed in quotation marks  Large, indented quotes do not have unnecessary quote marks; short quotes (less than 3 lines/40 words) not indented.  There is no unnecessary use of italics in quotes (only use italics if the original is in italics).  You have avoided incorrect use of ‘it’s’ (only reserved for contraction of ‘it is’).  Your essay has clear and unambiguous paragraph breaks involving a full carriage return or tab.  You have avoided short (1 or 2 sentence) paragraphs.  Your essay has page numbers.  The essay is double line spaced.  Ellipsis has 3 dots … with one extra when they occur at the end of the sentence.  You have used square brackets properly where appropriate.  The essay is spell-checked.  The essay has been proofread at least once for spelling and sentence structure. Spell-checkers do not catch everything.  You have provided full reference details in a consistent referencing style.  Your in-text references use page numbers when referring to a specific argument or quote in a book or article (not just to author and date).  The quotes you use are not just cut and paste ‘grabs’ but reflected on and incorporated into your argument.  The examples you use are woven into your argument.  The period comes at the end of the sentence.  You don’t use a hyphen (-) when you should be using a em- dash ( — ). On Mac keyboards a dash is ‘Option-shift-hyphen’. Resources Passive Voice http://owl.english.purdue.edu/ Referencing Systems APA is the preferred Dept. Style but you can use others as long as you do so consistently See http://libguides.library.usyd.edu.au/citation Media and Communications Library Subject Guide http://libguides.library.usyd.edu.au/media?hs=a Media and Communications Databases http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/databases/media.html