Writing the draft is only 80% of the job. The final 20% is editing. Before you hit that "Submit" or "Send" button, take 15 minutes to run your paper through this rapid technical checklist.
Minor formatting and grammatical errors can make even the most brilliant research look sloppy to a reviewer.
🌕 Visual Layout & Formatting
✔️ The "Font Uniformity" Check: Your entire paper uses exactly one academic font family (e.g., Times New Roman 12pt or Arial 11pt) from the title page to the bibliography.
✔️ Line Spacing: Double-spacing or 1.5 spacing is applied consistently everywhere, including blockquotes and references.
✔️ Page Numbers: Numbers are clearly visible in the header or footer of every single page (except the title page, if required).
✔️ Visual Hierarchy: All main section titles (Introduction, Methods, Results) are bolded and distinct from standard paragraph text.
🔗 Citations & References
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The 1-to-1 Match:
Every single name inside your text (e.g., Smith, 2024) has a corresponding full source listed in your final reference list.
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No Dead Links:
If you included URLs or DOIs in your bibliography, click on them to ensure they actually open the correct papers.
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Punctuation Rules:
All periods go after the parentheses in your in-text citations, exactly like this: ...according to the data (Davis, 2023).
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Et Al. Accuracy:
For papers with multiple authors, you used et al. correctly with a period only after the "al" (e.g., Green et al., 2022).
💼 Style & Academic Tone
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The "I/We" Purge:
You have removed personal pronouns ("I think," "In my opinion") and replaced them with objective, passive, or third-person phrasing ("The data suggests," "It can be argued").
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Contraction Check:
Words like don't, can't, won't, or it's are completely spelled out as do not, cannot, will not, and it is.
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No Emotional Language:
Words like terrible, wonderful, shocking, or completely ruined are replaced with objective terms (significant decrease, substantial impact, limited efficacy).
🔋 Technical Details
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File Naming:
Your final file isn't named "draft_final_v3.docx". Rename it professionally using your name and topic (e.g., Surname_ResearchPaper_2026.pdf).
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PDF Conversion:
You converted your document to PDF format to ensure your charts, tables, and spacing don't break when the reviewer opens it on a different device.