You must perform the following functions before you turn in any reports. These actions are easy to do and can immensely improve the professional character of your report. Please check off the following and turn this form in with your report. Reports will not be accepted for grading until they have undergone these checks.

I have run Spellcheck on my document.

I have not used first person singular, and have used 1^st person plural only to make it clear that a given result is from my work group (not to brag about the group’s accomplishments).

I have removed all occurrences of the phrase “due to the fact that.”

I have used graphs rather than tables whenever possible.

All of the references that are given at the end of my report are explicitly cited in my report

All of the figures and tables have references to them in the text.

All references to figures and tables occur before the figure.

The words “this,” “these,” and “those” never occur without referencing a noun.

All acronyms are spelled out completely the first time they are used. For example, “A Magnetic Resonance Imager (MRI) is used for ….”

All quotes relate to points that are subjective or a matter of opinion on the part of the quoted author.

I have not used any of the following words: a lot, kids, kinds, big, kind of, due to the fact that, (or just “the fact that”), utilize, actually, obviously, rather (as in “It is rather surprising”), very, quite, essentially.

There are no sentence fragments or run-on sentences in my text (the grammar checker should find these).

There are no contractions in my text (do a global search for the apostrophe and make sure it occurs only in possessives).

I have not used phrases such as “It is clear that…,” “It is obvious that…,” or “You would have to be a complete moron not to see that...”

The phrase “et al.” is correctly used, with no period after “et” and a period after “al.”

When the semicolon is used, it separates complete sentences, not sentence fragments or clauses.

Wherever a present participle is used at the beginning of a sentence, the noun performing the action is the first thing after the comma. E.g. “Wielding the knife, I sliced the carrot,” as opposed to, “Wielding the knife, the carrot was sliced.” (The second form implies that the carrot was wielding the knife, which is not likely, genetic engineering aside).