highballjordan replied to your post “Pro tip from a real facts professor- Making your font bigger does...”
yikes??? there's a standard format for a reason oh my god
INDEED. And it is reiterated on the assignment sheet of every paper, repeated and walked through for every paper, and I explained how to access the different formatting features in Word just to be sure.
tbf, some of my students have wildly varying levels of experience with word processors, in that yesterday, I showed my student the tab key and his jaw dropped bc he’s been using the space bar to start paragraphs manually.
But you know what? you have to DELIBERATELY CHANGE THE FONT TO MAKE IT 15 and when you have to turn in your rough drafts and they’re formatted right, and SUDDENLY the final draft is 2+ font sizes bigger and your spacing goes all to hell, it’s noticeable.
I try to warn them, and tell them how particularly unlucky they are that I worked for years in a print shop and thus can actually eyeball the difference between 12 pt. TNR and 12.5 but ... they just. Feel the need to play chicken with me every. damn. semester.
Just from a self-preservation pov, this is not the mood you want your professor in when she reads a paper you’re already not feeling good about. Why would you do the thing?