Picky details about essay writing

1. It is easier to automatically put your last name and the page number in the upper right-hand corner of each page of your essay by editing the header than by manually typing in your name on each page. If you use Microsoft Word, then
1. Open the View menu
   
2. Select Header and Footer
3. Align your text to the right (you might have a button for this on your toolbar, or you can go to the Format menu and choose Paragraph and then from the Align drop-down box choose Right)
4. Type in your name and then press the Insert Page Number button (which probably appeared on the Header and Footer toolbar, or which you can find by going to the Insert menu, choosing the AutoText submenu, then Header/Footer, then - PAGE - -- for formatting reasons, this is rather less easy than just pressing the Insert Page Number button)
2. Always cite page numbers for prose and line numbers for poetry. You don't need to tell me which you are citing -- e.g. (line 121) or (page 130) -- if it is obvious. If you are switching between the two, there are a variety of commonly-used abbreviations -- most of these are nonstandard, but I would be hard pressed to tell you which they are (personally, I use the l. / ll. and p. / pp. notation)
   
1. For lines
1. (ln 12) or (ln 12-19)
2. (l. 17) or (ll. 17-24)
2. For pages
1. (pg 94) or (pg 130-42)
2. (p. 77) or (pp. 81-6)
3. For numbers
1. (ll. 7f) means line 7 and the following line
   
2. (ll. 7ff) means line 7 and two or more following lines
   
3. (pp. 81f) and (pp. 94ff) mean the same thing, of course, but for pages -- these notations are used more rarely because the 81ff notation