Why conform? A not-so-short discourse on “proper” manuscript-writing

When writing academic papers, why conform? Why restrict yourself to a certain paper size, orientation, typeface, or color? These questions usually don’t enter the minds of university students, as they have been told to follow formats like MLA or APA, so maybe this question is more relevant: why do our professors ask us of this injustice? And why have we been taught, since high school, to strictly obey these “standards”?

I was interviewed on this topic, by the lovely Annik Spencer, who prodded me on the meaning of these choices. Many others, too, were asked of their opinions—but some, as I later heard, felt unprepared to answer: why should they have to answer for something they were instructed to do by some auspicious association of modern writing? I don’t blame them for feeling uneasy, but perhaps this is a way to widen their understanding of what these standards are and why they exist.

Take MLA guidelines, for example. The MLA guidelines at Purdue University’s famed website bullets these general rules to follow:

• Type your paper on a computer and print it out on standard, white 8.5 x 11-inch paper.

Devil’s advocate     Standard paper sizes should be used because, if paper size wasn’t regulated, writing professionals wouldn’t be able to consistently determine the length of manuscripts. Of course, this depends on whether you follow the rest of the guidelines, as full compliance makes it easier for instructors to easily specify content length in pages instead of specifying in terms of word count or character count (length in pages is much friendlier; it prevents students from trying to inflate the word count by writing simpler sentences). Also: if instructors need to photocopy a document, standard Letter size paper is the most widely used paper format in the United States. Additionally, white paper & black ink is both practical and easy to read. Anything else would be hard on the eyes.

To hell with standards!     Standard paper sizes shouldn’t be used because it corners students into monotonous, claustrophobic spaces that seriously limit creativity. Imagine the variety and expressiveness of essays on paper formats anywhere between 8x10 and poster paper: sure, they wouldn’t all be uniform, but students could be able to explore creative options that many would take advantage of to create true visual and lingual arguments. And for those who choose to take a more formal route: standard Letter size would still be available. As for the introduced difficulty of photocopying and printing—worthy tradeoffs, I say.

• Double-space the text of your paper, and use a legible font (e.g. Times New Roman). Whatever font you choose, MLA recommends that the regular and italics type styles contrast enough that they are recognizable one from another. The font size should be 12 pt.

Devil’s advocate     Double spacing the text makes it much easier for instructors to mark up the content, providing the student with valuable feedback. A legible serif typeface like Times New Roman is very readable at comfortable reading range, and Times New Roman at 12 points is widely regarded as “standard” (not to mention being the default character style for Microsoft Word documents before Office 2007). 11 points would be too small and 13 too large. These guidelines also make specifying content length easy, as long as each student follows the same formatting rules.

This ain’t your father’s essay!     Double space, double schmase. If we wanted your feedback, we would have come to you before we passed the paper in. As for your Times New Roman at 12 points—let me tell you how much I loathe Times New Roman at 12 points. Seeing the same face set in the same point size on the same paper size since the sixth grade is tiring. Yes—it’s really, actually visually tiring—and I’d like to think that I’ve amassed enough graphic design and typography knowledge to understand that setting my paper in 16 point Comic Sans MS is a bad idea (actually, Comic Sans MS is a bad idea at any point size—I’m not the only designer who thinks so). Besides, how can you instructors stand it? You’ve been reading text set in 12 point serif type much longer than we have... how are you not complaining? What about—just for once—allowing us to set our paper in 12 point Helvetica, double spaced? I guarantee that everyone would love it. A breath of fresh, sans-serif air. Quote me.

• Leave only one space after periods or other punctuation marks (unless otherwise instructed by your instructor). Set the margins of your document to 1 inch on all sides.

Devil’s advocate     Spacing should be specified uniformly to maintain accurate estimation of content length. The habit you have for putting two spaces after a full stop comes from the days of typewriters with monospaced type: with a monospaced typeface, every character has the same width, even the period. Adding two spaces after each period made it easier to distinguish among sentences. You don’t need to do this with Times New Roman, or any other proportional typeface. 1-inch margins exist, again, to maintain uniformity that allows instructors to determine content length. That guideline also exists to make sure photocopies are not cut off.

Na, na-na boo-boo.     Who are you to tell me what not to do after periods or other punctuation marks? And as for margins: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen my friends change the page margins from 1.0 inches to 1.01 inches or 1.03 inches—that stuff works miracles.

• Create a header that numbers all pages consecutively in the upper right-hand corner, one-half inch from the top and flush with the right margin. (Note: Your instructor may ask that you omit the number on your first page. Always follow your instructor's guidelines.)

Devil’s advocate     A header with consistent placement ensures that instructors will always know where to look when sorting pages. If you type your last name into the header, it will help keep your pages together in the event of a de-stapling or an instructor spilling coffee all over your papers (it happened to me in Intro to Ethics last semester).

*blows raspberry*     I realize that I’m getting increasingly belligerent, but these rules really deserve this treatment. Excuse my elementary conduct.

As you may be able to tell, I am of two minds here. Two... really diverging minds. I think we, as students, understand the nature of these requirements, but following them takes perseverance (and, in my case, suppression of intrinsic potty language).