From Experience, the Most Typical Things That Get Overlooked, Part I

So, as we close in on the ePortfolio deadline, I try to share some common things my students do that can lead to contract breaks . . . Here goes:

1. Coming up radically short on word counts. If you can't meet the word counts for the projects, you might just withdraw from class. That's a big deal breaker, and we've had three months.
2. Forgetting to do MLA-style formatting for papers #1 and #2. 
3. Not realizing that Google Drive doesn't auto-correct the same things that Word does. Seriously read your drafts over. If it helps, read through them backwards, one sentence at a time (this works). Google won't auto-correct a little "i" for instance. In your document, you can use Edit—Find and Replace to fix your "I's," or any other common errors of yours. Just type in an i (with space on either side of it) for Find, and type in a big I for Replace, and you should be good to go. But definitely read the draft—find the obvious typos at least before you make that PDF.  
4. With the profile, focusing a lot on yourself! 
5. Not bothering to really look at punctuation rules surrounding the use of quotation marks. 

If you're gunning for the A, here are a few things that can get you there:

1. Transitions. Remember that activity where we looked at the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next? That's the best thing you can to do improve the flow of the paper and develop its ideas.
2. Variety. We spent time on this too, on varying sentence structures and lengths, making good choices about verbs and details. Your work with details and variety can make your writing stand out from the rest. 
3. Specifics. We've talked about this all term, but the more concrete and detailed (meaningfully and purposefully) you can get, the better your overall ideas will be, and the more likely the reader will truly connect with what you're communicating.