Consistency checks are one of the most important aspects of proofing your paper. Professional companies providing manuscript editing and proofreading services have elaborate consistency check lists that they use on a regular basis to render an optimally consistent manuscript to you. Consistency is imperative in academic writing because inconsistent writing creates confusion among readers and considerably reduces the readability of your manuscript by forcing your readers to backtrack when reading. It, thus, breaks the flow of your manuscript to a certain degree as well. Here are a few consistency checks that you cannot afford to forget. Basic consistency checks: ☐ Are the titles, headings, and subheadings consistent in style and fulfil your target journal’s requirements? ☐ Are your font size and style consistent throughout your main text ☐ Are your capitalization and italicization appropriate and consistent? ☐ Have you used demonstrative pronouns (this, that, those, these) as adjectives at all instances? ☐ Are all the instances of “respectively” preceded by a parallel list? ☐ Are your in-text and end-list referencing styles consistent and as per your target journal’s guidelines? Manuscript consistency checks: →Abbreviations and acronyms ☐ Have you defined the abbreviations and acronyms at the first instance of use in the abstract and main text and then used it consistently throughout? ☐ Have you consistently used the abbreviations of chemical elements? ☐ Have you consistently used the abbreviated or expanded form of a term at instances where an abbreviated term is used at the beginning of a sentence? →Punctuation ☐ Have you consistently used the terminal comma in a series? ☐ Have you ended sentences that end in mathematical equations with consistent punctuations? ☐ Have you consistently checked for double spaces between words? ☐ Have you checked for spaces on both sides of all mathematical symbols in your manuscript? ☐ Have you consistently used the same punctuation after certain words such as “etc,” “eg,” “vs,” and “et al”? ☐ Are your length and style of dashes and hyphens consistent and as per your target journal’s requirements? ☐ Have you ignored a space between a comma and its preceding word or digit? →Numbers, Units, and Figures ☐ Have you consistently spelt out or used numerals to express numbers (1–10) according to the requirements of your target journal? ☐ Have you consistently added or removed a zero before the decimal point in a number? ☐ Have you followed a consistent style with number equal to or greater than 1000? ☐ Have you consistently included or excluded spaces between a number and the following unit, particularly the degree symbol for temperature and the percentage symbol? ☐ Have you consistently abbreviated all the units of time and volume? →Figures, Tables, and Equations ☐ Have you consistently used the spelling of these words that have been specified by your target journal? ☐ Have you capitalized the words “figures,” “tables,” and “equations”? →General instances ☐ Have you consistently italicized or not italicized gene and protein nomenclature? ☐ Have you consistently capitalized and not capitalized gene and sub-genus names, respectively? ☐ Are the names of places consistently and correctly presented in your manuscript? ☐ Have you consistently hyphenated or not hyphenated certain words? ☐ Have you used appropriate articles in various contexts? This list gives you a basic level of consistency checks you should be performing whether or not you are seeking academic editing and proofreading services. You can add to this list by checking your target journal guidelines. Any consistency check issues should be made first according to the journal guidelines and then according to the formatting style. Hope this post encourages you to adhere to a more consistent writing style. Happy writing!!
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