These days, students can hand in their essays, dissertations and other papers digitally.
This might seem like the best way to proceed because doing so effectively time stamps when the work was handed in for assessment.
However, increasing numbers of Manchester’s student population are choosing to have their coursework professionally printed.
Why is this and what does it offer?
Greater professionalism
To begin with, having something you have worked on printed means you are taking more pride in your work.
To many students in Manchester and elsewhere, choosing a digital printing service, such as BachelorPrint, for example, means that their essays and other coursework look more professional.
If you want to present your work in the best way possible, then printing it professionally makes sense, especially as doing so isn’t very expensive nowadays.
Certainly, it is cheaper to have an end-of-year dissertation or lab report printed using such a third-party service, which tend to accept emailed files and then post them back to you, fully printed, than buying even a low-cost inkjet printer.
What’s more, professional printing means obtaining a higher quality with no fading or smudges which are a hallmark of most home printers.
Even better, you will usually be offered a choice of binding option, something that you simply don’t get with a home printer.
Securing a higher grade
For some, handing in work that has been professionally printed is nothing more than a way to make it easier to mark.
In other words, doing so makes it more likely that your grade will go up rather than down.
Printing won’t ever earn you a higher grade on its own, but it could make all the difference if your work could go one of two ways.
Simply put, well-presented work is more likely to be seen in a favourable light by tutors who have to decide what the final mark will be for each work they assess.
Script checking
Manchester University may be one of the best in the country for supporting students but this doesn’t mean they don’t run into trouble from time to time with the issue of plagiarism.
Copying or adapting others’ work is a big problem in academia.
Printing plagiarised work won’t counter that but it can help.
Some service providers of plagiarism checks students can take advantage of to help them edit or remove suspicious passages from their work.
This additional service can be worth the printing fee on its own and something could save you from having your work ungraded because of plagiarism, whether it was entirely accidental or not.
Conclusion
Whether you have written a PhD dissertation or an undergraduate essay, presentation can be vital in ensuring your work gets the attention and respect it deserves.
In this regard, professional printing services can be worth their weight in gold.
Easy to procure and convenient to manage, such services are just as suited to science students who need to produce written reports as they are to arts students who tend to be more essay-focused.
Either way, it is something worth considering.
Picture credit: Free to use from Unsplash
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