Exams and Plain Text Degradation

Today I had the lovely semiannual experience of taking some final exams. On one of them, the teacher had to post some corrections to errata on the exam document: some numbers were messed up because the text editor the teacher used apparently doesn't do superscripts. (But it could do Rockwell font and BOLD ITALICIZE UNDERLINE ALLCAPS what is allegedly REALLY IMPORTANT.) So, numbers in scientific notation like 10⁶ appeared as something plain-texty like 106, which is very much a different number.

Over the course of this course (ha ha), I have several times had to guess whether a number just a shade over 100 was actually that number or a misformatting of 10 to the something. In science, exactness is a big deal, so lack of text layout capability is kind of a problem.

So, my advice to teachers and anybody dealing with text in which superscripts or other non-linear text layouts may appear:

• Use a real word processor, not just a rich text editor (WordPad). You'll have lots more features at your disposal, and your document will look a lot nicer.
• Do the essential formatting as you go. Don't write something like "9.9 * 104", promising yourself that you'll come back later and fix it. (You probably won't.) Instead, learn the features of your word processor thoroughly enough that you can do formatting immediately. "9.9 ∙ 10⁴" can't be that hard to type.
• Write like it matters. If you want your students to write academic-quality scientific papers, you should be a good example of that writing style all the time. You should proofread to make sure that there aren't any "102"s left over and while you're at it, prettify the IMPORTANCE EXPLOSION into something more professional.

Here's to all the students preparing for finals!