Naming Your Files

When submitting essays and other work digitally—for all your classes—you should name your documents so that they can be readily identified. File names like “George.docx” or “Essay.docx” or “English.docx” are NOT useful!

Instead, follow this pattern when naming your documents:

Your Full Name_Assignment_xxMonthxxxx.docx

If you submit multiple drafts, give each draft a unique file name:

Your Full Name_Assignment_v2_xxMonthxxxx.docx

In either case the “Assignment” part should be specific, but not too long. For example, this document name—

JohnStudent_EnglishEssay_xxMonthxxxx.docx

—is not very helpful, since it does not specify which English essay it is. Better would be something like this—

MaryStudent_HamletEssay_12March2014.docx

—where Hamlet is the text you are writing about.

IMPORTANT: When writing dates, always spell out the name of the month; otherwise, you risk confusion. For example, does 5/12/2023 mean May 12th, or December 5th? Spelling out the month makes it clear.

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