Integrity before polish

A polished paragraph that cites a book you have not opened is worse than a rough paragraph that tells the truth about what you read. Academic style can be taught. Honesty has to be practised earlier, because software now offers the polish on demand. The reader cannot always see the difference. You can.

The practical test is retrieval. If a supervisor asked for the page, could you find it this afternoon? If a sentence was suggested by a tool, did you check the claim against a source you understand? If the answer is no, the sentence is not ready, however fluent it sounds.

None of this is a promise that careful writing will be published. Editors decline strong work for reasons of fit. They should decline work that cannot be checked. The first duty of this site's writing guidance is to keep writers on the checkable side of that line.