Feature Spotlight: The ‘I’m Finished’ Button Just Got Smarter

PERRLA has always helped you build a properly formatted paper from the start. Now it checks your work before you submit. The updated I’m Finished button in PERRLA Online reviews your paper for common formatting and citations mistakes – and gives you one-click fixes for most of them.

It’s a second pair of eyes, not a gate. You can always download your paper anyway.

What PERRLA checks for

When you click I’m Finished, PERRLA scans your paper and flags issues like:

• References that are never cited in the body of your paper
• Double spaces or extra spaces around punctuation
• Citations typed by hand instead of added through PERRLA
• Periods placed before a citation instead of after
• Missing periods or commas in “et al.,” and “i.e.”
• Quotes with no citation, or no page or paragraph number
• Long quotes that should be formatted as a block quote
• Contractions in academic prose
• Ampersands (&) used in writing instead of “and”
• Personal communications listed in the reference list instead of cited in-text
• Reference titles in the wrong case for your paper’s format

These are among the most common formatting errors we see in student papers (the kind that are easy to miss after staring at the same document for hours).

How it works

Click I’m Finished in the PERRLA Online toolbar. A panel opens on the right side of your paper with two sections:

Suggested Fixes

Any issues PERRLA finds appear here as a list of flagged items. Click the magnifying glass next to any item to jump directly to that spot in your paper. Fix it, then click Check again – anything you’ve resolved disappears from the list. Most findings have a one-click Fix option, and when the same issue appears multiple times, a Fix all option handles them all at once.

Download your paper

When you’re ready to turn it in, download your paper directly from the same panel as a Word document or as a PDF. That’s the file you submit.

A note on availability

Suggested Fixes is available now in PERRLA Online for papers created after July 28, 2026. If you have an older paper and don’t see the checks, create a new paper and paste your content in – or keep an eye out as we continue to expand the feature.

We’re also bringing these checks to the I’m Finished panel in the PERRLA Word Add-In and Google Docs. More on that soon!

Not using PERRLA yet? Try it free for 7 days – no credit card required.