Dealing with this from the academic position can get ridiculous. In writing a thesis or dissertation (here in the US, at any rate) one must follow the style manual to the letter and there are actually people whose job it is to measure margins and look to see if your dash is an "m" in length or if your lines are exactly double-spaced. They aren't looking at the content, mind you, unless perhaps to comment that there are too many personal pronouns. I had to get a note from the chair of my committee to take to the graduate school saying that the number of times "I" appeared in the document was entirely appropriate to the subject. In addition to the style manuals (I usually use the MLA--Modern Language Association) that is used in liberal arts, but have more recently had to switch to the Chicago Manual of Style. And then there's the book by Kate Turabian that is just about writing theses and dissertations. It can take longer to get the darned thing into the proper format than it took to do the original thinking and writing to get the degree!

SRS