Now that I have finished my structure outline, I can start to write my essay.

Of course, I will first write my name, student number and today’s date at the top of the page.

When I use an abbreviation, for example ‘student no.’, I have to put a full stop after ‘no’ even though it is a contraction of numero (n---o). That means it is no abbreviation, and I only put full stops if there is a true abbreviation or the initial letters, e.g. ‘Prof. or e.g. When you have the first and the last letter, e.g. ‘Mr’, you do not put a full period. However, in American English a period is put after Mr. and Ms.

When writing a date, it has become common today to use no commas. You can, however, follow the rule of putting commas around the year; especially with American English, this can be helpful. In my example sentence, if you forget to put the second comma, you might cause a slight confusion about the number of amendments that came into force.

Tom A. Vatar / Student no. 9933666 / Dec 18, 2020 …

On July 13, 2013, amendments of the Animal Welfare Act came into force and forbade the use of great apes as laboratory animals.
On 13 July, 2013 amendments of the Animal Welfare Act came into force and forbade the use of great apes as laboratory animals.