Late penalty
What it really means
Marks taken off work submitted after the deadline without an extension — commonly 5 to 10 marks per day, and after about five days the work may score zero. Each university publishes its own rule.
Context, tips & common mistakes
Late submission penalties are mechanical: a typical scheme docks marks per day (or caps the mark at a pass), sliding to zero after a set number of days — and 'late' means the timestamp, so 00:01 against a midnight deadline is a penalised day exactly like 23:59 the next evening. The machine does not weigh intentions, which is precisely why the system runs on timestamps: it cannot be argued with, only planned around.
Plan the boring way: submit a safe draft an hour early (most systems allow resubmission until the deadline), never trust halls Wi-Fi at 23:50, and screenshot the receipt. If genuine crisis hits — illness, emergency — the remedy is the mitigating circumstances or extension process, ideally requested *before* the deadline; retrospective mercy exists but is harder. What never works is the quiet hope that nobody noticed: the penalty applies automatically, and the appeal-shaped email afterwards needs evidence, not eloquence.