Revision Checklist: Purpose

1. Revision Checklist: Purpose • Do you know exactly what you want your essay to accomplish? Can you put it in one sentence: “In this paper I want to…”? • Is your thesis stated outright in the essay? If not, have you provided clues so that your readers will know precisely what it is? • Does every part of the essay work to achieve the same goal? • Have you tried to do too much? Does your coverage of your topic seem too thin? If so, how might you reduce the scope of your essay? • Does your essay say everything that needs to be said? • In writing the essay, have you changed your mind, rethought your assumptions, made a discovery? If so, do you need to reshape your thesis and support to reflect your new outlook and purpose? • Do you have enough evidence? Is every point developed fully enough to be clear? To be convincing?

2. Revision Checklist: Audience • Who will read this essay? • Does the essay tell them what they will want to know rather than what they probably know already? • Are there any places where readers might fall asleep? • Does the opening of the essay mislead your readers by promising anything that the essay never delivers? • Do you unfold each idea in enough detail to make it both clear and interesting to readers? • Have you anticipated questions that readers might ask? • Where might readers raise serious objections? How might you anticipate these objections and answer them? • Have you used any specialized or technical language that your readers might not understand? • Is your attitude toward your readers respectful? • Will your readers be convinced that you have told them something worth knowing?

3. Revision Checklist: Structure • Does your introduction set up the whole essay? Does it both grab readers’ attention and hint at what is to follow? • Does the essay fulfill all that you promise in your opening? • Would any later passage make a better beginning? • Is your thesis clear, or clearly implied, early in the essay? • Do the paragraph breaks seem logical? • Is the topic sentence (main idea) of each paragraph clear and relevant to the thesis? • Is the topic sentence of each paragraph fully developed? • Within each paragraph, is each detail or piece of evidence relevant to the topic sentence? • Would any paragraphs make more sense in a different order? • Does everything follow clearly? Does one point smoothly lead to the next? • Does the conclusion follow from what has gone before, or does it seem tacked on?

4. Editing Checklist Grammar and Punctuation Problems • Have you used the correct form for all verbs in the past tense? • Do all verbs agree with their subjects? • Have you used the correct case for all pronouns? • Do all pronouns agree with their antecedents? • Have you used adjectives and adverbs correctly? • Have you avoided writing sentence fragments? • Have you avoided writing comma splices or fused sentences? • Have you used punctuation correctly? Sentence Problems • Does each modifier clearly modify the right word(s)? • Have you used parallel structure when necessary? Mechanics and Format Problems • Have you spelled all words correctly? • Have you used correct manuscript form?

5. Proofreading Checklist • Have you omitted any words? Any letters? –s and –ed at the ends of words? Any necessary punctuation marks? • Have you transposed any letters? Have you misplaced any punctuation marks? • Have you added any unnecessary letters or punctuation? • Have you checked your grammar? Look especially at verb tense, subject-verb agreement, pronoun agreement, pronoun case, and pronoun reference. • Have you checked the spellings of words you’re unsure of? Of words you habitually miss? • Have you in haste used the wrong word (lay for lie, its for it’s, advice for advise)? • Have you slowed your mind down and focused your eyes on each word, each letter in each word, each punctuation mark?