Note to fellow writers
  Be sure to revise your essays carefully!

There’s an old saying among writers: “There’s no such thing as good writing. Only good-rewriting.”

Ernest Hemingway once confided to George Plimpton during an interview that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was satisfied. Why so many rewrites? Plimpton asked.

Because, Hemingway responded, he wanted to get the words right.

Please work on revising your essays before I grade them. Start with your ideas. Can you state your main point in a single, clear sentence? If not, you haven’t brought your thoughts into focus yet, and if you’re thoughts aren’t focused it’s inevitably that your essay will wander around with no clear sense of what it’s trying to accomplish.

Is each paragraph really a paragraph, organized around one idea which is stated in a clear topic sentence?

Have you cut out unnecessary padding, so each sentence is sharp and lean and clear?

Have you proofread, to make sure that every sentence really is a sentence, and that your paragraphs are smooth with a rhythm that’s easy to follow?

Have you spell checked?

Here’s the checklist I will use to grade your essay:

Proofreading Checklist

Ideas and organization

• Somewhere in the first paragraph, I state my thesis in a simple, direct sentence.
• My thesis expresses an opinion rather than summarizes the story or states something that is simply factually true.
• The body of my essay consists of three or four reasons that “prove” my thesis or examples that support it.
• Every paragraph has a topic sentence which states the main idea of that paragraph.
• Everything in the paragraph relates to that topic sentence.
• The points are organized in a way that a reader can easily follow the argument.

Style

• Every sentence is clear and graceful.
• Most sentences have active verbs rather than “being” verbs, such as “is,” “was,” “were,” “are,” etc.
• My nouns are specific rather than vague or abstract. (“tree” is vague; “willow” is specific֓trouble” is abstract; the death of her daughter is specific)

Conventions and Usage

• Every word is spelled correctly.
• Every sentence is complete (no fragments).
• I have no fused sentences or comma splices. I’ve changed run-on sentences with too many jumbled together ideas into simpler sentences.
• Possessive nouns have apostrophes. Conjunctions have apostrophes.
• Proper nouns are capitalized, and every sentence begins with a capital.