Next, I want to highlight some general guidance for the process of editing your paper:
Please note that I am trying to be as critical as possible in the comments that I leave for you on your rough draft. I’d rather point out errors here–no matter how small–rather than identify them on the final paper when you don’t have a chance to edit them. I therefore likely made a lot of recommended edits in your paper. I don’t expect you to make every single correction. However, I do expect you to make the easy ones (like grammar corrections), the necessary ones (like if a section is missing or something is written such that it cannot be easily understood), and the big picture ones (that address the biggest problems in the paper). I recommend reading the comments from me (and your peer reviewer) all at once, and then coming back later and reading them again while you go through and make (or reject) edits. This two-step process will help you to view the corrections more objectively and to focus on what those biggest picture issues actually are!
If you work from the copy that either I or your classmate made for you, make sure that you accept or reject all changes and then also delete comments after you’ve reviewed them. Your final submission should not have any mark-ups on it.
You might consider working from the draft you submitted, and going through and manually making any changes based on what your classmate and I recommended.
I recommend looking through all recommended changes. Don’t just accept them all blindly–there may be cases where you should reject a recommended change. In addition, you only learn how to improve your writing if you actually pay attention to those recommended changes and consider if the change is better or worse than the original writing.
Your classmate and I may disagree about particular edits. Ultimately, it’s your decision about how to handle it. While you don’t have to accept all of my edits, you should keep in mind that I will grade the final paper and so most edits should probably be made unless you have a good reason not to. I won’t double-check every tiny edit, but I will definitely check that you either made the big edits or made some kind of change to address any major issues. Also, please note that students tend to be friendly to each other when providing grades on a rubric–so even if your classmate thinks you should get full points, that does NOT mean that you will get full points on the final paper.
If both your classmate and I made the same comment about something needing to be changed, that’s a really good indication that it does in fact need to be changed! Even if something seems clear and precise to you, it might not be as clear to the reader.
If there are any particular edits that you want to run by me, feel free to do so. For example, you can send me a message and say “My peer reviewer recommended that I do X, but I’m not sure about it because of Y. What do you think?” As another example, you might ask, “You wrote X and I don’t know what it means. Can you provide me with more clarity?” I’m happy to answer any specific questions that you have.
I will not review the entirety of the draft again. However, I will review very particular things if you ask me to. For example, I can review your reference page, or a paragraph or two, or the heading organization, or a particular discussion, etc. The more specific your question, the better feedback I can give you! This feedback will take me up to 48 hours, so make sure to ask any of these kinds of questions as early as possible.
Read your paper out loud to yourself. Often, if something is confusing or grammatically incorrect, you’ll notice it better when you hear it. Read the paper slowly–pausing after each sentence to make sure that sentence is complete. In particular, if a sentence was highlighted by your reviewers as a run-on or a sentence fragment, spend extra time reading the edited sentence on its own and making sure it makes complete sense without any of the sentences before or after it.
In addition to your final paper, you should submit a document that summarizes the major changes that you made on your paper. It does not need to summarize every single minor edit–but do highlight the biggest changes that you made. This should take approximately a double-spaced page to summarize, but you can write more if you’d like. If you chose to reject certain edits, this is also a good opportunity to explain WHY you did not make those edits.
What do you need to submit?
Your final paper (with the reference page included in the document)
A separate document providing a summary of changes from your previous draft
Students may also lose points for:
Failing to include a reference page (-5)
Improperly citing a reference on the reference page (-1 for each bad citation)
Improperly formatting the paper (the penalty depends on how closely or poorly directions were followed; you can lose up to 10 points for this)
If you participate in Assignment 8 but fail to turn in your feedback on time, you will lose 5 points from your own final paper (because you disadvantaged another student).
If your paper includes any errors that I have corrected you for multiple times before, you may lose additional points. For example, if I have told you that one of your sources is a non-academic source and you continue to use it as part of our 5 required sources, you will lose extra points. As another example, if I ask you to update your organization in both your outline and rough draft and you still fail to make those edits, you may lose extra points. In a final example, if I have identified an incorrect citation on your reference page multiple times and you still fail to correct it, you may lose extra points. Please review the feedback from your earlier assignments closely to avoid these errors.
This paper is due during final exam week. I need enough time to read 20 papers, grade each paper, provide feedback, and give your grade and feedback back to you before final grades are due. For that reason, I cannot accept late papers. If you fail to turn your paper in on time, you will receive a zero.
