Editing Guide

To give yourself the Best Chance Ever of getting a good grade, make sure you spend time editing your paper. Go through this checklist to make sure your paper meets all the requirements.

• I have a Title Page, outline, and bibliography.
• My entire paper is double-spaced.
• I started my paper with an interesting "hook."
• My thesis statement is clearly stated at the end of my first paragraph. 
• My thesis statement states a fact. It does not start with "My paper will be about..." or other similar leads. 
• I organized my ideas so my paper flows well and is easy to read.
• I checked for spelling errors. 
• I used punctuation and capitalization. 
• I gave credit where credit was due and have carefully noted all of my sources in the bibliography.
• My words are my own. I did not copy from other people unless it is a direct quote that I gave credit to. 
• I have a concluding paragraph where I restated my thesis and gave some concluding remarks. 
• The last page of my report is my bibliography which I have checked for accuracy. 
• I used an average of one source per page of my report. 

Sourced from Pixabay

Other tips to ensure accuracy:

• Have someone else read over your report to catch any obvious errors in grammar or punctuation. Also have them point out sentences that are confusing to them. A person who does this for you is called a beta reader. Professional writers use beta readers to help them catch mistakes before publication. I have four of them that I use regularly, though not for the same article. They'll tell me things like this: "I didn't understand what you meant by..." Or they'll point out my typos. I strongly encourage you to have someone do this for your report. Any areas that need to be corrected should be done by you. Beta readers don't rewrite things. They just tell you when you need to make improvements. 
• Read your report out loud to yourself if you don't have someone who will read over it for you.
• Print off your report. Correct mistakes with a colored pen, then fix those mistakes on the computer. 
• If you can, let your report sit for a day or two without working on it, then go over it again to check for errors or for any wording you would like to change. 

Important: 

Submit a clean paper, one that is largely error-free. I'll look forward to seeing it on or before December 7.