Revising, Editing & Formatting the Research Paper

Now that you have a completed rough draft and a completed annotated bibliography, here are your next steps in Revising, Editing & Formatting (with yourself or with others):

• Thesis--Read through the paper again. Do you need to change your thesis at all, make more specific, etc...? Now that your have your argument "in the flesh", you can see how well your thesis matches and fix accordingly.
• Evidence--1.Quality: this is your last chance to take a serious look at your work and ask yourself if you have appropriate depth and insight in your evidence and 2. Variety: If you notice you are citing the same source over and over again, you probably lack the depth in variety of evidence to produce good analysis.
• Organization--Is your whole paper organized in a way to present a logical and coherent argument, as well as provide a subtle and sophisticated argument?
• Conclusion--After reading your paper, will the reader be left with the question, "So what? Why did I read this paper?" Or will they know. We're not looking for summaries here, we're looking for an answer to the question, "what's the point?"

Integrating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism:

• look at pages 187-191 in the easyWriter book, and apply advice to your paper. This is a critical step in making your paper readable, and hence, interesting to read.

Internal Citations, proper phrasing and style:

• look at pages 200-203 in the easyWriter book, and apply advice to your paper. This is also a critical step in making your paper readable, and hence, interesting to read.

Finally, Proper MLA formatting:

• look at pages 198-199 in the easyWriter book, and apply advice to your paper. I will not accept paper unless it is formatted correctly. Do this step last, even after your final spell check.