Tips for proofreading and catching major errors:

• Review the major error handout to make sure you understand the most significant problems you're looking for.  Also, take a look at the editing section on pp. 63-65 in Bedford. 

• Read the essay out loud with a pencil in your hand and mark awkward sections.

• Read the draft backwards at both the word level (to catch spelling errors) and the sentence level (to catch grammatical errors).

• Read the draft through several times with at least an hour in between readings.

• If you’re using a word processor, make sure to proofread with a hard copy—you won’t be hypnotized by the flashing pixels this way.

• If you’re using a word processor, use the spell-checker, but remember that it won’t catch misspellings like from/form, two/too/to, then/than, of/have.

• Lightly mark sentences that you’re unsure of, and ask me about them in class next time.

Students who don't pass this essay generally haven’t spent enough time proofreading

COMMON BIG PICTURE PROBLEMS:  Most people will have wonderful thesis statements for this essay and good evidence to back up thesis statements.  The most significant problem tends to be with reasons:  people often organize by evidence/plot instead of by reasons (i.e., The policeman makes a mistake at the end of the play when he lets the convict escape instead of The policeman makes the wrong decision because he did not uphold the law or failed to do his duty or let his personal feelings get in the way of doing his job.)  Another problem people sometimes have is with counterarguments.  Remember, you should acknowledge compelling reasons on the other side of the issue, develop them with evidence and explanation, and then refute or accommodate them.  It isn't enough just to mention them.  Pages 196-99 in CGW have some good sentencing strategies on dealing with counterarguments.  Another problem is with the overuse of rhetorical questions.  Avoid overuse of questions, particularly when you don't answer them.  Using such a strategy often makes the writer appear hostile.    

COMMON DETAIL PROBLEMS:

• Short story titles get quotation marks, not italics.
• Make sure to follow MLA guidelines for integrating quotations (see Bedford Chapters 55 and 58e for help). 
• No need to put the author's last name in the parenthetical notation if you're only using one source and it is clear in context that your quote is from that source (you do need the page number).  In this kind of situation:  (602) would be correct and (Fitzgerald 602) would be incorrect. 
• Set up story title, author and brief summary of story in the introduction. 
• Use DIRECT QUOTATIONS from the story to support your claims. 
• IF you quote sections of dialogue that have quotation marks around them in stories, then you should use double quotation marks in your essay.  See 37C in Bedford.
• If you forecast reasons in your thesis, make sure that the order of development in the body of the essay follows the same order.

I strongly encourage you to use my office hours, the writing center, and pages 202-05 in CGW to help you solve the problems as you revise your essay.