Questions to consider before you begin your paper

1. Will your paper be the kind your instructor asked for?

2. Do you have enough material for a sound discussion?

3. If the subject is controversial, have you been careful not to ignore awkward facts that do not fit neatly with your ideas?

4. If the subject is timely, is your material recent?

5. Are your bibliography cards complete and accurate?

6. Are you sure you have not unconsciously plagiarized or misleadingly quoted material out of context on your note cards?

7. Have you organized your notes in a logical order by content?

8. Have you skimmed your notes again to refresh your memory on what you have to work with?

9. Does this rereading indicate that there are no gaps requiring further information?

10. Have you narrowed your focus so that you can discuss your subject in convincing detail?

11. Do you have a thesis which orders your material?

12. Have you worked out the order in which the separate parts should be presented to develop a thesis?

Questions to consider before doing the final draft

1. Have you given enough evidence to support all generalities and conclusions?

2. Have you discussed the subject objectively?

3. Does your discussion move forward smoothly?

4. Does it come to a convincing conclusion?

5. Is the diction (choice of words) appropriate?

6. Are the transitions into and after quotations smooth?

7. Have you worked out unnecessary wordiness and awkward phrases?

8. Have you checked the mechanics?

9. Have you proofread the paper carefully?

Quotations

1. Are they accurate?

2. Are you sure you have not plagiarized or misleadingly quoted material out of context?

3. Have you used appropriate ellipses, insertions, and square brackets?

4. Have you used the correct forms for short and long quotations?

Citations

1. Have you noted the author's name and page numbers in parentheses after the quotations or facts they are documenting?

2. Have you checked page numbers to be sure they are correct?

1. Have you footnoted for all quotations, facts, and ideas (even paraphrases) derived from your reading?

2. Have you used the correct form: author's name in normal order (first name first)? titles of articles enclosed in quotation marks? titles of books and periodicals underlined? required publication facts included?

Bibliography

1. Are items alphabetized by author's last name?

2. Is the name of the first author in each listing reversed, last name first?

3. Are the facts of publication complete?

4. Have you used proper spacing, punctuation, underlining?

Title Page and Cover

1. Do you have the title of the paper, the course number, the professor's name, the date of submission on both?

Troubleshooter's Checklist

IF YOU:

HAVE YOU

have no idea what to write about...	read your course text thoroughly? checked references in the bibliographies of those texts? asked the reference librarian for help? read basic reference materials in the field (find these by asking your instructor, using computer data bases, consulting bibliographies)?
have a subject area and a general topic but no focus, no point of view, no thesis	read primary and secondary material and noted your reactions? done any brainstorming? used a tape recorder to record ideas as they occur to you? asked probing questions about the material? written some tentative thesis statements which express a response to the material? stated the topic as a problem to be solved?
have a topic with a focus (a proposition) but can't generate enough supporting material.....	honestly done all your reading and research? made notes on note cards? probed key concepts by describing, defining, explaining, analyzing, evaluating, looking for cause and effect, comparing, contrasting supported generalizations with details: facts, illustrations, examples, analogies, incidents?
have a proposition with a lot of material that you can't organize.....	written down supporting ideas and grouped them into categories? rejected all ideas which do not relate to your thesis? tried making a simple point- by-point outline? typed a triple-spaced draft and used scissors to cut it up so that you can manipulate the material, trying different organizations?
have trouble anyway.....	signed up for help at the WRITING CENTER?