The Checklist Page

• What about the image immediately gets your attention? Size? Position on the page? Beauty of the image? Grotesqueness of the image? Humor?
• Does the image appeal to the emotions?
• Does the image make an ethical appeal - that is, does it appeal to our character as a good human being? Ads by charitable organizations often appeal to our sense of decency, fairness, and pity, but ads that appeal to our sense of prudence (ads for insurance companies or for investment houses) also essentially are making an ethical appeal.
• What is the relation of print to image? Does the image do most of the work, or does it serve to attract us and to lead us on to read the text?

• What assumption(s) does the letter writer make? Do you share the assumption(s)?
• What is the writer's claim?
• What evidence, if any, does the writer offer to support the claim?
• Is there anything about the style of the letter - the distinctive use of language, the tone - that makes the letter especially engaging or especially annoying?

• In your opening paragraph (or opening paragraphs), do you give the reader a good idea of what your essay will be doing? Do you identify the essay you will discuss, and introduce your subject?
• Is your essay fair? Does it face all of the strengths (and weaknesses) of the argument under discussion?
• Have you used occasional quotations to let your reader hear the tone of the author and to ensure fairness and accuracy?
• Is your analysis effectively organized? Probably you can't move through the original essay paragraph by paragraph, but have you created a coherent structure for your own essay?
• If the original essay relies partly on the writer's tone, have you sufficiently discussed this matter?
• Is your own tone appropriate?

• Does the draft show promise of fulfilling the assignment?
• Looking at the essay as a whole, what thesis (main idea) is advanced?
• Are the needs of the audience kept in mind? For instance, so some words need to be defined? Is the evidence (for instance, the examples, and the testimony of authorities) clear and effective?
• Can you accept the assumptions? If not, why?
• Is any obvious evidence ( or counterevidence) examined?
• Is the writer proposing a solution? if so:
• Are other equally attractive solutions adequately examined?
• Has the writer overlooked some unattractive effects of the proposed solution?
• Looking at each paragraph separately:
• What is the basic point?
• How does each paragraph relate to the essay's main idea or to the previous paragraph?
• Should some paragraphs be deleted? Be divided into two or more paragraphs? Be combined? Be put elsewhere? (If you outline the essay by jotting down the gist of each paragraph, you will get help in answering these questions.)
• Is each sentence clearly related to the sentence that proceeds and to the sentence that follows?
• Is each paragraph adequately developed? Are there sufficient details, perhaps brief supporting quotations from the text?
• Are the introductory and concluding paragraphs effective?
• What are the papers chief strengths?
• Make at least two specific suggestions that you think will assist the author to improve the paper.

• What claim does the argument make?
• What grounds are offered for the claim?
• What warrants the inferences from the grounds to the claim?
• What backing supports the claim?
• With what modalities are the claim and grounds asserted?
• To what rebuttals are the claim, grounds, and backing vulnerable.

• Is the book recent? If not is the information you will be using from it likely or unlikely to change over time?
• How credible is the author?
• Is the book published by a respectable press?
• Is the book broad enough in its focus and written in a style you can understand?
• Does the book relate directly to your tentative thesis, or is it of only tangential interest?
• Do the arguments in the book seem sound, based on what you have learned about skillful critical reading and writing?

For Articles from Periodicals:

• Is the periodical recent?
• Is the author's name given? Does he or she seem a credible source?
• Is the periodical respectable and serious?
• How directly does the article speak to your topic and tentative thesis?
• If the article is from a scholarly journal, are you sure you understand it?

For Internet Sources:

• How up-to-date is the site?
• Is there an author listed for the site or document?
• Is the information associated with a reliable host site?
• Does the site rely on substance - or on flash alone?

• All borrowed words and ideas credited?
• Quotations and summaries not too long?
• Quotations accurate?
• Quotations provided with helpful lead-ins?
• Documentation in proper form?

And of course, you will also ask yourself the questions that you would ask of a paper that did not use sources, such as:

• Topic sufficiently narrowed?
• Thesis (to be advanced or refuted) stated early and clearly, perhaps even in the title?
• Audience kept in mind? Opposing views stated fairly and as sympathetically as possible? Controversial terms defined?
• Assumptions likely to be shared by the readers? If not, are they argued rather than merely asserted?
• Focus clear (evaluation, recommendation of policy)?
• Evidence (examples, testimony, statistics) adequate and sound?
• Inferences valid?
• Organization clear (effective opening, coherent sequence of arguments, unpretentious ending)?
• All worthy opposition faced?
• Tone appropriate?
• Has the paper been carefully proofread?
• Is the title effective?
• Is the opening paragraph effective?
• Is the structure reader-friendly?
• Is the closing paragraph effective?