1. Final Editing of Essay 1

2. Organization and Focus of Essay
Organization and Focus of Essay:
• Does your essay have a clear thesis
statement? Is it clear to the reader what your
opinion of the movie is?
Your claim should come at the end of your
opening paragraph. It should be the final
sentence of your opening paragraph.

3. Clear Topic Sentences
• Does each of your paragraphs have a clear
topic sentence?
• A topic sentence should clearly:
– Support your claim (unless you are presenting the
opposing view in a particular paragraph)
– Indicate the topic of the paragraph
• Plot, acting, theme, etc.

4. Specific Evidence
• Does each paragraph contain specific evidence
that supports what you state/claim in your
topic sentence?

5. Awkward Wording
• Have you read your essay aloud?
• Have you proofread and looked for small
words that are often missing such as
prepositions (“on,” “of,” “off”)?
• Have you avoided beginning sentences with
words such as “And” and “But”?
• Have you avoided words such as: “It is”…
“there are…” “you” ?

6. Transitional Expressions
Have you
been
conscious of
using
transitional
expressions
and words?

7. Punctuation
• Did you use commas and periods correctly
when quoting from your sources?
• Did you proofread for problems with
apostrophes?

8. Formatting
• Did you place the title of the film in italics?
• Did you place the title of any magazines or
newspapers that you mention in italics?
• Is your works cited page formatted correctly?

9. When uploading your essay . . .
• Make sure that the title of your file reads:
Essay 1 Final Copy
Do not name your document file with any of these
symbols: # % @
Make sure that your file is a WORD file or a RTF file.
Do not try to upload a PDF file. Do not upload a
WORKS file. If you do not have WORD (.doc or
.docx) please save your files as a RTF file (.rft).