ROME ESSAY FINAL DRAFT CHECKLIST

INTRODUCTION
□ Does your background information/historical context give your reader enough information to properly
understand your essay?
□ Do you address who/what/when/where?
□ Does your thesis statement
o answer the thesis question?
o contain a “because” statement that has one BIG IDEA/IDEA UMBRELLA?
o address the counter-argument (potential criticisms of your position)?
□ Does your focus statement clearly preview your two themes (one for each body paragraph)?

FIRST BODY PARAGRAPH

□ Does your topic sentence clearly introduce a theme?
□ Do you present comparable evidence for Judaism and Christianity (one each)? Are you comparing
apples to apples (and not apples to oranges)?
□ Does your analysis clearly support your thesis statement?
□ Do you address “So what?” “What’s the importance/significance?” and “Why should we care?”
□ Do you wrap up your paragraph and provide a quick transition?

SECOND BODY PARAGRAPH

□ Does your topic sentence clearly introduce a theme?
□ Do you present comparable evidence for Judaism and Christianity (one each)? Are you comparing
apples to apples (and not apples to oranges)?
□ Does your analysis clearly support your thesis statement?
□ Do you address “So what?” “What’s the importance/significance?” and “Why should we care?”
□ Do you wrap up your paragraph and provide a quick transition?

PARENTHETICAL CITATION (Remember the handout we got on this for the Shi Huang Di essay?)
□ Do you provide necessary (and accurate) parenthetical citation (citation within the paragraphs in
parentheses)?
□ Are those citations correctly formatted?

WORKS CITED (This is when you should definitely check with the librarians.)
□ Do you provide accurate and correctly formatted Works Cited page?
□ Do you provide at least one database source and two credible web sources that you’ve actually used in
your essay or in preparation for your essay? If not, take it off the list.
□ Did you share your Noodle Bib project with me? If not, you need to. Right now.

GRAMMAR AND STYLE

□ Is your essay clearly written?
□ Is your essay free of careless errors (spelling, grammar, typos, etc.)?
□ Have you read your essay aloud to yourself or to another person?
□ 12 point, Times New Roman, double spaced?

PRINT OUT
□ final draft (with name on it)
□ Works Cited
□ Noodle Bib notecards
□ outline (if you did it electronically)