21W.784: Becoming Digital

Manuscript Forms

Writing assignments other than essays will usually be submitted electronically. Unless otherwise specified, you should e-mail the assignment inline, as part of your e-mail text, and not as an attachment. The subject line should include the assignment number (“P1.2”) and your name. (Of course, your name will also appear in the address field of the e-mail, but for reasons of bookkeeping, it is very helpful for me if you include your name in the subject line, as well.)

Essay manuscripts should be typewritten, double-spaced, etc. Single-space your name, the course title, my name, and the number of the essay (or draft) in the upper right-hand corner of the first page. Center your title about a third of the way down your first page, and begin your opening paragraph two double spaces beneath your title. Please do not underline your title or place it in quotation marks (except in special cases, such as a title that is a quotation). Number your pages, beginning on page two. You should use a twelve-point font, and margins of about an inch all the way around.

All essay assignments will be submitted as hardcopies. The paper copy is generally the one that I will grade and put comments on. In addition, you are also expected to send an electronic copy to me, as an attachment, with the assignment number (“Draft 2” or “Revision 2”) and your name in the subject line.

All drafts and revisions must be word-processed and thoroughly proofread for typographical, grammatical, and punctuation errors. If you consistently make these kinds of errors, your grade will drop.

You are required to keep a copy, electronic or otherwise, of every assignment. You are strongly encouraged to save your document frequently, back-up regularly, and print your work-in-progress periodically. Computer errors are inevitable and do not excuse shoddy, incomplete, or late work.

Following the guidelines will ensure that I can focus on your ideas and your prose when I read your essays, rather than devoting time to issues of formatting, pagination, and so on.

Conferences

Conferences are your opportunity to meet one-on-one with the professor to discuss how to produce a strong revision from your draft. Conferences are scheduled for twenty minutes, which is usually enough time to work out an overall strategy and to go over a few specifics, but is not enough time to step through an entire draft together. The agenda for the conference is up to you, and you should come prepared with questions you want to ask or comments you want to make. I have already offered you substantive commentary on your draft, and i will likely have little more to say spontaneously.

All conferences are in my office, 14N-316. I will have an electronic copy of your draft in my office (assuming you submitted one), but it may be helpful for you to bring a hard copy or your own electronic copy so that you may make notes directly on the draft. You should also bring a pen.

Please arrive on time for your conference, as scheduling is tight and we can't afford to run into the next scheduled conference.

While conferences are primarily about your revision process, you are free to discuss any aspect of the course with me, including suggestions for improving the course or your current status in it. I look forward to seeing you in conference.

Workshops

From time to time, we will devote all or part of a class meeting to a full draft workshop. Prior to class I will distribute via email a draft written by one of your classmates. Please read it carefully and either print it out or bring it on a computer to class. Class will be spent discussing the draft, discovering its merits, and working on ways to improve it.

Full draft workshops are usually most helpful to that student whose draft is being analyzed. But as I choose for workshop drafts that tend to typify the drafts I receive, it is very likely that everyone can benefit from the group discussion. As such, you should edit your comments as you make them, attempting to direct the discussion toward the most generally helpful topics. It is, for example, less helpful to point out a particular misspelled word. But critiques of both style and content are fair game, as they likely will apply to the drafts of many of your classmates.

Whenever we have such a workshop, you should come to class prepared. Not only should you read the essay in advance, and bring a copy to class, but you should also identify a few things about the draft, to help stimulate discussion if necessary. That is, come prepared to respond to these questions.

Finally, on workshop days, I will play only a very small role in class discussion. In addition to the burden/boon of having her draft examined, the student whose draft it is will be responsible for directing the class discourse. For the most part, this job takes care of itself. But it is helpful sometimes to guide the discussion more forcefully. Hint: the discussion leader should begin by asking about the thesis and pursuing this question with some intensity. She may also wish to draw on the above questions to keep the discussion moving forward in helpful ways. I have seen some students do a fantastic job of directing this discussion, much to their own benefit and to that of their peers.

Peer Editing

Peer editing is an awesome resonsibility. Just as you are counting on your fellow students to provide incisive and constructive criticism of your draft so that you might turn it into a successful revision, so are they counting on you. You are already familiar with the criteria on which to judge the strengths and weaknesses of a draft, as we have applied these criteria in workshops and you have seen them applied to your own work. The list of recommendations below will thus serve as a reminder and a checklist, to ensure that you have done a thorough job of evaluating your peers’ drafts. Please print out a copy of each draft that you review and mark it up as appropriate with your edits and comments. It will likely also be helpful for you to type a few paragraphs of overall commentary, summarizing the outstanding strengths and weaknesses of the draft, and providing directive advice about how to turn the draft into the most successful revision. Make sure that you have thought about and addressed these key factors in your analysis.