First a note on procedures. I’ll ask you to tell me within a week after the paper is returned if you intend to rewrite and you should suggest the due date for the rewrite at that time. When you have completed your rewrite, you only need to turn in the new version since I have a copy of the first version and my comments on it.
My basic advice for rewrites is very simple: work to make your paper better in any way you can think of. More specifically, I can suggest several things to watch for as you rewrite.
• I have made some general suggestions for a rewrite in my comments. Pay attention to those. I have tried to select the issues where I thought rewriting would do the most to improve the paper.
• I will sometimes give examples to illustrate my comments. Of course you should deal with those cases, but do not assume they are the only ones. Indeed, if I refer to something as an example, you can pretty safely assume that it is not the only case of the issue I’ve used it to illustrate. Dealing with only the specific examples I point to does not count as any real improvement in the paper.
• Work to make your paper better in any other way you can think of. Don’t assume that the issues I’ve mentioned are the only areas where improvement is possible (even from my point of view).
In my comments, I try to avoid completely specifying what you need to do to correct an error or respond to another sort of comment. That’s to make you take more initiative in the rewrite. However, while many of the issues will be obvious once they are pointed out to you, it may be hard to see what to do in some cases. I’m not trying to keep secrets here, and I will be happy to provide further advice. Asking me about these things is one way for you to take initiative in correcting them. (And, since I keep a copy of your paper and all my comments, including those scribbled in the margins, you can ask questions by e-mail.)
Finally, while the payback in your grade may seem very small (the rewrite affects only 1/2 your grade for the paper, so it affects only 1/16 of your grade for the course), you can learn a lot about writing papers by taking seriously the exercise of rewriting one; and that can have an effect on the many other papers you will write before you are done at Wabash (and even before you have finished C&T).