First a note on procedures. I’ll ask you to tell me before the end of classes if you intend to rewrite and to suggest the due date for the rewrite at that time. (I’m flexible about suggestions for the due date, and it will be possible for me to accept rewrites during the week following exams. But I strongly encourage you to plan to submit rewrites before the end of finals; past experience suggests that rewrites left beyond that point are very likely never to be completed.) 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. My comments on the paper are designed to help you in this; but, while you certainly should not ignore them, you should not think of your task as primarily one of correcting specific errors I’ve noted (and doing only that will not lead to any significant change in your grade).
More specifically, I can suggest several things to watch for as you rewrite.
• I usually mark only one or two occurrences of things that I notice, so, if you correct an error or address some other issue that might appear elsewhere, too, be sure to look for other cases where it occurs.
• Look for things that I might have missed. I see new things, both good and bad, every time I read a paper; and, once some errors are corrected, it becomes easier to see others. So don’t assume that the kinds of errors I’ve marked are the only ones waiting to be corrected. And certainly don’t assume that it is only the kinds of things I’ve suggested that will improve a paper (even from my point of view).
• I have tried to make some general suggestions in my initial comments. Pay attention to those. While it may take more work to apply them than it does to respond to more specific comments, the improvement in the paper can be much greater.
• 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 errors 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.