Annotating your drafts allows you to become a better self-editor of your work by guiding you to think deeply about what you want to know about it before you turn it in.

This can help you to work toward one of the major learning goals to English 110: developing the skill of taking ownership over your own writing. While your peers and I are giving you feedback as readers of your work, this is YOUR piece of writing. Annotating it for us can help us help you to address what you want to know.

Steps to Annotating Your Work

Step one: Learn how to make a comment.

To annotate your own work, you first need to know how to add comments to your draft. You can do this by using the MS Word comment feature or the Google Docs comment feature, depending on which format your document is in. A reminder: I prefer if you use Google Docs, but will accept submissions in MS Word as well.

Step two: Review an annotated sample.

Next, review this annotated sample student draft to see what the student (“Veggie Meatball”) is asking her reviewers to tell her about her own work. Notice that her questions fall into a few different categories:

• She asks questions about her development (i.e. “Is my summary enough?” and “Would it be helpful to say more?”)
  
• She asks questions about whether her choices make sense to the reader (i.e. “I’m trying to signal that this is the first claim that I’m dealing with. Is this obvious?” and Do you think I’m effectively extending Dunn’s claim here?”)
  
• She asks questions about her transitions (i.e. “Here, I’m transitioning from one of the claims (teaching grammar in isolation doesn’t work) to another (teaching “real world” writing is better). Is that obvious enough?)
  
• She asks questions about her word choices and her tone and whether it’s conveying the meaning that she’s going for (i.e.  “I’m trying to be a little “softer” here and to not just accuse her of being wrong. Is that the way that this is coming off?”)
  
• She asks questions about whether or not she’s doing the assignment correctly (i.e. “Is this a good question to ask? I don’t know if there’s maybe another way to say this.”)
  
  • She asks formatting questions (i.e. “Do I need a Works Cited for this draft?”)

Step three: Brainstorm some questions you have about your own draft.

Next, think about some questions that you might want to ask about your draft. Here are some ideas of different things you could look for as you’re reviewing your own work.

• If you have summarized something, is the summary comprehensive enough?
  
• If you have summarized something, is the summary using too many minor details?
  
• Are you missing any key points in your summary?
  
• Is it clear to your reader which claims you’re using?
  
• Are your claims debatable?
  
• Are your claims just a repeat of what the author said, or are you extending or complicating their claim in some way?
  
• Do you feel like you have enough evidence to support your claim?
  
• Are there any places where you might be repeating yourself?
  
• Have you analyzed your evidence in sufficient detail?
  
• Are you transitioning from one idea to the next idea in a way that makes it clear to your audience?
  
• Does your evidence relate to the claim that you’re making?
  
• Is a particular paragraph too long or too short? Do you have distinct paragraphs (rather than just one continual text with no paragraphs incorporated)
  
• Is a particular sentence too long or too short?
  
• Do all of your sentences start off in the same way, or do you have good variety?
  
• Are there places where you’re not sure if you’re conveying what you mean to say?
  
• Are there any requirements that you don’t understand? Are there places where you want to make sure that you’re meeting them?

Step Four: Write in your annotations using the comment feature.

There are not a limit to how many annotations can you write, but you should strive to have at least two or three of them per page.

Please try to be as specific as possible: don’t write “Is this good?” or “Did I do this right?” with no other context.