Editing Checklist

First Name______________________ Last Name _________________________

Date: March 31, 2008

Editing Checklist for Growing Up Narratives

Reread your writing carefully. Put an “x” in each box under “Author” as you complete each editing item. Email your piece to a friend to edit. Have them use the same checklist. Once you have edited this piece, post it to the Hand-In box of the T drive as “Last name, first initial, GUP3.”

Editing Checklist	Author	Friend
1. Re-read it! Read your story aloud to yourself.
2. Clarity – As you read, ask yourself, “Will this make sense to a stranger?” Find confusing spots and rewrite to make them clearer. Note places where you stumble as you reread and revise to make them easier to read.
2. Punctuation - Read, paying attention to the actual road signs you’ve given readers. If you followed the punctuation as you’ve written it, will the piece sound the way you want it to sound? Have you guarded against sentences that run on and on? Have you punctuated dialogue?
3. Spelling - Do your words look correctly spelled to you? Check ones that feel as if they could be wrong, try them again, get help with them. Use online spelling tools.
4. Paragraphs - Narrative writers use a new paragraph or a new page for each new episode in the sequence of events. Do you paragraph to show the passage of time? Do you also paragraph to show changes in who is speaking?
5. Grammar Have I written with periods and capital letters? Do I avoid using and or so to combine lots of short sentences together into one run-on sentence?