Essay planning, drafting, and structural review checklist

• Copy the exact prompt or commission into the working document.
• Mark instruction verbs such as explain, compare, interpret, evaluate, or argue.
• Record target length, deadline, format, citation style, and media requirements.
• Name the likely reader and what that reader already knows.
• State what the reader should understand, reconsider, or decide after reading.
• Identify any legal, ethical, privacy, or safety concern in the subject.

• Replace the topic label with a question.
• Bound the object, place, period, people, and mechanism where relevant.
• Write two plausible answers to test whether the question is open.
• Remove assumptions of motive, guilt, virtue, or causation from the wording.
• Confirm that core evidence is available.
• List what the essay will not attempt to cover.

• Answer the question in one or two specific sentences.
• Name a relationship, reason, interpretation, or criterion.
• Avoid a thesis that merely announces the topic.
• Replace universal terms unless evidence supports them.
• Write the strongest reasonable objection.
• Note what evidence would force the thesis to change.

• State the question the essay answers.
• List the claims a reader must accept for the thesis to hold.
• Order those claims by dependency, starting with what the reader already grants.
• Name the evidence that carries each claim.
• Label each section's movedefine, compare, trace a cause, weigh a counterargument, interpret.
• Mark where a skeptical reader could stop agreeing.

• Match every factual claim to a source, observation, or record.
• Save page numbers, timestamps, captions, and stable URLs while researching.
• Separate quotation, paraphrase, summary, and personal inference in notes.
• Check the original source rather than citing a secondhand mention when possible.
• Use library catalogues and subject databases before general web searches.
• Match the method to the claimstatistics for rates, documents for decisions, interviews for experience, close reading for texts.
• Record conflicting evidence and uncertainty.
• Use a clear placeholder such as [SOURCE NEEDED] for unresolved claims.
• Write the sentence as it will read, for exampleThe bridge opened in [YEAR], according to [SOURCE NEEDED].

• Start with the section whose evidence and purpose are clearest.
• State the point before or near the evidence that develops it.
• Explain what each example proves and what it does not prove.
• Use transitions that name a relationship, not decorative connectors.
• Keep speculation visibly qualified.
• Draft the introduction after the essay's real direction is known if that helps.

• What is this paragraph's one main job?
• Which sentence states that job?
• What evidence does the paragraph use, and where does it come from?
• What does the evidence prove, and what does it not prove?
• How does this paragraph depend on the one before it?
• If this paragraph were deleted, what would the reader lose?

Paragraph audit questions

• What does it say?
• What does it do for the essay?
• Which evidence does it use?
• Where does analysis begin?
• How does it connect backward and forward?
• Does it contain more than one main point?

• Read only title, thesis, headings, and topic sentences.
• Make a reverse outline from the draft as written. A short version might read: para 1 states the question, para 2 defines the measure, para 3 gives the strongest counterexample, para 4 answers it, para 5 states the limit.
• Find repeated moves, missing steps, and late-arriving premises.
• Reorder sections by logical dependency.
• Cut background that never affects the answer.
• Confirm that the conclusion follows from the evidence presented.

• Open with the specific issue rather than a universal claim about society.
• Supply only the context needed to understand the question.
• State or strongly orient readers toward the essay's central direction.
• Avoid promising material the body never delivers.
• Use the ending to state the earned consequence, limit, or changed view.
• Do not introduce a major unaddressed objection in the final paragraph.

• Whole-essay passargument, scope, and structure.
• Evidence, quotation, and attribution pass.
• Clarity, diction, rhythm, and repetition pass.
• Grammar, spelling, punctuation, and format pass.
• Link, caption, permission, and metadata pass.

• Every quotation matches the source.
• Every paraphrase preserves the source's meaning.
• Every material counterexample receives fair treatment.
• Personal memory is not presented as independently verified fact.
• Composite scenes or invented details are not passed off as reporting.
• The title and description match the finished essay.