Rubric and Checklist for Papers
This checklist is not to be completed for a grade. Use it as a general guide to be sure that your paper is complete.
Papers are graded based on three major elements:
- Content: 35%
- Analysis: 35%
- Structure and Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation: 30%
Structure and G,S,P:
_____1. Name, course number, and date on the top of the first page
_____2. Presentation title on the first page
_____3. Pages are numbered
_____4. Margins are 1.5 on top, bottom, and sides
_____5. Line spacing is 1.5
_____6. Indented quotations of more than 5 lines are indented properly. (Use the “increase indent” function in Word.)
_____7. Footnotes or endnotes consecutively numbered?
_____8. Works cited page exists (where appropriate). Note: Some styles do not require a works cited page when all of the relevant publication information appears in notes.
- _____9. In text references? That is, are you using the kind such that if you are quoting John Smith’s book on X, you would write, immediately after the quotation, (Smith, 267). Or, in a case in which you state in the text of the sentence preceding the quotation that you are quoting John Smith, you would include only the page number or numbers in the parenthetical in-text reference, like this: (267).Did you make sure that when/if you use in-text references, that you included the citation inside the sentence – i.e., before the period at the end? And when you use them with an indented quotation, the citation goes after the period.
_____10. Proper font used? Please do not use script fonts or fonts less than 11 point. Use no font size larger than 14.
_____11. Stapled pages?
_____12. Is your paper the right length? If the assignment for the paper indicates that it should be no more than 6 pages, or approximately 1500 words, your paper shouldn’t be more than 6.5 to 7 pages at the most (I’m always fairly lenient about this sort of thing because the idea is to write a quality paper, not to make sure that you hit some arbitrary target of an exact number of words), and it shouldn’t be less than about 4 pages.
_____13. Did you check for errors in spelling? After 3 errors, your grade on the paper may be reduced.
_____14. Did you check for errors in punctuation? After 3 errors, your grade on the paper may be reduced.
_____15. Did you check for errors in grammar? After 3 errors, your grade on the paper may be reduced.
_____16. In your works cited (and in your annotated bibliographies), did you make sure that you used the hanging indentation function (go to “format,” “paragraph,” and “special” for this function)?
_____17. It is perfectly acceptable in philosophy to write in the first person. So if you think that X is the case (or not), then you may state in the prose something like this: “My position on this issue is…” or “I contend that Descartes’ version of the Cosmological Argument is insufficient because….”
Content:summary or summaries or explanation(s) of others’ positions
_____18. Did you re-cast an argument or position of another person clearly and completely?
_____19. Did you remember to cite the source when you used an idea or words of an author? Not doing so is plagiarism – even if you did it unintentionally.
_____20. Did you use the principle of charity in re-casting an argument?
Research, Analysis (your arguments), and Information Fluency
_____21. Does your paper have a thesis statement within the first two paragraphs?
_____22. Did you make sure to avoid irrelevant details such as biographical information about a philosopher or other person mentioned in your paper? There are some limited cases in which biographical information matters, but it is rarely the case that this is true.
_____23. Does your argument contain contradictions? That is, did you say something odd such as: “I find Kant’s ethics to be completely indefensible, but it is a good theory”? It seems peculiar for someone to write this and mean it. That is, it is peculiar to claim that a theory is indefensible and at the same time think that it is good.
_____24. Does your argument contain justified conclusions? That is, did you argue for your position?
_____25. If you used the ideas or words of another in the creation of your own argument, did you cite the source? Not doing so is plagiarism – even if you did it unintentionally.
_____26. Are there instances in your paper of questionable reasoning such as inappropriate appeals to authority or tradition, ad hominem attacks, circular reasoning, or other irrelevancies?
_____27. Did you check web sites that you used to make sure that they are respectable and contain reliable information?
_____28. If you used “popular” media sources for any information in your paper, were you careful about assessing the reliability of the contents of the article, TV show or news broadcast? Popular media sources are things like Time, Newsweek, newspapers, television news broadcasts, TV programs, and the like.
_____29. Did you use the information that you included in our paper fairly and accurately, doing your best to ensure that you did not alter the meaning of the original author’s ideas?
Other Details
_____30. Did you remember to send me a copy of your paper by e-mail to , using this subject heading? PHI 2010H, your name, paper number. So, if I were sending a paper, I would put this in the subject heading:
PHI 2010H, stanlick, paper 2 or PHI 2010H, stanlick, presentation or PHI 2010H, stanlick, presentation evaluation
_____31. Did you remember to make a hard copy of your paper to turn in during class on the due date?
_____32. Did you remember to staple the pages together? This is an important little detail if I happen to drop a stack of papers or if my cat, for example, decides to jump into a pile of papers.