(Each of the five criteria is weighted roughly the same as the others for grading--click here to see how to convert the zero to 20 scores in each category into a letter grade to guide you re: how strong the paper was in each one.)

1)  Is the paper focused clearly on recommending a product to a suitable audience?

2)  Is the evidence appropriate and sufficient?  Are sources carefully chosen with care for their authority and reliability? Does the paper handle direct quotation and paraphrase correctly?  Is the reader always certain where information is coming from, and is that information usually paraphrased rather than directly quoted, except when quotes are essential?

3)  Does it have an introduction which addresses the needs of a clearly defined readership, and clearly forecasts the main points the paper is going to make, as well as the basic reasoning supporting them?  Do paragraphs occur in a logical order that is clearly explained in paragraph transition? Does the conclusion do more than merely summarize the argument?

4)  Does the paper follow MLA style, especially for in-text source citations?  Does the paper have an accurate title, a Works Cited section, page numbering, and other appropriate elements of an academic paper?

5)  Are the paper’s sentences composed carefully?   Are the sentences grammatically coherent, and are they composed of words well-chosen to be accurate and clear? Are paragraphs coherently constructed around clear topics and/or purposes?