Typescript of T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, with edits by Ezra Pound. Original in The British Library.
Holding a writing workshop online involves the trading and modifying of a lot of different documents, and it can be easy to get them confused. So I need to ask you to follow a fairly strict formula for saving and naming documents. It’s really quite easy.
Posting Drafts
You can compose your document in either Microsoft Word or Google Docs. In either case, when you post your draft to your Group Folder, please name it according to this formula:
First-Name Initial-of-Last-Name Assignment-Number
And so, for example, if Jenny Odell were posting a draft of the first assignment for this course, she’d title her document:
Jenny O E1D2
Posting Comments
When you are ready to read and comment on the drafts posted by your group members, please begin by first making copies of their documents. You do this on Google Drive by
- Selecting the document you want to work with.
- Clicking on the More actions icon (the three vertical dots immediately to the right of the Trash can icon) in the upper right-hand corner, and then selecting Make a copy in the drop-down menu.
Then work on the copies you have made, not on the original documents that the writers have posted!
Follow the guidelines I’ve posted in Commenting on Drafts to respond to each piece. This will involve both writing a note to the writer at the top of the document and inserting two or three marginal comments in it. When you are finished, rename the document by deleting “Copy of” at the start of its title, and adding your initials to the end. (The Rename function is under the File menu on Google Docs.) For example, if I were writing comments on Jenny Odell’s draft, I’d title the version with my comments:
Jenny O E1D2 jh
It’s not a hard system, and it makes it easy for each of you to keep track of who has said what about your draft. It also lets me see (and give you credit for) the work you’ve done in writing comments on your classmates’ drafts!
E110: Seminar in Composition 