Once you have sufficient advice on your draft and have studied all the responses, reread the draft once more, paying special attention to your thesis and its support. If the kind of writing you are doing calls for an explicit thesis, make sure that you have one and that it contains both a clear statement of the topic and a comment explaining what is particularly significant about the topic (3c). As you read, ask yourself how each paragraph relates to or supports the thesis and how each sentence develops the paragraph topic. Such careful rereading can help you eliminate irrelevant material and identify sections needing further details or examples.

Be particularly careful to note what kinds of evidence, examples, or good reasons you offer in support of your major points. If some points are off topic, look back at your exploratory work (3a). Emily Lesk found, for example, that an entire paragraph in her draft (paragraph 8) did nothing to support her thesis. Thus she deleted the entire paragraph.