Guidelines for your annotations (with thanks to Prof. Lisa Freinkel) Each annotation should be no more than 200 words and should cite the article or book chapter using proper MLA documentation style. Generally you should

• Avoid summarizing the article part-by-part. Your goal here is to explicate the author's thesis as concisely and clearly as possible. Details of the argument should only be mentioned when they seem necessary for understanding the author's thesis. A good annotation will give a sense of "what's at stake" with the argument. Why is s/he writing this essay? To what critical trend or presumption is s/he responding?
• Avoid quoting the article. Occasionally a brief quote will be helpful to convey the author's position or his/her tone, but be careful! You want to explicate, not to re-cite. Be especially careful to paraphrase rather than quote directly if your author is using jargon, specialized or highly theoretical terms.
• Avoid editorializing. Be as neutral as possible. Your goal is not to critique but to explicate. You are presenting an argument - not demonstrating its weakness.
• Say something about how your expect to use the article: how has it affected your thinking?

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