For Students with the Right-Sized Feet
I am about halfway through your papers and will, I hope, finish in a day or 3. I thought you’d appreciate an interim report.
First, my apologies that the links to online obituaries did not work. You had no models assigned by me. Most of you did the best you could and most of you did pretty well in terms of content. I also apologize for having been too cute by calling the assignment an obituary. That bit of silliness left a lot of you with tense problems—wanting to write present tense but making believe your subject was dead and so unable to shift your writing to past tense.
My bad. The rules are these:
- WRITE IN SIMPLE PAST TENSE UNLESS YOU HAVE A GOOD REASON NOT TO.
- DO NOT SHIFT TENSES IN A PIECE – (that is, if you start with past tense, do not suddenly write in present tense--
If you do not know the difference between simple past more complex verb constructions, look them up and then sue your 7th grade English teacher.
I am writing, however, not about content but about Mechanics. None of what follows should be news to any of you.
Paragraphing
Full indentation means 5 spaces from the left. Like this 3-sentence paragraph. The rest of this message is a memo—no indentation needed.
Please type all papers for class double-spaced. This is not me being idiosyncratic—it’s standard practice for English classes everywhere. Sorry I did not think I needed to say as much, but I should not have to. Seriously.
Punctuation
I am mystified how anyone can be an English major in the 14-15th grade and still not know how to punctuate a quotation. It’s not my job to teach you this, nor will I. Find the rules and look them up every time you need to until you no longer need to. Find them at OWL or in your 9th grade grammar book. You are enrolled in a class called “professional writing.” You’ve read a lot of books with dialogue—they are novels. How can anyone fail to notice that, with rare exceptions, punctuation goes inside the end-quote? If you as a professional don’t get it, who will?
These are from your papers; I assure you, the errors are not matters of typos.
“...Discover your passions and chase after them wholeheartedly”. -- How did that period get out of bounds?
“Yes. There is some pressure” --There is no end to this sentence.
She expressed the joy this brought “I love brewing tea . . . a positive attitude can really have an impact on their day, make it start off right” . . . customers always left with a smile on their face”. – one sentence with no punctuation, and the next with it outside the quotation mark. Sigh....All those customers and only one face: how sad.
Wordiness
So many I’ll try to be brief. The real point is to ask you to reread your work and find trim your expression. Most of these are simply unacceptable, as in C work. Remember what we said about topic sentences?
“At the young age of eighteen she graduated from high school and decided to do something not many do at this age.”
Why not: “After high school she stepped from her comfort zone and moved to Australia.”
Ask: Do you know any “old” eighteen-year olds? The phrase “to do something” promises we will learn what—but why not simply state what the something is instead of a topic sentence that promises an explanation is coming soon?
“It comes to no surprise that Molly was of Irish descent as she had blazing red hair and Cullen for a last name.”
Why not: “Red-haired Molly Cullen was Irish.”
Really, folks, as writers, we need to think about phrases like “of Irish descent,” whether the cliché “blazing” is needed, and whether we need to identify “Cullen” as a person’s last name when all we have to do is put it after “Molly.”
Last But Not Least
Don’t write the report of an interview. We interview to garner facts, not to summarize a conversation.
“When asked if he had any stories in the works, he briefly described a Fantasy idea in a magic/myth type setting.”
Why not: “Keith wants to write Fantasy.”
Why report “when asked?” – That’s passive voice. Who did the asking?
Now, honest, your papers are pretty good—so the question is: How much do you want to learn?
If you have ANY question about these points—“What’s passive voice, professor?” first thing in class, please.