Literary Devices: General Guidelines Honors English – Roberts

My expectations are that all students write with precision and depth of analysis. I also expect that all students adhere to standard guidelines for written English. Please review the following notes, and keep them in mind as you submit your entries.

  1. Citations: Whenever possible, remember to use text from your example in your function discussion. When you cite your quotes within your function discussion, remember to do the following:
  1. Include the page number, properly cited.
  2. Make sure that the quote is grammatically correct. If you need to change the case of a letter or the tense of a verb, indicate the change with brackets.
  3. Only use ellipses when omitting words from the middle of a quote, not at the beginning or the end of a quote.

Example: Marlow observes that“[t]he forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight” (95).

  1. Function Discussion: Remember to keep the “Three C’s” -- Context, Concept, Connection-- in mind when you write your function discussion. Submissions that do not discuss in detail each of these areas will not receive full credit. Remember also to use the present tense.
  1. Conventions: I will not grade a device that does not cite the quote properly. Furthermore, if I encounter more than one conventional error I will return it with the abbreviation “REV” at the top. This indicates that there was a conventional error that must be fixed before the device can be scored. In order to receive credit in these instances, you will need to fix the error(s) and resubmit the device as a revision.
  1. Submission Opportunities: There are a limited number of submission opportunities available, so you will need to take advantage of as many as you can. You may submit only two literary devices plus one revision per week.
  1. Resubmissions: Please staple your original device to the back of the revision and type “Revision” on your new version. Highlight the changes you have made on your revised entry. You may submit one revision per week, in addition to the two new submissions.
  1. Point Totals: Remember that once you have achieved the necessary point total, you no longer need to submit literary devices for the remainder of the semester.

I want to once again stress exactly how significant this assignment is to your grade. It is in some ways the heart of our study of style analysis, so it carries quite a bit of weight as far as your grade is concerned. This has the potential of helping your grade considerably, or hindering it significantly. Remember that in college it is precisely these types of long term assignments that require a degree of self-monitoring that will comprise most of your coursework.