During many years of teaching, I have written innumerable comments on student papers that address writing issues. Eventually I began collecting some of my comments for the purpose of reusing them in comments to students. Typically, I would discuss substantive problems in a student’s conceptualization, framing, or organization of an essay, then call attention to two or three main writing problems, and finally add in my comment: “Here are my standard explanations of these writing problems.”
Below are some of my standard explanations. They are not as good as those in writing handbooks, guides, and other such resources and sites designed for the purpose by writing program or writing studies professionals. But they are in my voice and with my examples, which is useful when addressing my own students.
- Active versus Passive Voice
- Citations at end of sentence or phrase
- Comma overused
- Comma underused
- Dangling modifier
- Fuzzy statements about the relation between one thing & something else
- “I” versus “we” voice in making an argument
- Imprecise concept words
- Imprecise verbs (and verb phrases)
- Inconsistent tense
- Inexact citations
- Inset quote format
- Matching quotations to the syntax of your sentence
- Paragraphing problems (too long paragraphs)
- Parallel construction of thoughts in a series
- “Person” pronoun of an argument
- Prepositional phrase strings
- Present tense used in analyzing a work or concept
- Quoting poetry
- [more to be added]
