Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Blessed Winter Solstice!

I hope your holidays have been as enjoyable as mine have been. This December I’ve used my vacation to spend time with family and savor our Christmas traditions more than I have in many years. The presents were less plentiful this year, but I can’t say I missed them.  Good friends and family, happy dogs, and delicious food were all the gifts I needed (or wanted!).

I’m a quiet, introspective person so spending the holidays with my very small immediate family while we cook traditional Peruvian and Romanian dishes and watch Christmas classics on television is my idea of a perfect Christmas. I have friends who are far from loved ones this winter and I feel for everyone who can’t spent this holiday in the comfort of home.  There’s a classic Spanish Christmas song that always brings a tear to my eye when I hear it. If you’re far from the ones you hold dear, then this song is for you.

Ven A Mi Casa Esta Navidad by Alvaro Torres

Tu que estas lejos de tus amigos     You, who are far from your friends,
De tu tierra y de tu hogar     From your country, and your home
Y tienes pena, pena en el alma     And you have sadness, sadness in your soul
Porque no dejas de pensar     Because you can’t stop thinking
Tu que esta noche no puedes, dejar de recordar     You, who this night, can’t stop remembering
Quiero que sepas que aquí en mi mesa    I want you to know that here at my table
para ti tengo un lugar     For you I have a place.
Por eso y muchas cosas más     For that and many more things,
Ven a mi casa esta Navidad     Come to my house this Christmas.
Por eso y muchas cosas más  For that and many more things,
Ven a mi casa esta Navidad     Come to my house this Christmas.
Tu que recuerdas quizá a tu madre     You, who remembers perhaps your mother,
O a un hijo que no esta     Or a son who isn’t here,
Quiero que sepas que en esta noche     I want you to know that this night
él te acompañará     He will accompany you.
No vayas solo por esas calles Don’t go alone through those streets
queriéndote aturdir     Wanting to be in a daze.
Ven con nosotros y a nuestro lado    Come with us, and by our side,
intenta sonreír     Try to smile.
Por eso y muchas cosas más    For that and many more things,
Ven a mi casa esta Navidad      Come to my house this Christmas.
Por eso y muchas cosas más    For that and many more things,
Ven a mi casa esta Navidad     Come to my house this Christmas.

Luis Alguile sings a beautiful version of this Spanish classic. Even if you don’t understand Spanish, the catchy melody and the emotion in his voice cross language barriers.Click here to listen to this song on YouTube.

Here are some recent photos of my dogs to keep you company if you are missing your own pets or are living in a place that doesn’t allow animals. Happy holidays to everyone out in Internet-land!

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Editing Your Writing: Removing Pleonasms

Brevity is one of the characteristics of good writing; it’s also one of the hardest for writers (especially new ones) to achieve. Writers have a tendency to hang on to the words they commit to paper, even when editing them out would result in better prose (a process Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch called “murdering your darlings”). When the writing is your own, you’re often the last person to realize some words, sentences, or even entire paragraphs are superfluous and need to go. It’s best to start desensitizing yourself to the pain of deleting your own writing by editing out redundancies that are easy for even novice writers to spot.

These redundancies are called pleonasms, words that are repetitive and unnecessary to the meaning of a sentence. They usually appear alongside a synonym and are easier to recognize than other forms of verbiage because two adjacent words that have the same meaning tend to call attention to themselves. An easier way to identify pleonasms is to remember they are the opposite of oxymorons, a combination of contradictory terms (e.g., jumpo shrimp).

Examples of Pleonasms

Examples of redundant phrases can be found very easily just driving to the grocery store or the local mall. If you’re not the adventuring type, opening the paper or turning on the television will yield just as many pleonasms. Here are just a few of the more common ones:

• “Free gift” – Presents, by definition, do not cost you anything.
• “New [and] improved” – Improvements can only be done to pre-existing items.
• “Lift/Raise/Climb up” or “Descend/Fall/Lower down” – Each of these verbs already contains directionality.
• “Unexpected surprise” – Surprises are never expected.

You should start to get the idea what a repetitious phrase looks like now. Sometimes there may be a conjunction like “and” or a comma separating words that are synonymous, as in the phrases “old and ancient ruins” and “frigid, cold depths.” In these cases, one word can still be deleted to make the message more succinct (just remember to also remove the conjunction or comma!). For a very thorough list of English pleonasms, see Pleonasms and Redundant Phrases.  Once you start keeping your eyes peeled for redundancies in writing, you’re going to start seeing pleonasms everywhere!

Great writing doesn’t have to be overflowing with flowery language that spills onto page after page.  Some of the most beloved and impactful novels we have are slim paperbacks that barely break 100 pages. George Orwell’s 1984, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 all come to mind.

I cannot tell you that editing your own work is easy, especially when it comes to deleting words you spent long hours coming up with, but what I can assure you is that it gets easier with practice. Removing repetitious phrases from your writing is a simple exercise that is guaranteed to make a noticeable improvement in your work.

 

 

Photo credit: George Hatcher’s Flickr Photostream

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Topic Sentences: An Introduction

For those of us fortunate enough to have grown up during a time when game developers were just beginning to explore the potential of 8-bit graphics, the sight of an NES zapper calls to mind nostalgia. Duck Hunt was the very first first-person shooter I ever played, and it is still the most memorable. While pointing the light gun at anything was fun in the beginning, when I was done fooling around and wanted to actually be successful at the game I had to learn how to aim properly to hit the targets.

In writing, paragraphs have to be aimed towards targets as well. Topic sentences accomplish this task for you by pointing your paragraphs in the direction of the main point you're trying to cover. They also let your reader know where you're heading, clarify your ideas, and organize your points. It's can be fun and productive to just mess around writing anything that comes to mind, but if you want your paper to have any chance of being successful, you need to add topic sentences.

A Topic Sentence Defined

A topic sentence is a sentence that states the main idea of a paragraph. It is usually, but not always, located at the beginning of the paragraph. Additionally, a good topic sentence is concise, taking no more words than are absolutely necessary to state the main idea.

Hopefully this definition sounds familiar to you. If not, take a peek at my post about thesis statements. Getting a feeling of deja vu yet? Topic sentences and thesis statements are so similar to one another because they both serve to focus writing. Whereas a thesis statement states the direction of an entire essay and is located at the end of the introductory paragraph, a topic sentence only states the focus of a single paragraph and is placed at its beginning. Interestingly, when you break a paragraph down to its basic components, it's essentially a miniature essay. However, that's a topic to tackle in another post.

Examples of Topic Sentences

It’s time to see what topic sentences look like in action. In the following examples, I will write the topic sentences in bold for easier identification. Notice how the topic sentence contains the main idea of the paragraph and the remaining sentences are 1) relevant and 2) support and/or expand on the topic sentence.

• “Charismatic people always seem to know the right things to say and when to say them.  They don’t pepper their sentences with ‘uhs’ or desperately search for words.  They are polished and articulate, which creates a commanding and powerful presence.  But this enviable performance is not by chance, it is the result of careful preparation.”
  
  ~Solovic, Susan W. The Girls' Guide to Power and Success. New York: MJF Books, 2001. 79. Print.
  
• "Unlike a disease, which has a specific pathological origin, a syndrome is a condition that exists only as a collection of symptoms. Consider cystic fibrosis, a disease that causes the body to produce an unnaturally large amount of sticky mucous, resulting in long-term deterioration of the lungs, as well as other conditions related to mucous production. The disease is present when a person receives a specific gene from both parents. The genes are the cause, the excess mucous production is the effect, and the lung deterioration and a few other conditions are the symptoms. The symptoms are specific to the disease and lead to the specific diagnosis."
  
  ~Hammerly, Milton, and Cheryl Kimball. What to Do When the Doctor Says It's PCOS. Massachusetts: Fair Winds Press, 2003. 91. Print.
  
• “The legal profession is known for its mind-boggling complexities, but also for its clever terminology.  One of my favorite creations from this latter category is the ‘attractive nuisance.’  The phrase seems almost perfectly to summarize the yin and yang of life, with its sweet, naughty temptations.  Sadly, in legal terms, what it more specifically refers to is one’s backyard swimming pool, which looks so inviting to the youth of the neighborhood that they can almost be expected to try and jump in at some point.”
  
  ~Beneke, Jeff. The Fence Bible. Massachusetts: Storey Publishing, 2005. 13. Print.
  

Who Uses Topic Sentences?

Don't pick up your favorite novel to find examples of topic sentences. In fact, most professional writers whose work is found in bookstores do not use explicit topic sentences in their writing. You definitely won't find many topic sentences in journalism or online; people perusing Internet posts and newspaper articles have short attention spans and will not read large chunks of text, so paragraphs are often no longer than two sentences (if even that long).

However, topic sentences are expected and often required in academic writing, including writing produced in professions that require reports (e.g., medical professionals writing research, lawyers and paralegals working on briefs, and even managers writing productivity reports). If you have any aspirations of making it through your high-school, college, and professional writing responsibilities unscathed, you're going to need to learn start writing topic sentences. But don’t think of topic sentences as a chore; the fact is, writing them will end up saving you time and effort.

How Topic Sentences Make Writing Easier for You

Getting in the habit of writing topic sentences for each paragraph as you work on an essay will actually make writing your essay faster and easier. You have to know what you're trying to say with each paragraph before you can write the topic sentence, so you're essentially being forced to organize your thoughts as you commit them to paper. As someone who's written more essays than she can count during the span of her still-ongoing academic life, trust me when I say making an outline of your main points before you start writing will make writing topic sentences a piece of cake. Once you know what main point or sub-point you're presenting in a paragraph, all that's left to do is supply the evidence to support the paragraph’s main point.

Why wouldn't you want to make essay writing easier for yourself? A topic sentence is a sentence that writes itself because if you know your main point, you know your topic sentence. It's essentially one less sentence you have struggle over in your essay, letting you focus your energy where you need it most: supporting your arguments.  

Not only do topic sentences help you write papers, being able to identify other writers’ topic sentences has benefits of its own.  Since a topic sentence contains the main idea of a paragraph, it can be used to summarize writing sections easily and efficiently.  Professional tutoring services for the SAT and LSAT frequently teach students to look for topic sentences in paragraphs as a simple, fast “trick” to locate information to answer questions. Apply this technique to textbooks to isolate important points quickly and create an outline of each chapter’s main ideas.

Final Thoughts

Topic sentences are considered one of the basics of good writing and mastering them is not something most people can accomplish without practice.  There is much more to learning how to execute them successfully than what I can contain in a single blog post, so stay tuned for future posts that transform main points in an outline into topic sentences, break down the elements of essay paragraphs, and  include examples of paragraphs missing topic sentences.  I will be writing many more blog posts on this topic because I know just how essential a skill writing topic sentences is for you to be successful in your writing endeavors.

A dog in the game Duck Hunt held up the birds you shot when you aimed well. Readers won't do that to let you know your paragraphs hit the mark so remember to get feedback on your writing before you submit it to a professor or supervisor.

 

Photo credit: MethodShop

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Why _The Man With The Iron Fists_ Is Bad Writing

 

It has always been my belief that movies are descriptive essays come to life. I've taught students to watch film with a critical eye and to notice how closely screenplays follow the same requirements of academic writing. An introduction with an attention-grabbing element that will also appear in the conclusion, solid main points that are relevant and fully developed, transitions to improve the flow from one scene to the next – it’s not hard to see why the hallmark of good cinema is good writing.

When a movie has great writing, why the show was so successful can be difficult to pinpoint because most, if not all, of the elements it needs are well done. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true. It’s much easier to identify the flaws in a badly written movie because we take for granted that the basics will be present; when characters are under-developed and multiple plot holes exist, the absence of quality writing comes as a shock.

It can be difficult to find movies so badly done that it’s impossible to not see what part of the writing failed to deliver. Luckily for me, The Man With the Iron Fists is one such example of cinema that failed to live up to its potential. Please be forewarned that THERE WILL BE SPOILERS throughout my review of the movie. If you have yet to see it and would like the plot to be a surprise when you do, consider NOT reading further in this blog post.

The Title Was Inappropriate

The movie is titled after the main character of the story, the Blacksmith. The problem is the focus of the movie is on the other characters for the first half of the film.  The Blacksmith doesn’t make a significant appearance until the second half of the movie. That would be acceptable if the first half of the film paved the way for the Blacksmith’s character to take a starring role, but it didn’t.  When the so-called protagonist of the story finally gets some screen-time, he is still only a secondary character who does not battle the primary villains to avenge Gold Lion, recover the gold, or save the orphans from the Emperor’s gold-recovery team.

In terms of screen-time and the role the blacksmith plays as a character in the story, his being named the main character is simply not warranted. A better title for the movie would have been X-Blade, as Zen Yi is the character who avenges Gold Lion, his father, by journeying to Jungle Village, battling multiple attempts on his life by various hired goons, and ultimately fighting and killing Silver Lion to recover the Emperor’s gold.

The title The Man With the Iron Fists could still work, but the screenplay would have to be rewritten to reflect the more active role the Blacksmith would have to play in the movie to justify his being the title character. Read more about the importance of titles and why weak titles can upset viewers.

There Were Too Many Plot Holes

Plot holes are the result of underdeveloped ideas. There simply isn’t enough detail in the script to explain some person or event in the story and a “hole” is felt by the viewer. These cavities can lead to what are called logical fallacies, errors in reasoning.  You actually need some thread of reasoning before it can become a tangled mess and, alas, The Man With the Iron Fists suffers from much more basic errors in writing.

Examples of the story’s weak writing include:

• The Poison Dagger: This character uses poisoned darts, not a dagger, to stealthily kill opponents.  As a top advisor to the Emperor, it’s questionable that he would be able to disappear from duty and spend as much time as he does with Silver Lion without his absence being noticed.  Moreover, his raspy voice and shocking head of pure white hair are qualities impossible to keep hidden under a cloak for months on end.  Jack Knife has been searching for the Poison Dagger since his own almost-fatal run-in with the Dagger’s poison; it’s hard to believe that in the many years since their encounter, Jack Knife never heard rumors about the Dagger’s identity.  Jack Knife’s only clue is the blueprints for a dart dispenser and mercury tipped darts.  These clues lead him to the Blacksmith, the only weaponsmith who uses mercury in the area.  However, no mention of the commissioning of this dart gun was mentioned earlier (and there were many opportunities afforded the film to slip it in with the other plans for weapons commissioned by the various clans). 

 

•  The Assassination of Gold Lion. Only TWO people in the Lion clan thought Silver Lion’s behavior was odd after the death of Gold Lion? What about those present at the battle where Gold Lion was assassinated by the Poison Dagger? Silver Lion wasn’t exactly subtle about gloating over Gold Lion’s corpse.  Did all the Lions at that particular battle perish so none could be witness to Silver Lion’s betrayal? Finally, and most importantly, why would the clan NOT wait for Zen Yi’s return? As the son of the now-deceased leader and the most capable warrior in the clan, it doesn’t make sense for the clan not to wonder about his continued absence.  Silver Lion’s enthused speech about the Lion clan being strong enough without Zen Yi may have won over the clansmen for the battle against the Hyena clan, but when months pass and Zen Yi still doesn’t return, surely more than two members became concerned. Once Zen Yi was in Jungle Village and the news spread, the Lion clan members STILL remained apathetic to Zen Yi’s lack of arrival at the clan’s headquarters.  Silver Lion never hid the fact that he hired Bronze Body and Brass Body’s fight with Zen Yi was public.

 

• Zen Yi’s Escape and Convalescence. After Zen Yi is defeated by Brass Body and is about to receive the death blow, Zen Yi’s dying henchman manages to drop a roof on top of Brass Body. While Brass Body shrugs off the structure, the Blacksmith and his girlfriend whisk Zen Yi away down the alley and up into the Pink Blossom. Zen Yi manages to avoid detection for weeks by lying in bed at the Pink Blossom while the Blacksmith’s girlfriend attends to him. Later, when the Blacksmith is being tortured, Silver Lion reveals that he knows all about the Blacksmith’s prostitute girlfriend. The Blacksmith ultimately loses his arms due to his refusal to give up where Zen Yi is hidden. The question here is: How could Silver Lion NOT know where Zen Yi was? If Silver Lion were desperate to get Zen Yi, as he claims to be, why not storm the Pink Blossom or ask for them to hand Zen Yi over?

 

I understand some kung-fu action films are meant in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way where entertainment is paramount over logical consistency, and some cheesiness is actually intended. The overly dramatized gore and action were throw-backs to Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle, and especially Kill Bill type cinematography, but the intentionally melodramatic, corny acting was inconsistent, making the movie seem confused. At best the movie seemed to suffer from multiple personality disorder, unsure of what genre it was supposed to be.

Main Points Weren’t Developed

While missing main points created plot holes, the main points that were present were severely underdeveloped. I’ve written before about the types of evidence available for writers to use to support their main points and screenplay writing is no different. Flashbacks, dialogue, and cut-scenes are all ways plot and characters can be developed. The Man With the Iron Fists doesn’t take advantage of these techniques and the resulting story and characters are shallow and insincere.

• Madame Blossom was a fascinating character who’s thirst for power and gold and willingness to use sex and violence to attain it were well developed. We get hints as to her background when she gives an impassioned feminist speech to her brothel girls, but nothing that really indicates what horrible things happened to her as a young woman. Nothing that justifies her turning her back to an enemy and exposing herself to his blade in order to save a child. The act rang very insincere for her character.

 

• The Blacksmith. I can’t begin to convey how woefully underdeveloped this character was in the movie. The scenes where he was a negro in America were a start towards developing him as a three-dimensional human being, but nowhere near enough the development needed for a main character. Instead of his life back in Southern America, more attention should have been spent on his time in the monastery after washing ashore in China. DEFINITELY more scenes needed to be shot that depicted his relationship with his girlfriend. There were no emotional scenes between them. For the entirety of two minutes they were together on screen, he gave her the gold he earned for her and she put it into her jewelry box and smiled over it. The scenes depict his "girl" more like a gold digger who was using him. However, her death supposedly provided the Blacksmith the motivation for him to defeat Brass Body. 

Irrelevant Points Were Developed

Writing a thorough, lengthy answer to the wrong question is one of the oldest tricks in a student’s repertoire of desperation when they see an essay question they don’t actually know the answer to. Take-home essays suffer from irrelevancy just as often as in-class essays do, but usually because the student used up all the relevant main points s/he had and needed to reach a set page limit.  RZA could be considered a student as this was his first time directing a movie, but the stakes were much higher for a product like The Man With the Iron Fists than it is for a student trying to get another assignment out of the way.

As beautiful as the character development for Zen Yi was, it was for the WRONG MOVIE. For what it’s worth, his relationship was much more believable than the Blacksmith’s was. Jack Knife’s character was another one that was extremely well developed.  A movie explaining Jack Knife’s past exploits would be thrilling, but he should not have received as much screen time and development as he did in The Man With the Iron Fists. That time would have been better spent flushing out the Blacksmith’s character and filling in the gaping holes in the plot line.

The Acting Was Bad Overall

If the screenplay consists of the main points, then acting consists of the stylistic elements present in writing. How well the paper is formatted, proper use of citation style conventions, and thorough proofreading affect how well received an essay will be by a reader. If the paper is so riddled with grammar and spelling errors that it is frustrating to read, no one will enjoy reading it. The same bad experience is guaranteed viewers of a movie with bad acting.

Suffice it to say that it was quite obvious RZA was not a professional actor just by his handling of the Blacksmith role. Not only was the narration and dialogue delivered in an emotionless, monotone voice, he had only two facial expressions: angry and in pain.

The Final Say

I would be remiss in my duties as a reviewer if I didn’t point out that there are things that were exceptionally well done in the movie. For example, the music and costumes were amazing. But the many flaws in the movie overshadowed its good merits. If The Man With the Iron Fists were an academic essay, it would not receive a passing grade. The writing is simply too poor for this movie to be successful. All the errors mentioned above could have and should have been caught at the proofreading stage, if not sooner.  With a screenplay as badly flawed as this one, it’s a wonder the movie ever made it into theaters at all.

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NaNoWriMo 2012 Kickoff!

A month brimming over with words is upon us as today marks the commencement of NaNoWriMo 2012! I wish I could be struggling to meet daily word goals with the other 200k+ people taking part in this year's National Novel Writing Month, but studying for tests and filling out graduate school applications takes priority this month. 

If you do have the free time, I plead with you to take part in the writing frenzy.  A talent for weaving pictures out of words is not needed, just a desire to tell a story -any story- however simple.  Some people who have no stories to tell use this month to write blog posts, poetry, or correspondence to family members.

Don't worry about actually meeting word limits if you like to take a slower approach to fabricating your stories.  The story I began in last year's NaNoWriMo is still incomplete and I never met more than a week of word goals, but I had the time of my life reading through all the interesting forum posts and I now have 27k of words of a story that I wouldn't have had without the support and motivation granted me by knowing an army of writers was out there with me sweating to find just the right way to say something.

Signing up for an account is free! Even if you decide not to participate, this month can still be one where you pause and think about the craft of writing just a little longer than you normally would. I know I will be writing more than I usually do this month, even if it’s not 1,665 words a day.

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Meet Martin!

 

A Fateful Meeting

On my way to a test the other day, I ran across this little guy on the outskirts of campus.  People were walking past him without a second glance while he sat under a tree and wagged his tail.  He looked so lonely, I just had to walk over for a closer look.  My original plan was to give him my lunch, pat him on the head, and continue on my merry way to class. Ha! After he devoured my sandwich, he crawled all over me, positively ecstatic. In between trying to keep him from slobbering too much on my face and putting away my lunch containers, I realized he was just a puppy. I hardened my heart as best I could and started walking away, but when I saw him chase a skateboarder into the busy street and get shooed by university landscapers towards the main road, my well laid plan to feed-and-run was doomed.

The Journey Home

Yes, that is the puppy in the back seat of my car.  He looks completely unremorseful in the photo for the struggle it took to get him across the parking lot and into my vehicle (not to mention for what he DID to my car!).  When I ran out of food with which to lure him, I resorted to picking him up and carrying his wiggly butt the rest of the way.  With the amount of squirming he was doing, it looked like I was dog-napping someone’s pet! Did I mention he was heavy? And I was wearing my backpack and purse, to boot! I have no idea what muscle I pulled in my lower back, but it’s still on the mend today.

 

The Start of a New Life

As thirsty as he was, I’m surprised he didn’t jump into the pool to cool off! It must have been in the upper 90’s the day I found him.  Doesn’t he look adorable? I made it back to school in time for my exam, thank Goodness! I had two hours to spare, but all it takes is one accident on the freeway and several closed lanes for traffic to slow to a crawl. I doubt “I found a stray dog” would have qualified as an acceptable reason to make up a test for my professor.

After terrorizing Mofi and Hugo, my other dogs, ALL night trying to smell their nether regions, he settled down to a nice meal of one decorative rug, three stuffed dog toys, one tennis ball, and a throw pillow.  Did I forget to say he wasn’t neutered? The house was uncharted, unmarked virgin territory and it was his mission to claim it all.

One sleep-deprived night and a generous donation later, the puppy was safely admitted to a no-kill local shelter.  Everyone who met him on the way fell in love with how happy and soft he was and once at the shelter, he claimed the staff’s hearts by bounding over to the admitting clerk’s desk and trying to crawl into her lap. I left them with the few dog toys that managed to survive the night and last I saw he was inspecting the computer monitor while staff cooed over his cuteness.

I HAD to check on him the next day so I visited the shelter’s website and saw his pretty little face already posted for adoption. I’m not sure if I’d have named him “Martin,” but he certainly doesn’t seem to mind the name they gave him.

Needless to say, my life has been hectic. My last post was back in August! I apologize for neglecting this blog for this long; now that I’ve adjusted to my class schedule and am unhampered by stray dogs (Sad to say, “Martin” wasn’t the first I’d found this past month, but all have happy homes now), I can get back to doing what I love: writing about writing.

Thank you all for hanging in there with me! I won’t let you down!

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Happy First Week of Classes!

Sitting in the hallway outside a classroom waiting for my class time, I heard a Statistics professor say the following: “You don’t need to use a formal citation style for your papers. This isn’t a writing class and I don’t care about how fancy your vocabulary is.” There were, of course, cheers and scattered clapping in response to those words. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard a non-English teacher make that pronouncement and it wouldn’t be the last; the very next hour my own professor made the same comment.

If you’re attending upper-level high school classes or a university, you need to keep in mind that the emphasis in higher education has focused to content because instructors assume you’ve already mastered the basics of English writing.  The very same Statistics professor who had moments before said what I’m sure students interpreted to mean “Writing isn’t important” said:

That being said, you need to write in complete sentences. I need to see a thesis statement or I won’t have any idea what you’re talking about. If you turn in a page that is one long paragraph, your grade will NOT be good. I need paragraphs with topic sentences. I need to see tolerably good grammar and spelling.

No one expects you to write like an academician who’s published dozens of peer-reviewed professional journal articles.  You’re just expected to write well. The idea of being judged on one’s writing ability makes most students nervous (I have several writing assignments coming up and even I’m nervous) because 1) not everyone is confident in their writing abilities and 2) half of how writing assignments (i.e., their content) are graded is subjective.

The good news is, with some practice, you can master the basics of writing and eliminate half of the stress associated with writing assignments.  I’ll be working on posts that focus on some of the most common difficulties writers face, like when to start a new paragraph and how to write topic sentences. But just because I don’t write too often about spelling and grammar issues doesn’t mean they’re not important enough for you to address. 

Don’t take just my word for it that grammar and spelling are fundamental. Check out this book review published in the Daily Cougar yesterday. The journalist reviewed a book written by a University of Houston alumnus and, goodness, was the review ever critical. If you ever thought spelling and grammar weren’t important, then this sentence from the review should help change your mind:

Any big ideas grasped within the novel feel incomplete due to clunky prose rife with spelling and punctuation errors.

The takeaway message is: Keep working on your spelling and grammar issues, NEVER forget to proofread your work, and seek out help from a competent source if you know you need assistance to find and correct your errors.  

Here’s to a great start to the new semester!

Photo credit: Markrabo

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