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Little Fires (Let’s put them out extinguish them.)
- As you knew on the first day of
school (and signed a syllabus in agreement), assignments/files not saved to
the correct location and/or named incorrectly result in a zero. The
zero will not change but you still will be required to submit the work.
Neither ignorance, avoidance nor laziness are reasons: they're excuses and
we neither make nor accept excuses in the real world.
- If something your boss tells you to do is not done by the deadline and
as he or she wants it, that could mean your job. I am preparing you for that
hardship in hopes you can avoid it.
- If an assignment given to you in college is not done by the deadline, as
he or she wants it, and submitted or saved to a particular location,
you will receive a zero. I am preparing you for that hardship in hopes you
can avoid it.
- Solution? 1) Pay attention, 2) Use your resources
(I don't have a website just for the fun of it.), and 3) Do as expected and
get into that good habit in hopes you can avoid hardships in your future.
- 1st, 2nd person references
- Addressing reader, directly or otherwise. Stop with the questions
directed at reader.
Also, an essay is not creative writing so do put your voice into your work
but do not treat this like a short story.
- Be concise
- Too often I am seeing sentences with words or phrases that are
unnecessary and/or superfluous
- When you are revising, edit out fluff - as long as your idea remains
intact, you're writing better if you do this
- Redundancy
- Stop repeating sentences or ideas
- State it once and let it stand
- Proper nouns are always to be capitalized - common are not
- My mom (correct)
- My Mom (incorrect)
- I hope Mom goes the store (correct - that is one of her names)
- I hope our mom goes to the store (incorrect)
- Pray to God (correct)
- Pray to your god (correct)
- Casual/informal style
- Write with a formal voice, period.
- Do not say there is a ton of something
- Show evidence of good word choice and THINK before you write AND
be sure to EDIT when you REVISE
- REVISE!
- I am seeing more examples of errors left behind... orphaned words or
letters... unorganized thoughts... this is VERY sloppy and will be graded as such in the future
- Fragments vs. Sentences
- Parallelism
- Don’t mix tenses
- Who vs. That
- People are whos - Things are thats.
- She is the girl who won the contest. (correct)
- She is the girl that won the contest. (incorrect)
- Writing numbers
- Our conservative rule (nobody can fault you for this):
- 0-99 - Write out the number
- There were fifty-two cars on the lot. (correct)
- There were 52 cars on the lot. (incorrect)
- There were 100 cars on the lot. (correct)
- Semi colon vs. comma/colon
- Use a semi-colon to connect two related independent clauses.
- "They took the money from the vault; they took it quickly."
- -Related ideas, clauses stand on their own, semi-colon is OK.
- Use a comma to separate clauses and items in lists.
- "Since I had such a great day, I decided to spend all the money on my
wife, my mistress, and my girlfriend."
- Use a colon to separate equal things (like an = sign).
- "Just remember three things: be on time, bring the money, and come
alone."
- -here things = those three items.
Source: http://www.englishforums.com/English/SemicolonCommaColon/bpwn/post.htm
- An apostrophe shows possession
- It does not show that something is plural
- These are Jamie's toys. (correct)
- These are Jamie's toy's. (incorrect)
- Plural nouns rule - apostrophe and/or another "s" at end:
- These are the twins' crayons. (correct)
- Nouns ending in "s" rule:
- This is Mr. Janes' book. (correct and preferred)
- This is Mr. Janes's book (also correct but not preferred)
- Visit these web pages for clarification:
- Ending sentences with prepositions. Yes or no?
- Run on sentences - Has your sentence lost its focus?
- If it should be broken into multiple sentences, do that.
- If the phrases rely on each other for meaning or to show a sequence,
use a semi-colon (;), NOT A COLON (:).
These fires ARE little but still need to be put out, er, extinguished.
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