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This is a paper I wrote for my high-school English class. I'll be turning it in today, so I won't get any chance to have revisions based on your comments, but just thought that I'd share it with you all. I'd be interested in your thoughts, just to see if I messed up anywhere.

Does it make sense, and are my points valid? Yeah, i hate how I can't get deeper into the issue, but there are so many cases and so little information available I just figured I'd try to do a more general look.

1 posted on 04/14/2008 7:27:12 AM PDT by onja
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To: onja

Do you get paid by the comma?


2 posted on 04/14/2008 7:35:57 AM PDT by raybbr (You think it's bad now - wait till the anchor babies start to vote!)
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To: onja

You’ve argued your topic reasonably well, and your paper is coherent. These are my suggestions:

My thoughts are that you’ve chosen a fairly “dense” writing style (ie not “dense” meaning stupid, but “dense” meaning “difficult to easily parse”) and your teacher might ding you for that. 25% of your sentences are in the passive voice — this is high for a paper of this nature. You may wish to consider using the Active Voice more often — it results in easier comprehension.

Your Fleisch-Kincaid Grade Level is 12 — as I understand that metric, anyone less educated than Grade 12 will not be able to understand what you have written. So lower is better. Standard business English should strive for a score of about 8. If you are using MS Word, you may wish to turn on the option to show readability statistics after it does its spelling and grammar check, then use that tool iteratively to drive your readability.

Spell-check is your friend: you misspelled Al Qaeda once — your teacher may not ding that too hard for that. You may wish to consider running spell check as a matter of course — but don’t get mesmerized by it: also use your hardcopy dictionary, for which there is no real viable substitute.

Your most common issue is comma-use: the Grammar Check option in MS Word is your friend, too — usually its selections are quite good I have found. You may wish to make use of the Grammar Check option iteratively, too — it tells you its suggestion, as well as why it is suggesting it. As often as not, it is correct.

In all, as an English paper it is quite good: I particularly liked your use of vocabulary.


4 posted on 04/14/2008 7:48:42 AM PDT by DieHard the Hunter (Is mise an ceann-cinnidh. Cha ghéill mi do dhuine. Fàg am bealach.)
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To: onja

I skimmed it rather than reading the entire thing, sorry. I only do that when I don’t know how much time or energy I’ll I have to read the news. You made good points. I didn’t notice any glaring grammatical errors while skimming through it. Besides, do you REALLY want us to tell you that you put the wrong word in a sentence, had a run on or whatever AFTER you’ve handed it in so you can agonize over it?


5 posted on 04/14/2008 7:54:44 AM PDT by cake_crumb (Boycott Genocide. Boycott the Olympics.)
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To: onja

Long winded and wordy. Decide the purpose of your paper and them choose the material. Every paragraph of your paper takes us down a different road and we never seem to arrive at any point of conclusion. The polite word for that problem is “mindnumbinglyboringwithwaytoomuchextraneousmaterial”


6 posted on 04/14/2008 8:03:43 AM PDT by count-your-change (you don't have to be brilliant, not being stupid is enough.)
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To: onja
Your concept and content are well detailed. Take this with a grain of salt, but coming from the perspective of someone who edits professional documents in the corporate world, I would suggest you break up several of your paragraphs into bulleted lists. Example:

This subject proves the key theme base on the following piece of evidence:

I would only suggest you do this if you already have experience with your teacher/professor's opinion on this formatting style. I have found often High School/College writing classes create standards that aren't always accepted in the corporate world.

7 posted on 04/14/2008 8:06:36 AM PDT by mnehring
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To: onja
In addition to everyone else's' and my previous comment, a few other items to consider are:


8 posted on 04/14/2008 8:16:33 AM PDT by mnehring
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To: onja
Good work, onja! I, for one, am pleased that you tackled a difficult subject, and did it well. Maybe you could send a copy to Pres. Bush. If it finds him, I'm sure he'd appreciate it. Keep up the good work! ;)
9 posted on 04/14/2008 11:13:53 AM PDT by Phendlin (It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible. George Washington)
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