This guide will assist you in interpreting notes and ...



This guide will assist you in interpreting notes and comments made in your writing. You should refer to it at any point you see a mark you don’t recognize or understand. Please ask questions if anything is ever unclear, including how to revise the issues revealed in the comments.

Analysis: (see support)

Analysis is the process of explaining how your evidence (quotes, etc.) support your main point/topic sentence. Leaving your reader with weak or no analysis forces them to find the connections and ultimately weakens your argument. Be sure to include in-depth analysis to clearly demonstrate your understanding of your topic.

Awk:

Awkward: The expression or construction is cumbersome or difficult to read. Consider rewriting.

Block:

Blocked Quotation: Any direct quotation that takes up more than three lines in your own essay must be blocked: that is, indented several spaces from the left and right margins. Such blocked quotes are usually single spaced, but some citation manuals prefer them to be double-spaced.

Cap:

Capitalization (may be underlined or circled)

Circ:

Circular writing or logic means you are presenting repeated information to support itself. To a reader, this can appear as "spinning wheels" where your points are being made simply to take up space or because you have run out of things to say. Consider revising to add depth or a different perspective.

Citation Needed, Improper Citation (IC), or Cite:

Cite Source or correct citation: Please use the link below to find links to information regarding specific citation styles:

CC:

Commonly Confused Words: Words that have similar sounds but different meanings often cause trouble for student writers. Please watch for such confusions in your writing. Some of the more common of these common confusions include: Accept (to receive) and except (to leave out) Affect (to influence) and effect (result or to accomplish), Allusion (an indirect reference) and illusion (a false perception), Its (possessive form of "it") and it's (contraction of "it is"), Their (possessive form of "they"), there (indication of location, and they're (contraction of "they are"), Then (next or at that time) and than (used in comparisons), To (toward), too (also or excessively), and two (number), Your (possessive form of "you") and you're (contraction of "you are”)

Conj./Opinion

In an academic essay, you want to avoid making speculative statements (conjecture) or loaded descriptions based on opinion. Such statements can expose a lack of understanding by the author or simply demonstrate a bias that could affect credibility

Context:

Providing further detail and context allows your reader to understand your topic and evidence better. Context also helps to frame your argument, whether it be for the entire essay in the introduction, or within a paragraph for specific evidence. Missing context often leads the reader to make assumptions and possibly question the validity of your argument or evidence.

C/S:

Comma splice: A sentence must have both a subject and a main verb in order to be complete, but it cannot have more than one subject or main verb. A comma splice is a variety of run-on sentence that occurs when two complete sentences, each with its own subject and verb, are joined mistakenly by a comma. There are generally three methods of correcting this problem: 1) Replace the comma with a stronger mark of punctuation such as a period or semicolon, 2) use a coordinating conjunction ("and," "but," "or," "nor") to join the two constructions, or 3) make one of the two sentences a dependent construction by linking it to the other with a subordinating conjunction ("if," "when," "so that," "although," "because") or relative pronoun ("that," "which," "who," "whom," "whose”)

Cut Q:

Cut quotation down: Quotations from outside sources are important in constructing a convincing argument. However, a writer does not always need to reproduce a sentence from another source in its entirety, especially if parts of that sentence are irrelevant or make the paragraph too long. If you choose to leave out some text from an original source, you must mark the missing words with three equally spaced periods (...) called an ellipsis. An ellipsis has little use when expressing your own thoughts, but it is a valuable tool in presenting the words of others.

Delete:

(will likely just be lined out)

Detail/Elaborate:

You may need to further explain a concept phrasing or idea presented in your essay for your reader to clearly connect your information.

Emb:

Avoid embellishing descriptions or interpretations to make a point. This can happen simply through the use of hyperbole, absolutes, superlatives, or flowery word choice. This also can affect the tone of the statement, making it sound persuasive as opposed to informative.

Evidence:

Make sure you are providing relevant evidence to support your points. When making a point, claim, or strong statement, evidence is necessary to support it. Providing quotes, examples, etc. allow your reader to accept the claims made and trust that you are clearly knowledgeable about your topic. However, avoid using quotes that only support the context. Your evidence should clearly demonstrate or support the point you are trying to make.

Fallacious (Fall):

It is important to make sure your arguments are based on sound interpretations. Assumed meaning often leads to incorrect use of evidence and analysis, which can damage your credibility.

Fragment:

A sentence fragment is a phrase or clause that is in some way incomplete. Such fragments become problematic when they attempt to stand alone as a complete sentence. The most common version of this mistake occurs when a writer mistakes a gerund (a verb that acts like a noun) for a main verb, as in the following sentence: "In bed reading Shakespeare from dusk to dawn.”

Hook:

The first sentence of your essay, often called a hook, is critical to gripping your reader. This is best done by starting with a fact, statistic, quote, insight, etc. on the broad/global perspective of your topic. It is often helpful to start broadly instead of just diving into the subject (depending on the writing piece). That will leave you somewhere to go in crafting your intro and gripping your reader as you narrow to your thesis.

Lead In:

When quoting, it is important to provide a lead-in that indicates context to your reader. Just dropping a quote to provide evidence can throw off the flow of your essay and can confuse the reader. Lead-ins usually include the speaker, but it is also helpful to have action verbs or context to help the reader interpret the quote properly.

Misplaced apos. or Apos.

Misplaced apostrophe: An apostrophe can function to indicate a possessive when accompanied by an -s ("the book that belongs to Roy" = "Roy's book"). For words that already have an -s at the end, just adding the apostrophe will do ("the team belonging to the boys" = "the boys' team"). Certain exceptions to this rule apply, and possessive personal pronouns ("like ours," "yours," "hers," "his," "its") are possessive already and therefore do not take an apostrophe. It is always wrong to use a possessive apostrophe to simply make a word plural.

Missing comma:

(usually just written in or circled)

Though it may not always be grammatically necessary, a comma can often help to prevent a misreading. When a sentence opens with an introductory element (a phrase, clause or word that is logically related to another phrase or clause in the same sentence), it is a great help to your reader to place a comma after that introductory element. Such phrases will often begin with words like "because," "while" or "although," as in the following example: "While everyone was fighting, the bear wandered away." As you can see, without the comma, the sentence would be confusing.

MM:

Misplaced Modifier: Be sure that a modifying phrase or clause is properly placed for clarity or to avoid ambiguity. This is usually just a matter of restructuring the sentence so the modifier is closer to the word it is modifying.

PPro:

In an academic essay, personal pronouns should be avoided unless posing a rhetorical question or referring to a character. Addressing the reader or yourself changes the tone of the essay to one of familiarity, and you can lose credibility. Even the use of the general or hypothetical "you" should be avoided. Usually this is just a matter of rewriting the sentence without addressing yourself, the reader, or both.

PV:

Passive voice: Passive voice constructions do not tell your reader as much as the corresponding active version would. For instance, in the phrase "it is understood," a reader cannot know who or what is doing the understanding. A more active version requires that you tell your reader who is performing the action: "Students understand." While there are rare occasions when a writer cannot avoid the passive voice, the more informative active version is almost always a better choice. Changing passive constructions to active always makes writing more lively and accessible, even if it sounds “less academic.”

Quote or Q: (see evidence)

Missing quote or quote is not being used to clearly support the main point. Avoid using evidence to simply support context of an event. Usually, this is just a matter of exploring surrounding descriptions in the passage you are referencing. All evidence should, in some way, support the thesis of your essay and help points you are making in each paragraph.

Relevance or SW? (So what?):

It is easy to include interesting information about the topic in your essay, but make sure the information is necessary and relevant. All detail should go to supporting your thesis. This is usually an issue of lack of proper or complete analysis.

Rep/Redundant: (see circular)

Unnecessary repetition: Avoid redundant use of words or phrases. Be aware of what is inherent to the words you choose to use, e.g. you would not write "the resulting effects" as "effects" are results and thus are always resulting from something. Also be aware of what the acronyms and abbreviations you use stand for, e.g. when using the acronym "ATM" you should not write "ATM machine" as "machine" is already in the acronym.

Run On or RO:

Run-on sentence: The sentence contains two or more independent clauses. Separate the clauses with a period, conjunction, or semicolon.

S/F:

Sentence Fluency: If a sentence is difficult to read by including too many clauses or unrelated topics, the reader may get confused. This may also be a result of using too many simple sentences consecutively - in which case, creating compound sentence may help solve the problem. The issue may also be regarding grammar or punctuation issues that make the sentence(s) choppy or hard/impossible to understand.

Sp:

Spelling error (may just be circled)

Spacing:

Issue with spacing. This may be a matter of a need for spacing, indentation, too many spaces between words or punctuation, or it may be a formatting issue in which the default format for your word processor adds spacing where it is not required (such as after pressing enter between paragraphs). Changing the settings in "Format Paragraph" will usually clear this issue up.

Support: (see Quote)

Support Needed: A well-written paper will include strong support for its thesis. Support for your thesis should come from primary (original documents, interviews, and personal experiences) and secondary (information that has been processed or interpreted by someone else) sources. To use your support effectively, you must elaborate upon the information, quotations, and examples taken from your sources and connect them to your thesis. It is also important to remember to cite the sources of the evidence and support you use in your paper.

SVA:

Subject Verb Agreement - Make sure when conjugating a verb, you are using a plural conjugation when you have compound subjects. This error is especially common with subordinate clauses.

Tense:

Verb tenses should be consistent throughout your writing in order to make it clear when an action takes place. You will confuse your readers by switching from one tense to another within the same sentence or paragraph. When discussing literature or a published source document of some kind, readers expect you to use the present tense, even though the source you're writing about may have been written many years ago. When writing an essay about historical events, however, readers generally expect that you use the past tense.

Thesis:

Thesis needs work: The thesis is the central idea of your paper around which all your evidence and claims are organized. Every single paragraph should be dedicated in a clear way to proving your thesis. In your essay, the thesis should be stated as quickly and as clearly as possible. In fact, many teachers will expect your thesis statement to appear in the last sentence of your essay's first paragraph. A vivid thesis statement will announce the steps of its argument, not just provide a flat statement of the essay's ultimate goal. Think of the thesis as a roadmap that gives directions to your reader rather than as a picture of your final destination. The thesis should also include an action (transitive) verb instead of a linking (state of being) verb.

Title:

The punctuation of a title depends on the kind of writing. Longer works usually are italicized while shorter ones are in quotes. Generally, larger or more important works like novels, publications, and plays are given italics, while smaller works such as poems, short stories, and articles are given quotes. Please review MLA formatting for further details.

Tone:

Inappropriate Tone: The way you say something can be just as meaningful as the content of what you say. In an academic essay, there is a danger of being too informal. As you write, you must have a clear sense of the kind of reader (audience) you are writing for, and adjust the formality, complexity, sincerity, and depth of your writing accordingly. In short, your tone is your overall attitude toward your reader. Your tone should, in all circumstances, be consistent and respectful. Problems with tone arise most often from the use of slang expressions or loaded words, which you must avoid in academic writing. Tone often goes hand-in-hand with word choice.

T/S:

Topic Sentence: The topic sentence should clearly relay the content of the paragraph, and include reference to all subjects covered. Being too specific can mislead the reader in what the paragraph is about, and leaving information out can demonstrate poor organization. Use active verbs when writing your topic sentence.

Vague or Unclear:

When making a point in one of your body paragraphs, one of the most common mistakes is to not offer enough details. A paragraph without much detail will seem vague and sketchy. A paper is always strengthened when your claims are as specific as possible; the more detailed evidence you offer, the more reference points your reader will have. Remember that you are communicating your argument to a reader who has only your description to go by. Someone who reads your essay will not automatically know what you mean to express, so you have to supply details, to show the reader what you mean, not just tell him or her.

Var:

Lacking sentence variety: It is important in your writing to vary the length and structure of your sentences. Sentences that are too short can feel choppy and monotonous. Sentences that are too long, on the other hand, can slow your reader down unnecessarily and sometimes lead to grammatical problems and confusion. To keep your reader interested, be aware of the rhythm of your writing and make changes to avoid too many sentences that have the same structure or start with the same words.

VTC:

Verb Tense Consistency: Verb tense consistency is when you unnecessarily switch between multiple tenses in your writing. Generally, you want to stick with present tense when referencing a text unless you are using another tense in reference to a present action being discussed. Present tense is also preferred when discussing the author in regards to the content of the text. Biographical information can be in past tense however.

WC:

Word choice error: Sometimes choosing the correct word to express exactly what you have to say is very difficult to do. Word choice errors can be the result of not paying attention to the word or trying too hard to come up with a fancier word when a simple one is appropriate. A thesaurus can be a handy tool when you're trying to find a word that's similar to, but more accurate than, the one you're looking up. However, it can often introduce more problems if you use a word thinking it has exactly the same meaning.

Trans:

Weak paragraph transition: Although paragraphs are separate, individual steps of your paper, it is important to clearly demonstrate a logical connection between them. Generally speaking, the way your paragraphs relate to one another displays how sound your argument really is. A paragraph that begins with "also" or "in addition" offers a weak transition from the previous point, even though it may develop a highly interesting and related point.

Wordy:

If you use too many words to describe a relatively minor point, your paper may seem wordy. In order to be as concise as possible, trim your sentences down and use longer, more meaningful words. Try to use fewer two- and three-letter words, passive constructions, and weak verbs such as "seem" and "appear."

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