Common Writing Errors: The Horror!

This is a new week, and I am desperately trying to keep up with everything I need to do, much like most of my students. Yes, as a semester progresses and more assignments are due, most will start to feel the pressure mounting. Indeed, some may even slack off on their work in their attempts to just "get it in." Part of the challenge of college is learning how to navigate through the many challenges and obstacles unscathed while still turning in the best work manageable. This means students need to work on proofreading and learning how to recognize the most common errors in their writing. Doing so will impress instructors and improve a student's chances of exiting out of developmental writing.

First and foremost, students must learn to work ahead of time. Most essays are given in advance. However, many students wait, for various reasons, until the last moment to work on their essays. Waiting until the last moment creates an environment where a student has very little time to proofread and correct his/her writing. Students frantically try to push out an essay in an hour or two and think that's the best they can do. Good writers do not wait until the last minute. They write and revise and revise and revise and revise. Indeed, good writing is not found in the writer who can complete an essay the fastest, but good writing is found in the writer who spends as much time as possible perfecting his/her work. Spending about an hour a day (between the date the essay instructions are received and the due date) on an essay is a good place to start.

Now, I'm going to depart from the normal essay structure here for a bit and define some of the most common writing errors: run-ons, comma-splices, and fragments.

A run-on is a sentence that fuses two or more complete sentences together into one long sentence students who commit this error fail to recognize that punctuation helps the reader more clearly understand the ideas in each sentence.

A comma-splice is similar to a run-on, it occurs when a student fuses two complete sentences together with a comma, a comma is not a strong enough punctuation to join two sentences together.

When writing sentences, because they are so worried about creating a run-on. Students tend to forget to complete. The idea the sentence is about, which usually results in a fragment.

The above sentences are examples of each of the errors they describe. The sentence describing run-ons is in fact a run-on. The comma-splice definition actually contains two comma-splice errors, and the fragment definition includes a couple of fragments.

Below are the correct versions of the above sentences:

A run-on is a sentence that fuses two or more complete sentences together into one long sentence. Students who commit this error fail to recognize that punctuation helps the reader more clearly understand the ideas in each sentence.

A comma-splice is similar to a run-on. It occurs when a student fuses two complete sentences together with a comma, but a comma is not a strong enough punctuation to join two sentences together.

When writing sentences, because they are so worried about creating a run-on, students tend to forget to complete the idea the sentence is about, which usually results in a fragment.

 In order to help recognize these type of errors, there are a couple of techniques students can use.

1. Read your essay out loud. Yes, it may feel awkward at first, but your ears will catch the errors your eyes may miss.

2. Read your essay from end to beginning. I may have mentioned this one before, but it's worth repeating. Start with the last sentence, read it, and move on to the sentence above it. If the sentence sounds odd, or a little off, then you know something needs to be corrected.

3. Have someone else read the essay. It never hurts to have another pair of eyes to read the essay. Professionals do this all the time, and if it's good for the professionals, then it'll be good for students, too. 

4. Pay attention to subjects and verbs. Most of the errors that occur in student writing happen because students forget to pay attention when a new subject and verb appear.

5. One idea per sentence. One way of helping minimize run-ons and comma-splices is to keep in mind that the best sentences are the ones that express only one idea. Having multiple ideas in one sentence only confuses the reader.

Using the above techniques will assist students with editing their own papers. Unfortunately, during a timed essay, students will not have the opportunity to use option three, but if they take their time with options one, two, four, and five, then they should be able to catch quite a few errors themselves.

But again, the most important part of writing students need to remember is saving time for these type of exercises. Waiting to the last minute will only result in substandard work, and instructors want to see students turn in the best work possible.

Rambling: The Dangers of... SQUIRREL!

The other day I asked for some potential topics to write about here in our class' central blog. Out of the good ideas brought forth, I have decided to focus this next blog post on the problem of rambling. While writing instructors have quite a number of pet peeves when it comes to writing, rambling or going off topic has to be one of the worst offenders. As the title above suggests, rambling is what I like to call the "Shiny Object Syndrome" of writing. Avoiding the pitfalls of rambling requires planning and the ability to recognize supporting details that do not add anything to the topic.

Like I said in class the other day, planning is an essential part of writing. Even writers like Stephen King go through some sort of planning process; and, depending on the situation, the planning varies. For most students, this requires starting with some pre-writing. Funny enough, the pre-writing stage of the writing process is the only place where rambling, or veering off topic, is perfectly acceptable. Students can allow their minds to grab at anything and everything, even if the idea has almost nothing to do with the topic. However, as they move to the next stage of the writing process, they will need to do some editing of ideas. Disregard any idea that does not or will not support the thesis statement. At this point in the planning process students should start creating an outline of the first draft of the essay. Creating an outline, a visual path, for an essay is incredibly important. As long as the outline does not stray off topic, it will be a map for the first draft. Thus, planning out the essay before starting to write--as opposed to writing the whole thing a hour or two before the due date--will help writers to avoid rambling.

In addition to planning, recognizing supporting details that do not add anything to the topic will also help. Of course, the question is "How do I know if something is off topic?" This is a little harder to pin down than planing. Planning will help you to stay on course, but students may still take another route while in the middle of writing their essay. Yes, we English teachers do tell students to include as many specific details as possible, but we don't want them to include details that are not related to their topic. For example, if a student is writing about why he/she is attending Mountain View College, then sentences about how much he/she loves a loyal cousin may seem off topic. However, it would be on topic if that student wrote about how that particular cousin went to MVC and graduated, thus inspiring him/her to do the same. Rambling is a very fine line. In order to avoid crossing that line, students must look at each supporting detail and decide whether or not it's related to the topic. If it is, then the connection between the detail and the topic must be clear. If not, then the detail would best serve the essay by not being in it.

In certain circumstances, rambling can be a good thing, but if not stalling for time or attempting to generate ideas of a paper, then students should try to avoid it in academic papers. After all, teachers have to grade those papers, and part of the reason we dislike rambling sentences and paragraphs so much is because no matter what we have to finish the paper; we have to muddle through. So, in order to make the process easier on myself, I remember the scene below from one of my favorite films, and I think, yes, humans have "Squirrel!" moments, too.

By the way, the essay above is 623 words. This should give you an idea of how long an essay needs to be when an instructor--or the Accuplacer--asks for at least 600 words.