{"id":1803,"date":"2022-09-28T17:33:37","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T21:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1803"},"modified":"2022-09-28T17:36:21","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T21:36:21","slug":"common-first-year-writing-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2022\/09\/28\/common-first-year-writing-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Common First-Year Writing Mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Dr. Greg Cavenaugh of Rhetoric and Communications Studies will work with my trainee Writing Consultants this semester. His First-Year Seminar, “Heroes and Villains” is a great topic, but no matter the subject matter, first-years always make the same errors.<\/p>\n

So I asked Dr. Cavenaugh for a list. Here is what he sent. Please send me other issues\/concerns you have about first-year writing!<\/p>\n

No governing claim\/thesis at all.\u00a0 Alternately, a governing claim stated only as a question.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 This more often occurs in reflective writing such as reading journals, but it sometimes appears in more formal assignments.\u00a0 This problem may well stem from the assumption that writing is simply \u201cstating what I think.\u201d\u00a0 Scholarly writing is a lengthy process of crafting and revising an argument; \u201cstating what I think\u201d is at best a first step in the creation of an argument.<\/p>\n

Several sentences (sometimes multiple paragraphs) of fluff before the author reaches his\/her governing claim\/thesis.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 This may well stem from the notion that scholarly writing is \u201cfancy writing\u201d and that the first few paragraphs of scholarly research are fluff.\u00a0 When a reader is familiar with the norms of the academic field that an author is addressing, it becomes clear that what students regard as \u201cfluff\u201d is actually essential to the author\u2019s argument.\u00a0 The reason that a novice reader views these paragraphs as \u201cfluff\u201d is simple unfamiliarity with the academic discipline and the communicative norms of that interpretive community.\u00a0 In Grad School Essentials, David Shore sums up this concern as, \u201cGet to the bloody point.\u00a0 Please.\u201d<\/p>\n

Essid’s note:<\/strong> I call such “fluff” a “March of History” introduction, and it seems to come from public-speaking experience in some cases. You\u00a0 know it: “As soon as humans stood erect, they gazed upon the night sky in wonder. For millennia we have wondered about the Moon. Finally, in 1969 we went there…” would be a typical paper about Neil Armstrong in my FYS, The Space Race. -10 points and a week to cut to the chase with a revision, please!<\/p>\n

Paragraphs that run across multiple pages.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 From the early 2000\u2019s to about two or three years ago, I would ask students, \u201cHow long is a paragraph?\u201d and get back a disturbing answer.\u00a0 \u201cOh, a paragraph is 8-12 sentences long,\u201d students would routinely say.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure where this definition of a paragraph came from, but it was taught with remarkable consistency for much of the last twenty years.\u00a0 Over the last few years, I am starting to hear a different, more functional answer:\u00a0 \u201cOh, a paragraph is about 3-4 sentences at least and maybe about 7 sentences at most.\u201d\u00a0 Despite this relative improvement in the perception of paragraph length, I still find students writing \u201cmega-paragraphs,\u201d and those \u201cparagraphs\u201d often (let\u2019s say) start on page 2 and end on page 4.\u00a0 These \u201cmega-paragraphs\u201d usually develop from a lack of clear organizational structure\u2014instead of making one point that leads to another point in a programmatic fashion, the author attempts to say several things all at once.<\/p>\n

A lack of explicit reasoning that moves from one concept to the next to programmatically prove a point.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 This is the broad, structural version of the previous issue.\u00a0 Students may articulate a clear governing claim\/thesis that can be reasonably supported, and yet their argument bounces randomly through ideas rather than making a linear case.\u00a0 Of course, good writing sometimes cannot<\/em> be linear and direct; sometimes authors must<\/em> take \u201cside treks\u201d in order to guide the reader to the final conclusion.\u00a0 These side treks should never be considered the default for academic writing, however.\u00a0 Instead, writers should build a case like a lawyer in a murder trial.\u00a0 Classic detective-novel reasoning here is good enough for our purposes\u2014in order to prove that Tom killed Jerry, we need to show that Tom had the means<\/em> to commit the murder, a significant motive<\/em> for killing Jerry, and the opportunity<\/em> to commit the murder. If those are the three things that we must<\/em> demonstrate, then we craft our argument to support those three points, in whatever order best allows for clear movement from one idea to the next.<\/p>\n

To extend the analogy, beginning writers often start out showing the Tom had the means to commit the murder, then take a detour into Tom\u2019s character and the horrible things he wrote on social media, then return to the issue of means while confusingly introducing a hint of Tom\u2019s motives, then going into an elaborate forensic analysis of the DNA at the crime scene, then proving that Tom had no alibi, and finally concluding with, \u201cThere, as you can plainly see, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Tom killed Jerry.\u201d\u00a0 Note that all of these elements COULD be used in a court case against Tom, including the references to his horrible social media posts.\u00a0 The problem is that there is no clear line of reasoning that helps the reader understand how (for instance) the DNA evidence relates to<\/em> the question of opportunity<\/em> (maybe the DNA proves Tom\u2019s alibi is false).<\/p>\n

Equating scholarly, formal writing with a stiff, abrupt tone.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Good writing can be personalized and can reflect a writer\u2019s sense of style.\u00a0 With the exception of some specific disciplinary audiences, such as writing up a lab report for a physics class, there is no need to sound stiff, inhuman, and impersonal.<\/p>\n

Alternately, equating scholarly formal writing with a loopy, baroque style.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Sometimes young writers assume that their goal should be to personalize the material as much as possible, to sound creative and elegant in the manner that associate with \u201chigh\u201d scholarship.\u00a0 Often, the remedy is to ask the writer for a \u201cplain English\u201d translation of their ideas.<\/p>\n

Commas used everywhere or nowhere.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 I am not talking here about the occasional miscue of a misplaced comma, and I am not talking about my lifelong support for the \u201cOxford comma,\u201d which is regarded by some writers as inessential.\u00a0 What I\u2019m talking about here is a systematic inability to use commas correctly.\u00a0 I often find that, at some point, the student was chastised for his\/her use of commas, and now the student either avoids commas completely<\/em> or else throws in commas everywhere<\/em>, hoping some of those commas land in the right places.\u00a0 For tutors who are not themselves sure about where commas go (which is an understandable issue), note that you can still observe that the writer is avoiding commas or overusing commas, even if you have trouble explaining the grammatical issues.<\/p>\n

No awareness of the distinction between plural and possessive.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 This is just plain annoying:\u00a0 \u201cThe heroes actions demonstrate his character.\u201d\u00a0 One hero (\u201chero\u2019s\u201d)?\u00a0 Several heroes, possessive (\u201cThe heroes\u2019 actions demonstrate their character\u201d)?\u00a0 What are you trying to say here?<\/p>\n

No attention to verb tense.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Also just plain annoying:\u00a0 \u201cTom enters the room and sees Jerry.\u00a0 Jerry tried to run away, but he slipped and fell, so Tom hits him with a mallet and then escapes before anyone had seen him.\u201d\u00a0 Either write the whole thing in past tense or write the whole thing in present tense.\u00a0 Because students in my academic field must so often write descriptions of actions, such as describing the actions of characters in a film or summarizing the steps involved in a religious ritual, I see this problem a lot<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Section headers used as transitions.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 I love section headers as a tool for helping the reader intuit the organizational logic of your work.\u00a0 But by themselves, section headers don\u2019t actually transition a reader from one idea to another idea in a way that connects those two ideas.\u00a0 Use a section header and<\/em> transition sentences.<\/p>\n

Sentence fragments produced by years of SMS texting.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 We\u2019ve all produced incomplete sentences and seen the dreaded \u201cFRAG\u201d comment in the margin of our work.\u00a0 Contemporary first year students are, however, even more likely to produce sentence fragments in my experience.\u00a0 SMS texting allows for and even encourages the expression of partial thoughts on the presumption that the reader is \u201cclued into\u201d the context that makes their partial thought complete.\u00a0 This is especially the case with \u201cmeme culture,\u201d where a single image and accompanying text is used as a shorthand for a host of thoughts and feelings that are condensed, almost poetically, down to something that can be sent via text with a few thumb swipes.<\/p>\n

Using 50 words to say what can be expressed in only 10.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 Students often write themselves into an idea, wandering through a ton of words in order to arrive at a useful concept.\u00a0 The revision process should involve rigorous editing to tighten the work.<\/p>\n

Essid’s Addendum: “Hand Grenade” quotations<\/strong><\/em> bedevil first-year work. Students drop in a quotation without introducing it or linking it to other claims made by follow-up analysis. -10 again and a week to fix it. It amazes me how many neglect to get it done in a week, losing a full letter grade in the process.<\/p>\n

Image source: “The Stair Method” by Sage Ross<\/a> at Flickr.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Greg Cavenaugh of Rhetoric and Communications Studies will work with my trainee Writing Consultants this semester. His First-Year Seminar, “Heroes and Villains” is a great topic, but no matter the subject matter, first-years always make the same errors. So I asked Dr. Cavenaugh for a list. Here is what he sent. Please send me … Continue reading Common First-Year Writing Mistakes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,2511],"tags":[87404],"class_list":["post-1803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-writing-instruction","tag-program-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-t5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1803"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1807,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1803\/revisions\/1807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}