Cures for Common Mistakes in Essay Writing

One last chance to correct

OR
How to earn at least one letter grade higher on your essay.

Title of Student Essay

Never do the following: make it bold, increase or decrease the font size, underline it, or italicize it. 2. Do not use the name of a document that you analyzed as the title of your essay. You may refer to it, but do not (inadvertently) claim it as your own. Example: I Have a Dream (incorrect) Kings Vision: I Have a Dream (Okay)
1.

Title of Student Essay (cont.)

3. Only italicize words in your essay title if your essay title contains the title of the novel, play, or movie that you are addressing. Examples: Fighting the Good Fight in The Old

Man and the Sea

Hamming it Up: Deliberate Affectations of Madness in Hamlet

Title of Student Essay, (cont.)

4. If you use the title of a short story, speech, sermon, poem, or song in your essay title (or anywhere else in your essay), the title is in quotation marks.

Example: Perfect Revenge in The Cask of Amontillado

5. Capitalize all words except for prepositions, conjunctions and articles (a, an, the) unless they are the first or last words or the first word after a colon. Example: Living the Last Word: The Birds

AlsoTitles of Things
Titles of whole unitslike books, films, plays, CDs, or television showsyou type in italics, or you will underline if the essay is hand-written.
Examples: The Iliad, The Old Man and the Sea, The Godfather, or The Beatles Anthology.
(Historically, to underline a word is to tell the publisher to print that word in italics, so lets not waste a step in our writing if you are typing the essay on a computer.)

Titles of parts of collectionslike book chapters, television episodes, individual songs, news articles, or a single poem from a collectionyou put in quotation marks. Examples: The Beatles Its a Hard Days Night, or the short story The Most Dangerous Game.

Referring to Works of Literature

When you refer to novels, short stories, speeches, sermons, poems, plays, television shows, film, or any works of story-telling or reporting, refer to the

selections in the PRESENT TENSE.

This is called, literary tense.

Why? Because every time you read the passage, listen to the speech or sermon, hear the song, or view the film, the text is in the present tense, or the universal tense of literature. Example: In the novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the good doctor Jekyll does not realize how much his hidden and alter-ego, Mr. Hyde, is out of control.

Punctuation Trouble Spots

If you directly quote an authority, you must give them credit with a parenthetical citation. In doing so, you move the period to the right of the citation to show the citation belongs with the quote.

Example: In the play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams warns young men that all pretty girls are a trap, but he admits that men expect them to be (Scene VI).

Anytime you include someone elses text (that is unaltered by you) in your essay, you MUST put quotation marks around it, followed by the citation.

Punctuation Trouble Spots

If your direct quote is 3 or more complete lines, form a BLOCK QUOTE.
1.

2.
3. 4.

5.

Text is indented 1 inch Double spaced No quotation marks Ends with punctuation, THEN the parenthetical citation. If paragraph continues, do NOT indent the next line.

Block quote (example)

as seen in Twains acerbic wit.

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money. (Taylor 64)

Even the sanctity of cherished relationships cannot

escape his censure. Twains quotable quips cover

Correct and Consistent Citations: New MLA & Good Ole Shakespeare
1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Works cited pages should not contain URLs. Each source should indicate how it was accessed. Example: print or web. Internal citations are usually only one word. The word is usually the first (unique) noun per citation. Internal citations only include a page number if it is from a print source. (Other than block quotes!) End punctuation follows the closing parenthesis of the internal citation, e.g., (Taylor). Standard Shakespeare citations are formed this way:

Standard Abbreviation for the play = e.g., Ham. Act # = capital Roman numeral, e.g., I Scene # = lower case Roman numeral, e.g., iv Line # = Arabic numbers, e.g., 43-44

Combined: (Ham. I.iv.43-44) **See StandardAbbrevShakespeareTitles on my website!

Those Pesky Commas

1.

Use a comma in a series before the conjunction. Example: I love pizza, tacos, hotdogs, and hamburgers.
Use a comma before a conjunction when an independent clause follows the conjunction (as in a compound sentence).

2.

Example: The Browns lost the football game Friday night, but they played with heart and unity.

Those Pesky Commas

The EXCEPTION TO RULE #2: If the independent clauses are joined by a conjunctive adverb (however, therefore, etc.), use a semicolon to before the c.a., and a comma after.
Example: The Browns lost the football game Friday night; however, they played with heart and unity.

Those Pesky Commas, Again

3. Use a set of commas to off-set a nonrestrictive phrase or clause.
(Nonessential means not necessary to understand the meaning of the sentence.)

Example of a nonrestrictive phrase: Mary and Cathy, singing and dancing, bounced into the theater for the tryouts.

Example of a nonrestrictive clause: Brentwood, Tennessee, which is located just south of Nashville, is my home.

Hint: use that for essential clauses; use which for nonessential clauses.

Those Pesky Commas, Continued

4.

Use a comma for introductory elements.

Example: No, I do not want to go. Example: Running in panic, the deer crossed the river and ran up the bank.

5. Use commas for sentence interrupters, like appositives, direct address, or parenthetical expressions.

Appositive Example: Kevin Keidel, Principal of BHS, oversees all faculty and staff. Direct Address Example: My dear, may I please have this dance? Parenthetical Expression Example: I told Aunt Faye, by the way, that you would be late.

More of Those Pesky Commas

6. Use commas to separate individual elements of dates and addresses.

Date Example: The allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944, marking the beginning of the end of the war in Europe.
This may not be necessary for your paper, but the same rules apply for addresses. Example: The famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, lives at 221B Baker Street, London, England; unfortunately, for fans of the mysteries, the address does not exist on the real Baker Street of London, England.

Using those

whatchamacallits
Ellipsis are dots used to show omission of an implied
word or a section of text. When omitting words in the middle of a sentence, use three ellipsis dots and have spaces before-and-after and in-between each dot. If you omit words at the end of a sentence, use four ellipsis dots at the end of a sentence (one for the period), but you put the first dot flush with the last word of the sentence. Example: Mark Twain believes, Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave . . . and has always held other slaves in bondage under him. . . . Example with a parenthetical citation: In his essay, The Lowest Animal, Mark Twain states, Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave . . . and has always held other slaves in bondage under him. . . (Twain 13).

Common modifier problems

Compound Adjectives: Use a hyphen with a compound adjective when it precedes a noun.
Examples: It is a well-organized presentation. The presentation is well organized.

You must compose a well-organized two-page essay. Your essay must be well organized and two pages long. They have a five-year-old son. Their son is five years old.

Common modifier problems

Misplaced modifiers: Place a phrase or clause close to the word it modifies; do not separate the modifier and the word it modifies with another part of the sentence.
Example of misplaced modifier: Sarah sent a present to her boyfriend wrapped in silver paper. Example of modifier placed correctly: Sarah sent her boyfriend a present wrapped in silver paper.

Dashes or Parentheses?
Generally speaking, they fulfill the same function. It is a matter of styledashes being old school.

Dashes are used to alert readers that additional or explanatory information is about to appear. Dashes set off material that is inserted into a sentence. Dashes also indicate that something unusual or unexpected might follow.

Examples: The contents of his backpackbooks, pens, and a rotten avocado tumbled out onto the floor. Robert Benchley once commented, In America there are two classes of travelfirst class and with children (Drennan 28).
Form dashes by typing two hyphens in a row, with no spaces before, inbetween, or after. Press enter and a dash is formed.

Taking care of the little things . . .

Cannot is one word.

The expression a lot is two words. Use it sparingly.

Italicize a single word if the sentence refers to that word. Example: Zarf is a useful word for the game Scrabble.
Italicize foreign expressions not commonly used in English. Example: On September 1, 1939, the Nazi blitzkrieg swept through Poland.

Two more little things . . .

Avoid contractions. Rewrite any contractions into the two separate words unless, of course, they are part of a direct quote. (OR cant =>cannot)
Correctly use apostrophes as indications of possession, e.g., Chriss,

the Andersons, the Joe Harriss