Hello everyone:

Giving an online course introductory posting must be the bane of a college student’s existence, giving the desire to avoid them like the plague. Most online courses do require them, you know, so go ahead and write one. Let me tell you about a few different types. You tell me which is the most interesting.

First, there is the non-introduction. Here is an example:

So, how did you like that one? It is also known as the introduction that was never made.

Moving on, we have the “she-asked-for-five-sentences-and-that’s-what-she’s getting-in-this-writing-class introduction.” It looks something like this: My name is Gertrude Hortense. I do not have a nickname. I live in Texas. I am majoring in cyber security. I like to run.”

Well, that was certainly a page-turner!

Next, we have the intro posted by a person we would really like to know better. That intro goes like this:

Hello everyone, and howdy from Texas. My name is Johnny Jump-up. My major is accounting and statistical engineering. I am the father of identical quintuplets. The odds of my wife having identical quints is 1 in 3,906,250,000. The doctors say they are identical but I can tell them apart because 2/5 have brown hair, 2/5 are blondes, and 1/5 is a redhead. But I digress. I love running and can do 10 miles in 139 minutes and 30 seconds, at a 1% grade at 6.1 miles per hour. I burn 1234 calories, and that’s before breakfast. I look forward to working with you all this term!

Now, folks, that’s an introduction! Make your introduction come alive. Don’t lie but make it your goal to have everyone wish they knew you.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

Wow- I had a student lately who wrote sentences that went on for five lines. Or more. Rarely less. Not good.

Sometimes folks have a lot to say, or think they do. Well, I’m happy for them but the train of thought school of writing only really works for Virginia Woolff and, the last I checked, she was dead.

Before you submit a document for grading, please read it out loud. If you have to come up for breath as you read, you need some punctuation there. Frequently, the needed punctuation will be a period.

Please do not use a sentence as the opportunity to rant on and on, switch topics several times, or go off on a tangent. Stick to the topic at hand. Cover it fully but not so completely that it takes forever to read it. He or she who writes the longest sentence does not win. (The student of whom I spoke would have written this paragraph as one sentence, for example.)

A particularly challenging sentence is one that is extremely long and requires a dictionary to understand. Don’t try to impress me with your lofty vocabulary. I will mark on my grading sheet that you are verbose, or that you have diarrhea of the mouth (or, in this case, the typewriter). It becomes even more of a challenge if your writing proves that you don’t know what those high and mighty words mean. (That happens more often than you think.)

So, folks, keep it reasonable in length, don’t use big words, and just tell me what you want to tell me.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

As I write this, I will be limiting myself to the ten most common writing mistakes and then I will show you what they should look like.

1. The most popular mistake these days seems to be the difference between a possessive noun and a plural one. A noun that possesses something needs a possessive apostrophe. For example, “Cat’s meow” needs that possessive apostrophe, versus “The cats meow all hours of the day and night.” In the first example, you have one cat who possesses a meow (if you have more than one cat, it would read “cats’ meows”). In the second example, you have multiple cats who are using the verb “meow” to really annoy you and keep you awake at night.
2. The next mistake is using a possessive apostrophe with the word “it.” This word does not need an apostrophe in its possessive form. If you write “it’s,” then you have written “it is.” An example of this is “in its best interest” versus “it’s (it is) in the best interest of the students.” If you add the apostrophe with the first sentence, then you have written “in it is best interest,” which is not what you mean at all.
3. A very popular boo-boo is not using commas with introductory phrases. It adds clarity, if you have a comma. For example, this sentence has an introductory phrase with a comma. Some students simply choose to never use any punctuation at any time. Augh!!!!! They feel that they can get away with the occasional period, if that.
4. The next is a related mistake: The use of commas between the subject and the verb and wherever else the student would like to plop them. An example, is because, whenever the student thinks, one would look good then, he or she, puts one into the sentence. Double aughh!!!!!
5. An all-time favorite is using semi-colons where commas belong. These periodically show up after an introductory phrase or in a list of things. For example; a student would use them after a person; place; thing; or idea. (Please note that none of these semi-colons is correct; semi-colons connect two independent phrases (phrases that could stand alone as a sentence on their own but which you have chosen to connect.)
6. Students also love to stick the year of publication in a paragraph multiple times. The rule of thumb is as follows: only use the year of publication ONCE in a paragraph, unless you have multiple articles by the same authors that are mentioned in the same paragraph and were written in different years. If the author has a particularly good year with numerous articles, then you would write 2020a, 2020b, and the like, after the author’s name.
7. Students like to shortchange the second author. For example, one of my textbooks was written by Beebe and Masterson. Students love to cite Beebe but not Masterson. Cite both! Do not write et al. if there are only two authors.
8. The use of et al. seems to be very confusing. (Note that I have removed the quotation marks around these words, to avoid confusion.) It is not eat all, et. al, or etal. These terms are used to indicate that there are multiple authors; I will use the citation properly at the end of this sentence (Smith et al., 2020, p. 123). Please note the punctuation herein.
9. Do not write huge sentences. Some students just go on and on and, the next thing you know, they have a sentence that is five lines long. If you have to come up for air as you read a sentence, it is way too long. He or she who writes the longest sentence does not win. You simply wear out your reader.
10. Students do not use Oxford commas. I love my parents, Daisy Duck and Donald Duck. I did not use an Oxford commas there, so it appears that my parents are Daisy and Donald (they aren’t). Using a comma after the second-to-the-last item in a list of things adds clarity. I love my parents, Daisy Duck, and Donald Duck. Now it is obvious that I love three separate individuals.
11. Best, Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

When students take a college class from me, they get two things for the price of one. They are in a communication class but I also teach them how to write, if they will only pay attention. I have students whose writing I correct over and over, only to have them ignore my suggestions. Of course, the thing to remember here is that my suggestions are more of a command than a “this might be nice” type of feedback.

Case in point: I find myself flummoxed by graduate students who persist in putting commas between the subject and the verb of a sentence.
Who in the world taught them that? The reason, is ….that’s one of their all-time favorite expressions when writing. AUGH!!!!! I, am not happy……Be still my soul! Do these folks know the King’s English??? (Or, in this day and age, the Queen’s?)

And don’t get me started on commas being used instead of semi-colons, or vice versa. Here’s the skinny on the difference: Semi-colons connect two independent phrases; that is, they connect two completely fine sentences that could stand alone. Commas do not.

Forgive me for ranting, but I just spent the whole day correcting graduate level papers that were anything but that. When we are in week five of an eight week course and students still don’t get the smallest inkling of how to write well, it gets quite frustrating.

Proofread everything. I do. I read my entire 400-page dissertation out loud, trying to catch flaws. Sadly, my professional proofreader added some mistakes into the document before she signed off and those 12 errors that are now in my book drive me batty. Some of my students had several typos in today’s work, which tells me that they ignored the feedback their computer was giving them. Too bad, because I noticed the flaws and marked them down…..Just sayin’

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

Oh, my stars! The verbosity reigns in some students’ work…..They use the biggest words they can find, in the hopes of making an impression on their professor. They do, indeed, but not the way that you might imagine.

Many years ago, I had a professor whose comments on a paper required that I get out the dictionary. By the time I had gotten to the end of a sentence, I had forgotten what the beginning of the sentence said. It was that bad.

Oftentimes, students pull out every big word they have ever heard and put it in their paper. I had a student not so very long ago who wrote a six-page document, filled with huge, multi-syllable words. The whole paper could have been boiled down to one sentence: Good communication is good and bad communication isn’t. That’s it. Really.

Yes, I understand that graduate students have the need to prove themselves. One of my colleagues, remarking on a master’s thesis we were reading, said, “This kid has diarrhea of the mouth.” He was right.

The question is: Do you want to be known as having that problem? I would think not. If you are a communication major, communicate. Don’t obfuscate, stupefy, obscure, or make your writing unintelligible. Explain, don’t explicate, until you get to the Ph.D. level. Once there, do it carefully.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

There’s a new kid in town: the 7th edition of the APA Style Manual. Oh, goodie. Sorry folks, but it is my personal opinion that the APA folks come out with a new manual just to keep themselves in business. I mean, the sales for their books go up substantially every time they make an adjustment.

Here’s the latest scope: In-text citations are staying pretty much the same as before. You still write the following:

Beebe and Masterson (2020) state that “here is the direct quote” (p. 123).

It has been argued that “here is the direct quote” (Beebe & Masterson, 2020, p. 123).

You still cite the page or paragraph number (if the online article you are reading does not have pagination) if you have a direct quote. You still only cite the year of publication once in a paragraph per author reference, unless you have multiple citations of the same authors in that paragraph but they all have different publication years.

Here’s the nails-on-a-chalkboard moment for me: You use plural pronouns (they, them) with single nouns (customer, person). Not in my classroom, thank you very much!

I will cover more changes in future postings, so stay local!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

There’s nothing like a good verb to really get a sentence going. Verbs like titillate, saunter, sizzle, clutch, ensnare, wither, or glisten are fun to write and enjoyable to read. The problem that some students have is when they write a sentence with the verb at a distance from their subject.

For example, perhaps the sentence is “I, in spite of dangers, toils, and snares, am going to the store.” They think that the word “snares” is the word that needs the verb, so they write “I, in spite of dangers, toils, and snares, are going to the store.” Nope. Not in this woman’s language.

The thing to do when your subject and verb are far removed from one another is to pretend that all of the words in the middle aren’t there. Take them out, temporarily, and write “I….am going to the store.” You wouldn’t say “I are going to the store.” At least, you wouldn’t do it if you want a good grade.

Another subject/verb challenge is when students believe that they need a comma between whatever noun they have and the word “is.” I don’t know what misguided English teacher wannabe told them that, but the answer is “no, a thousand times, no.” In the earlier sentence that I used as an example, the prepositional phrase “in spite of dangers, toils, and snares” acted like a parenthetical expression. Hence, the need for the commas. The students, on the other hand, write something like “The reason, is between you and me.” No, please.

Most recently, I had some students who thought that periods were excess baggage and that the word “I” never needed a capital letter. But those nails-on-a-chalkboard errors will have to wait for another time.

Best,

Dr. Sheri