Hello everyone:

Have you ever had a professor who marked down your papers and you couldn’t figure out what was wrong?

When I was in graduate school for my master’s degree, I had one professor who automatically took five points off of every paper, for what she said were “grammar problems.” I asked her what she meant and she just told me that everyone makes mistakes, so she always took off the points.

Poppycock and balderdash! (Forgive me for being redundant here!)

While I am willing to admit to not being perfect, neither am I so flawed that every paper has major mess ups. I went through my documents and, out of the entire semester, I only found one typo. There were no grammar, punctuation, or wording mistakes.

I asked her for a meeting. She refused but gave me a 100 on the next paper, saying that the grade made up for the other errors. (She was obviously not gifted at math, since one paper that was not marked down five points does not bring up five other papers that lost a total of 25 points.)

So, what is a student to do? Ask for a meeting. I was rebuffed by my professor but that doesn’t mean that you will be, as well. Be polite, not rude. Be firm but not unbending. You may actually be wrong, so be gracious. Because you handled the situation nicely, the professor may actually give you some of the points back and may be kinder to you next time.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

Wow, I commented on a student’s paper recently where the individual was talking about how much paper her office consumed in a day. I asked her, admittedly using less tact than perhaps was called for, if the people in her office really ate paper. Her emailed response was….rather unkind as she explained to me the meaning of the word “consumption.”

She said it meant “to use up a resource.” That’s exactly right, but there is more than one meaning to the word. She obviously didn’t get to the second meaning, which was “to eat something up.” (There are two other meanings, as well, but I won’t bore you with them.)

Furthermore, her sentence didn’t say that the paper consumption of the office was up, she said that they had actually consumed the paper. I corrected her. She didn’t appreciate the correction, to say the least.

So, what’s a student to do? For one thing, be nice to your professors. Next, make sure you are correct before you …launch the grenades …Double check yourself before you send that email. Keep in mind that most of us have an advanced degree (or two) and we do make mistakes from time to time, BUT …respect is very important. I’ve never given someone the benefit of the doubt after he or she wrote me a nasty email.

What do you think? Did she really eat reams of paper each day? How disgusting!

Another thing, while we’re on the topic: the words “new” and “knew” should not be used interchangeably. This was from a different student but the person was in graduate school. Heavens to Betsy!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

I had someone from the south ask me how basements are built. She had lived most of her life in a state where no one had a basement due to a high water table and she simply did not know.

I explained how the dirt movers come in and hollow out what looks like a deep pool and then how concrete is poured over rebar and how footings are also poured into place. The house is then constructed over the basement. The house is not built and then the basement dug out. Nope, you have to start with a good foundation for the cellar and you go from there.

Writing, especially good writing, is like building a basement. You take the usual rules of punctuation and grammar as your basement and then layer on the house till you get the height you desire. If you have poor grammar or punctuation that is lacking, it is like building your house and then trying to scoop out the basement.

With that method, you will undermine the structure of the house, much like you would undermine the quality of your writing.

That’s why it is so vital that you pay attention to the rules of construction. In this case, you are focusing on the mechanical issues. This will, in turn, produce a house with a strong foundation and a written document that will get a better grade.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

I had a student recently who insisted that she had always written her APA formatted essays with the period after the quote and left nothing at the end of the sentence. “Well, bully for Terry Elizabeth,” as my mother always said.

Folks, that is soooo 5th edition. That would be fine, if we still graded from the 5th edition of the APA Style Manual. But we don’t. I don’t. I tell everyone at the start of the term that I will be grading from the 6th edition and will count them down if they persist in ignoring that fact.

What if you “always” misspelled the words “our” and “are” and “then” and “than?” That wouldn’t make it any more correct than if you use the wrong style manual. It would just be wrong. You would lose points. Why be stubborn about this? You won’t win.

To finish our brief time together today, let me explain about the very old-fashioned expression I used earlier in this blog, “Well, bully for Terry Elizabeth.” “Bully” used to mean the equivalent of “knock yourself out” or “big deal, who cares.” Terry Elizabeth was a young gal whose pre-school birthday was being honored at a lavish party. Her mother went on and on about all of her little girl’s accomplishments, ad nauseam.

My grandmother, who was there with my mother, was about fed up with the bragging that the woman was doing on behalf of this little girl whose major accomplishments to date had been minuscule. A woman next to my grandmother turned to her and said, “Well, bully for Terry Elizabeth.” It stuck. Whenever my family wants to acknowledge something that is completely unremarkable, we say, “Well, bully for Terry Elizabeth.”

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

Have you ever known someone who said the same things over and over again, repeatedly? I occasionally get students who do and it is a real snoozer.

It’s almost as bad as the folks who love to say “like” without end. I was seated next to some very sweet young ladies on a plane recently and they had a conversation that went something like this:

“He like told me like that like he like wanted to like go out to the like movies for like our date like on Saturday night, like.”

“Well, like, what like did you like say?”

“Well, I like told him like that like I didn’t want to like see that like movie because like I’d like already like seen it.”

“What did he like say?” [What??? Only one “like?”]

“Oh, he….” And then they noticed I was listening. Their conversation was volume controlled so that I like couldn’t like hear them. Like it or not.

Please, folks, when you are writing an essay, make sure you state your points clearly and concisely, without belaboring the issue. Okay, like?

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

Every once in a while, I get students who never read the announcements and ignore my emails. That is a very poor idea. Why? Because I explain things that you need to know in those missives.

If you need an extra bit of information to complete an assignment, it will be there. If students are having trouble locating an article or need help with their APA formatting, it will be contained therein.

Yes, I have one school that asks me to post an announcement twice a week. Yes, I understand that you have two or three classes and, if all the instructors are posting as they should, that will mean four to six announcements you need to read each week.

The good news is that my announcements are relatively brief. More good news is that they contain information you may need, in order to get the highest grade possible.

Funny thing is, I posted some APA formatting information two weeks ago and I could tell, by the essays turned in, exactly who had read the announcement and who hadn’t. Since I had already given the class the information they needed for great success, those who didn’t pay attention got substantially lower grades than they would have otherwise, simply because they did not read the announcement. Food for thought.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

Guess what? There is a big difference between a colon and a semi-colon. they are not the same thing and they are not interchangeable.

I saw a graduate student’s work recently. He did not know that a semi-colon joins two independent clauses and that a colon is good for when you are listing things or want to point something out.

For example, one might write the following:

Action movies are exciting; they are full of movement.

Did you notice that I used a colon when introducing the sentence that preceded the example? After that, I used a semi-colon to connect two independent clauses. The sentence about the action movies had two perfectly good sentences (aka independent clauses) that I joined together with a semi-colon.

Do NOT write the following:

Action movies are exciting for one reason; full of movement and sense of fun.

Those are NOT two independent clauses. However, you could say:

Action movies are exciting for two reasons: movement and sense of fun.

Do you see the difference? Do let me know if you have any questions; I am happy to guide you along the written path.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

I recently assigned article reviews to one of my graduate classes. One of the students wrote one short paragraph about an unnamed article by an unnamed author and then q=wrote the rest of his essay about himself. By the time he was done, I knew quite a about him and almost nothing about the article. Here are the instructions I now give on how to write a review that’s not all about you:

Let me give you some tips on how to get the job done successfully when you are writing an article review. 

First, you must use APA formatting, which means you have a reference page, not a works cited page.  Your document should include a cover page that lists your name, the assignment, the name of our class, and the date. (A quick business tip: Always date your document. It is legal evidence in a court of law, so put a date on it.)

Your document must include an abstract, which is a summary (about 250 words in length) that explains what YOUR paper is about. It included key words underneath the abstract (3-5 words max). Do not copy and paste the abstract from your article. 

Next, mention the name of the article in your introduction, which is your first paragraph. Other information in the introduction states that you will discuss the article’s content and evaluate it.  If the name of the article is “The Focus of Nonverbal Communication in Colleges and Universities,” then take note of how I capitalized the name of the article in this sentence. If you put the name of the article italics and don’t capitalize the words, it is wrong. 

The body of your paper needs to be strong, and must contain more than one huge paragraph. I like five-sentence paragraphs, but am not fond of paragraphs that take up most of the page. I have seen students write one-paragraph essays. That is not good. There is usually some good place to break your paragraph up, so do it. 

The next step is to write a conclusion to your paper. Please keep in mind that I like five-sentence paragraphs (Yes, I am being redundant here). A shorter paragraph does not have any “punch.” Therefore, your conclusion should be at least five sentences.   A short conclusion is like a stool with only two legs. You haven’t given yourself much to stand on (or sit on, in this case).

Your References page must be in current APA format. I am grading based on the 6th edition, so make sure you follow that formatting. There was a change between the 5th and 6th editions, mostly with regard to where the period was placed. Here is an example of how to write an APA formatted in-text citation using the 6th edition of the style manual:

Here is the sentence “with the direct quote” (Smith, 2019, p. 123). 

Here is a sentence with a paraphrase (Smith, 2019). 

You might also be using the author’s name in the sentence, so this is what that would look like:

Smith (2019) states that “here is the direct quote” (p. 123).  Note that, if the author’s name is in the sentence, it must be followed by the year of publication the first time you use it in the paragraph. Furthermore, if the name is in the sentence, it does not need to be in the in-text citation. The year of publication is already in the sentence in this instance so it doesn’t need to be in the in-text citation.

Just citing the year of publication is not considered a correct in-text citation, even if you only have one article in your reference section that was published that year.

If you have two authors, the in-text citation looks like (Smith & Jones, 2019, p. 123). 

If you are writing about them in the sentence, it looks like this: 

Smith and Jones (2019) argue “here is the direct quote” (p. 123). 

If you have three or more authors, please use all of their names the first time you mention them and then use the following citation afterwards:

Smith et al. (2019) maintain that “here is the quote” (p. 123).  Note the period locations in the sentence. 

Pay attention here. I have given you fair warning, so I will grade you down if you goof this up!

Best,

Dr. Sheri

P.S. Yes, I am the in-text citation police!