Hello everyone:

Today’s blog will cover the all-important tense. When college students write an essay, sometimes they have a tendency to switch back and forth between past and present tense. According to Strunk’s Elements of Style, when a writer is summarizing something, he or she should use present tense. Don’t tell your reader that something is happening and then switch around and say that it did happen.

An example of this is when you summarize the television show House, M.D. in an essay.  Let’s say that you write “House walks in and talks to the fellows.” You wouldn’t then write “House didn’t know what to say” (like that would ever happen to Dr. Gregory House!). Instead, you would write “House walks in and talks to the fellows; he doesn’t know what to say.”

By the way, watch out for using too much of the show and not enough analysis in your essay! Sometimes students give me plot summaries of the show House, M.D. and offer nothing else. There is no analysis of the artifact and no scholarly sources that point anything out about what they have written. The whole essay is just one long chat about what happened on the show. There are websites that I can get this information from; what I want from you is an essay that shares your interpretation of the artifact. I wrote my 400-page dissertation on House; I don’t need to you explain  what happened in an episode.

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

What can we do about apostrophes? We need them, but their proper use often evades our understanding. Here are some tips for their usage:

When you write the word “it’s” you need to understand that this is not possessive. You have written the words “it is.” For example, if you write “it’s a mystery to me,” you have correctly written “it is a mystery to me.” If you write “it’s table,” you have incorrectly assumed that you have used a possessive apostrophe correctly. Nope, you have written “it is table.” That is not possessive of anything.

You see, the word “its” does not use an apostrophe to show possession. You simply write “its table” to indicate that the table belongs to something, like a table, for example. The correctly-written sentence would be: “The room did not have its table in the correct location.” While the room might have misplaced its table, the sentence is correct because it does not read as “the room did not have it is table in the correct location,” which is a horrid sentence.

So please remember, the word “its” does not require a possessive apostrophe. If it has one, it is not possessive, it’s just wrong! (But this last sentence was right because I was saying “it is just wrong!”

Best,

Dr. Sheri

Hello everyone:

So, I guess you can tell what I will be talking about today, given the obvious mistakes in my title. You would not believe what some folks will turn in for me to grade. Today’s list was pretty unbelievable, so here are a few to whet your whistle:

“Staff being arguing about the room….No solutions is found…..” (this gal is a junior in college). What did she write?

Next, “The company I work for provides software that allow us or our clients to medically management their members.”  That sounds painful!

After that, “With having so many varying areas leads to countless barriers in communication.”  Oh, my, this student is writing about communication, but what did the individual actually say????

Another student shared, “This has been the only place of employment, that grew a passion to work with people and customers to reach a common goal.” Huh?????

Still another student wrote about her company, which has “many moving parts.” I am not sure what those parts could possibly be.

Folks, one way these students could improve their writing is to proofread everything before submitting it. These mistakes were not made on discussion boards, which are important but don’t really count for much of the final grade, these sentences came from formal documents that were discussing communication.

Have you ever written something you wish you could change? Have you ever read something that was muddy or unclear? I would love to hear your examples of mistakes you have read!

Best,

Dr. Sheri