Participial phrase psychosis
• please review the rules for placement of participial phrases and uses of commas to set them off • please review the rules for distinguishing between proper and common nouns • please avoid the use of “this” as a pronoun – remember that using “this” as an adjective in front of a noun enhances the clarity of your prose • please do not begin or end a sentence with a conjunction • please be sure that your pronouns agree in number with the nouns they modify • please use your word processor to search for all forms of the verb “to be” (was, were, can, be, being, been, etc.) and rewrite affected sentences with more active, interesting verbs • please repeat previous request with all forms of the verb “to have” • please do not interrupt verbal phrases with adverbs • please avoid the use of the second person in formal writing • please do not use vocabulary that you do not understand in your essay • please limit each paragraph in your essay to discussing one discreet topic, to be defined by a topic sentence that appears early in the paragraph • please do not use the apostrophe to form the plural • please remember that compound subjects require plural verbs • if you plan to use the serial comma, please do so consistently • please do not call the author of the work you are analyzing “an idiot” • please do not use commas to join independent clauses • please eliminate common homonym confusions from your essay • please correct the faulty parallelism in this series of items • please stick to one tense when writing a historical narration • please incorporate a subject and a verb in every sentence • please proofread or ask a friend to do so • please provide evidence from a source for this assertion • please don’t drive me crazy • please • please • please • please • please •
Me + Richard Armitage 
uh oh, the prof has had it up to HERE?!
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Thar she blows!!!!
Please do not invent words like “spookd” 🙂
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• do not make up words • seriously belongs on this list. Without the “please”. I think Micros*ft somehow facilitates it.
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“please do not call the author of the work you are analyzing “an idiot” LOL! Some aspiring scholars do this in my field!
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*hugs*
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@Ann Marie,
That was great. LOL!
@Servetus,
Maybe it’s okay to call the author an idiot if the student explains why? 😉
Hang in there.
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Thanks. One more long day or two more shorter ones. Sigh.
But: it is practically never ok to call the author an idiot — the argument may be characterized as idiotic (though I wish people wouldn’t do this) but calling the author an idiot constitutes argument ad hominem and most rhetorical authorities put this in the list of errors of semantic logic. I just find that it explodes the framework for persuasive discourse.
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Did you think I was serious? LOL! I need to put more winks after my comments.
Ad hominem is never good in any quarter whether written or not. It’s just one big fat distraction and is not productive in the least besides being hurtful. But then someone has to define ad hominem. ‘Idiot’ certainly appears to be ad hominem unless of course it’s true. ;-);-)
So what happens when a kid uses that kind of verbiage in a paper? How do you respond? That’s a serious question.
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I’m teaching expository and persuasive writing (i.e., not homiletics, for example, which has different focuses) which means that the task at hand is to lay out a controversial position on the topic and then persuade one’s audience of the reasonability of that position. (So students are not allowed to write papers for me that argue something obvious, for example — they have to be trying to persuade someone with the same knowledge they have of the reasonability of a controversial thesis.) Focus on evidence and argument in history instruction are part of the reason, e.g., why the history major is considered good preparation for a law degree — so in general my courses, like most history instruction at the post-secondary level, are focused more on these things than on true data about the past per se, although part of the process of argumentation certainly involves identifying on the basis of source critique which data is reliable and which is not, and why. Usually, if a student attacks the author of a primary or secondary source (instead of questioning its reliability, which is what we’re trying to get them to do) it’s enough to ask them whether a reader who was not already inclined to agree with them would be persuaded by such tactics — or whether someone who was inclined to disagree would. I try to teach that written communication is about means to an end (identifying the truth and convincing others of your case). For that purpose it’s usually more than sufficient to identify an argument or a piece of information as faulty or biased, without having to attack the author himself, and a reasonable student will see this. There are always a few who won’t, though 🙂
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Can I get grits with that ad hominem?
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Fried or boiled?
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@RAFrenzy,
Screw it! It’s the holidays, fried please!
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@Ann Marie,
For you I’ll pull out my bible for grits. 😀
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Hmmm. Are indiscreet topics not allowed?
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well, the topics I teach are officially “not very sexy.” So I’d accept an indiscreet topic if a student were creative enough to find one. 🙂
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[…] recently graded thousands of pages of undergraduate prose, and having whined about at least three of the errors Mr. Armitage made, I have my own opinions on this. One is that speaking and writing language are two different […]
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Sheltering Armitage: or, Whence the protective impulses? « Me + Richard Armitage said this on December 28, 2010 at 9:10 pm |
[…] angry. Some have charged that it involves a grammatical error and that this choice makes me — someone known for her interest in correct speech — a […]
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#BlogIntroChallenge 3: why ” me + richard armitage ” ? | Me + Richard Armitage said this on May 31, 2015 at 12:13 am |