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Points Made (over and over)
in Tutorials that Still Showed Up as Errors in Essays
1. Use
Proper Syllogism Format
All M
are P
All S
are M
All S
are P
Not, all
M should be P
Not, all
M and X might be P
Not, all
M should be P with accompanying Y and Z
2.
Principle of Charity: Find a Valid Syllogism - it's not fair
that you are the author and the person who gets to set the rules
and lay out the syllogism and you choose for your advertiser a
faulty one, an invalid one. The advertiser has lost the battle
before it's even begun. If you're going to tear someone to
shreds, do the decent thing and give them a valid argument
logically to start with. Then tear them apart finding fallacies,
unsound arguments, poor arguments from other perspectives (MMA).
But don't cut them off at the ankles right from the start!
3. First
Premise Refers to All Products In A Way That Singles Out Yours
Incorrect:
All razors
provide a smooth shave.
If this is the case, if your syllogism
starts out saying that all products in your product class are
alike and provide the same benefit, why should the customer look
any further than the first one s/he sees on the shelf? Construct
your first premise so that it deals with the product class in
general but kind of limiting things already to your special
brand.
Correct:
All razors
that have a patented bluesteel whizbang edge give a smooth
shave.
4. Don’t
Conclude With “Buy this product.” We went over and over this in
tutorials. Find the conclusion that is the message of this
particular ad.
Writing
the Paper
5. Name
Only on First Page - time honoured tradition of grading blind
6. Don’t
Laminate Ads (this is new, not mentioned in tutorials)
7. Don’t
Use Direct Quotes; Use YOUR words
Use quotes only when quoting something
rather outrageous
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Michael Gilbert defines emotional
arguments as "arguments that use emotion." Hardly worth the
effort of typing in the quotation marks.
Professor Joe Schmo Blow of Hardcastle
University of Hard Knocks says "Advertising has no effect on
us whatsoever." (Advertising Age, March 15, 2006). Pretty
outrageous statement; you don't dare say it on your own so
you'd better have an authority to back you up - this is what
quotes are for. |
8. Don’t
Define Terms
9. But
Don’t Assume Your Reader Knows Everything
When using a particular author's theory in your paper, introduce
it briefly; don't just use his/her terms or it will look like
you are using them as if they were your own. Give credit where
credit is due.
"In addition to the logical, Michael
Gilbert in his theory of MultiModal Argumentation claims that
there also exist emotional, visceral, and kisceral arguments."
This is particularly important to do with
the word "kisceral" since Gilbert made it up. He invented it.
You can't just use that word without crediting Gilbert.
Basic
Grammar, Spelling, and Writing
(These may seem awfully basic to some of
you, but they occurred with enough frequency that I felt it
worthwhile to mention to the class as a whole)
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Break A
Solid Page of Prose into Paragraphs
-- No
one wants to read a solid page of unbroken prose
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Possessive
Form of Noun Takes Apostrophe
Plural Form
of a Noun Does Not
I question the ad’s sincerity.
I will examine two ads.
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Don’t Use
Contractions in Formal Writing
Incorrect: Don’t
Correct: Do not
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Underline
Magazine Titles or
Put Magazine Titles in Italics
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Watch Agreement Between Subject and Verb With Plurals
Incorrect: Celebrities wears
jewels.
Correct: Celebrities wear
jewels.
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Write in
the Active, not Passive, Voice
Incorrect: Two ads will be
analyzed.
Correct: I will analyze two
ads.
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Watch
Proper Comma Use
What is Wrong With
This Sentence?
This layout is strategic and
tries to persuade individuals, who can be easily influenced,
into thinking that they belong here.
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Answer: With the comma after
"individual" this sentence now actually says that ALL
individuals are people who are easily influenced, a statement
that simply is not true. What the writer meant to write is this:
This layout is strategic and
tries to persuade individuals who can be easily influenced, into
thinking that they belong here.
With only the one
comma, it is clear that the writer is referring to only those
individuals who can be easily influenced, not all individuals.
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Don’t Use
Run-On Sentences
and Remember that “However” and “But” are not
Interchangeable
RUN-ON: We hoped to
catch him, however he was too fast.
CORRECT: We hoped to
catch him; however, he was too fast.
CORRECT AND
BETTER: We hoped to
catch him; he, however, was too fast.
CORRECT AND
BEST (SIMPLEST): We hoped to
catch him but he was too fast.
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Don’t Use “Very” If it is important, it is important; you
don't have to say "very important"
Don’t Use
“It is important to note” If it weren't, we assume you
wouldn't be mentioning it
Don’t Use
“As I explained before” Either reorganize so that you say it only in one place, or if
it is important to say it twice, just say it and don't apologize
for it
Don’t Use
Clichés and Colloquialisms (see your paper; I've noted them)
Don’t Use
Rhetorical Questions (yes, I realize I started one of my essays
with one! That doesn't make it good practice; I was writing for
an informal conference presentation.)
Don’t Use A
Fancy Multi-Syllabic Word When a Simple Word Will Do
especially if you get the meaning of the multi-syllabic word
wrong. People aren't impressed with big words; they are
impressed when they can read and understand your writing.
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Learn To
Write Simply
Don't Write Too Much:
From one of your papers, someone wrote
"All in all, an abundant amount of advertisements appears each day.:
Just Right: I crossed out a whole lot of words and had it just say:
Many
All in all, an abundant amount of advertisements appear each day.
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Other
Comments
The “i”
statement doesn’t mean writing about how hard it was to write
the essay
The “i”
statement doesn’t mean writing “I think” in front of every
sentence you write (we know you think it; you're the person who
wrote the essay)
The "i" statement does not mean writing in
a down-home folksy way with cutesy colloquialisms peppering your
writing like Mark Twain's Mississippi River tales
Example of
a Great “i” statement (don't just copy this one for your next
paper; they have to be individual to you!)
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According to James Twitchell, it is
estimated that marketing companies spend about $140
billion dollars on advertisements a year, while
individuals are confronted with 3,000 ads a day. Based on
my exposure to advertisements, I can say that the
multi-billion dollar investment has had successful
results. In the past, they influenced me to buy, donate,
vote, and believe in countless sorts of promotions.
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The “i”
statement also gets rid of passive voice
Incorrect:
Two ads will be analyzed.
Correct:
I will analyze two ads.
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Start an
essay writing about your topic, not writing about writing your
essay
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Start by
writing about your topic, not about the process of writing
of the essay. The reader of an essay doesn’t care at all
about what your assignment was, what course you were taking
when you wrote it, how you went about collecting ads, or any
of that stuff. Start an essay with the topic of the essay,
not with a description of what you were assigned to write.
Francis Bacon, writing his essay “Of Truth” did not start by
writing, “My editor suggested that I write a piece about
Truth so I looked through my old files on truth and decided
to write something about how Pontius Pilate thought about
the issue.” No, he wrote this opening sentence, “What is
truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an
answer.” Start an essay with something that will capture
your reader’s interest, not with a statement of why you
wrote it. Trust me, no one cares. |
Marking
Your actual
mark is in pencil on the front of your paper. The first mark is
for essay structure, the second for content and writing, and the
third is the average of the two. The red S is a label of the
category you fell into for Structure and the pencil C the
category you fell into for Content/Writing. The number at the
top is the number of your paper I used in grading blind (without
knowing the name of the author).
A Check
Mark instead of a Plus means you spent too much time describing
rather than analyzing. The phrase OK instead of Good means just
that: it was okay.
A grade of B is a respectable grade. But
the paper lacked that pizzazz, that spark, that extra brilliance
that brings a paper up to an A.
Questions About Marks
In the next two weeks bring in
writing with a copy of your paper a statement of where you think
you earned more marks and why. Be sure you have read my detailed
comments and these classroom comments.
Note: I do not entertain requests that argue:
“I worked hard.”
“I worked harder than Jane who got an A.”
“I think I deserve a better mark.”
“I need a mark of _____ to graduate.”
Know that I don’t actually ever
raise marks unless I have accidentally missed a whole section,
but with the amount of time I took marking these papers, it is
highly unlikely that this has happened.
I have taught for a very long
time and one of the things I have decided is that I do not
bicker over marks. Claudio has had a look over these papers as
well and found that they correlated quite highly with the
midterm marks, with, of course, some instances where they did
not - no correlation is 100%; people do not perform with 100%
consistence. Ultimately if you are not happy with your marks,
there are formal avenues of appeal open to you through the
Faculty.
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