1. Not paraphrasing. If you have a quote–especially a long quote–be sure that it does something really, really special. Here’s a good rule of thumb: Use a quote if it does something that you can’t do in your own words (through paraphrasing).

Representative Tom Smith said that the state would “need to raise taxes at least ten percent in order to make the annual budget.”

Representative Tom Smith said that the state would require a ten percent raise in order to fulfill the annual budget’s obligations.

Representative Tom Smith said, “This state is in pretty nasty shape, and we’re going to have to raise taxes just to break even.”

2. Comma splices. This is where two independent clauses are hooked together with a comma. In other words, you have two sentences that need to be separate. Instead of being independent and separate, however, they are wrongly hooked by a comma. Simply unhook or add a conjunction (or maybe use a semicolon).

It’s already late, my friend is asleep on the couch. –> It’s already late, and my friend is asleep on the couch. (It’s already late. My friend is asleep on the couch.)

3. It’s its/their there they’re.

4. Titles and quotes or underlining.

5. Dangling Modifiers. This is a common problem, although many people don’t recognize it when they see it. Basically, whenever you have a small “chunk” of text that describes something, that chunk has to be next to the thing it describes. Otherwise, what you find is a sometimes confusing and unintentionally funny situation.

Dangling: After studying the problem, vandals are now thought to share certain characteristics.

Revised: After studying the problem, researchers think that vandals share certain characteristics.

Dangling: I talked about the great things George Washington did at Sunday’s picnic.

Revised: At Sunday’s picnic, I talked about the great things George Washington did.

Dangling: At age seven, her grandfather passed away.

Revised: Her grandfather passed away when she was age seven.

Dangling: Having finished my dinner, the waitress offered to bring out the dessert tray.

6. Non-parallel construction. When you have a series of actions, make sure they are in the same mode. Do they all “fit” with the verb that is used for the first word? [What about the following…?]

Jim likes to surf the net, to design games, and watching science-fiction movies.

I wanted to cry and head for the hills, all at the same time.

Without my mom, I would have driven too fast and shopping all the time.

For Thursday: Please find a section (perhaps a few sentences or even a paragraph) that either gives you trouble or that makes you particularly proud.

Guidelines: Seven minutes (no more, no less). This presentation should be written out in advance, practiced, and very interesting. Use notes, images, sounds, or whatever else will help you to tell an interesting story.

Your presentation needs to be INTERESTING! It should be something we want to listen to, and something that gives us (your audience) some pleasure from hearing.

What should your presentation be about? Two things:

1. The writing process: both the good and the bad. What was the research like? How did you start writing, and how did you revise? How did your focus change over time? What kinds of decisions did you wrestle with? Etc.

2. Some discussion of the topic itself. Tell us something you learned about your topic in the course of research. Since not all of your audience will read your topic all the way through, tell us a little about the topic. If it seems interesting, you might even read or show us a small excerpt of your project.

Balance these two things. Don’t necessarily emphasize one over the other. But do these two things in interesting ways. How? By being animated. Remember the anecdote? Use it!

Set the scene for us through language, images, music, whatever. Be creative. For this seven minutes, WOW us. Don’t limit yourself.

See the assigned order here:

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Revising writing must take into account the rhetorical character of any text. Remember: every time you write (or speak), you are entering a rhetorical situation. There are particular goals you want to reach in regard to a particular audience. You write in such a way that fits those goals and that audience.

Revision is more than simply checking for misplaced commas or spelling errors. Revision looks again at your writing and considers what you were trying to accomplish. You want to literally “see it again,” perhaps trying things in a new way. Revision is not the “almost done” feeling of checking your spelling or commas. Revision is a big job. It’s a creative job. You might end up overhauling a lot of what you’ve done so far. You might cut a lot, add a lot, or simply move things around. That’s the point of revision.

I’m going to talk about two different approaches to revision. The first I will call prose revision, which you can use to revise any kind of writing (academic, informal, professional, whatever). You can use this in almost any of your writing situations in the future.

The other approach I will call a reperspective. This method helps you for those areas you find lacking, somehow, but you aren’t sure how or why. This revision method helps to generate some new perspectives on the text.

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