4/21/2021 IIT Gandhinagar Mail - On the subject of the marks allotted to the second Module assignment, on Persuasion, for

suasion, for HS102.

Progyan Das <progyan.das@iitgn.ac.in>

On the subject of the marks allotted to the second Module assignment, on

Persuasion, for HS102.
1 message

Progyan Das <progyan.das@iitgn.ac.in> Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 10:57 PM

To: Jayishnu Roy <roy_jayishnu@iitgn.ac.in>

Dear Sir,

I write this in hopes that what I write will reach you in conditions better than that of my grades on our second assignment,
and I write to you regarding how I am convinced that my submission deserves more - even if we go by the draconian rubrics
that this course imposes on what should aspire to be literature but always ends up being but a few adjectives longer than a
clerical email written in rush-hour (which, perhaps, more than literature, is the unfortunate goal of the course).

What follows, sir, is an attempt to argue my case, and an informal criticism of the course that has been forced towards my
batch, as students, and you, as the teacher. I understand, sir, that no one who reads literature for the sake of literature can
truly appreciate this course, and I just want you to know that none of my criticisms is for the kind and understanding way in
which you have supported our discussions in the tutorial sessions; no, it is entirely towards the course itself, and its boorish,
mephistophelian tendency to leave its students unreceptive to the beauty of literature.

To my assignment were assigned 16 marks out of 20, and I would have been fine with it - had it been justified on the
grounds on which these marks were deducted. I shall not argue how flawed those grounds are, no; that is not my purpose. I
shall argue that my submission does satisfy the requisites laid before it, and that the marks deducted are not entirely for
valid reasons.

First, let me justify the word-count. I had this already clarified with Professor Dyotana Banerjee before submission: the topic
evaluation does not count towards the given word limit, and the word-count of the actual text is 316 words - within the word
limit. Therefore, that 1 mark for exceeding the word count is not justified.

Coming to copy-editing - I have found one inadvertent error in my text, and I shall admit that right away:

In this sentence, "one" should have been "on" - and this is clearly a typo, not a grammatical error, and while I would request
you to ignore this mistake, I understand that a minute checking of obvious errors in this course is much more important than
the quality of the overall write-up.

Here are some other errors that Grammarly has noticed, and my justification for why these were duly considered and kept
as part of the final draft. As I go along, I would request you to keep in mind that this was a module on Persuasion, and the
submission is more an informal argument than a corporate thesis; therefore, I have used commas, em-dashes, and
conjunctions liberally across the text, as the preservation of flow is more important than simple sentence structure while
writing to persuade.

Grammarly recommends replacing "at" with "in", therefore changing "at more depth" to "in more depth". I have tried to write
the sentence both ways, and "at more depth" feels not only truer to the spirit of what I wanted to express (drawing a parallel
to the phrase "at length"), but it preserves rhythm better: as a bisyllabic verb, "discussed" is stressed on the second syllable;
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4/21/2021 IIT Gandhinagar Mail - On the subject of the marks allotted to the second Module assignment, on Persuasion, for HS102.
therefore, to preserve flow, I needed a low-stress preposition right after - and here, "at" fits the bill better than does "in",
since the "ah" sound follows from the "-d" consonant more readily.
Besides, there is precedent for "discussed at more depth" being used in published texts before. On a cursory Google
search, I have found the following documents that use it -

https://www.causeweb.org/cause/research/literature/representativeness-fundamental-statistical-strategy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336321074_Failures_of_the_First_Round_and_a_Proposal_for_a_New_Strategy
https://www.washburn.edu/faculty-staff/staff-council/files/minutes.042209.pdf

Here, Grammarly claims that there is a subject-verb disagreement, and I will now justify why it is not: "differing opinions"
here is not used as a noun phrase, and "differing" is not used here as an adjective, but as a gerund phrase - therefore,
"differing opinions [...] gives rise to [...]" is valid in the same way as the sentences "swimming makes you healthy", or
"clarifying errors is good".
Interestingly, Grammarly itself has an article on gerund phrases in its blog: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/gerund-phrase/

This is fairly straightforward: Grammarly claims "for good reason" is not paired with the right article, but it fails to take into
account that "for good reason" is an established figure of speech, and that it is also grammatically valid - to the point where
the Cambridge dictionary lists it thrice in its list of examples of sentences containing the phrase "good reason",
at https://dictionary.cambridge.org/example/english/good-reason.

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4/21/2021 IIT Gandhinagar Mail - On the subject of the marks allotted to the second Module assignment, on Persuasion, for HS102.
Here, Grammarly points out redundancy: it claims that "my own personal" is redundant, and therefore should be
restructured as "my observations", "my own observations", or "my personal observations". First, I will clarify that this is
potential redundancy in the pursuit of emphasis - an important part of persuasion.
I will point out why not one of these phrases does entirely convey the spirit of the statement I wanted to express. "My own
observation" implies an observation that I have made, but one that I have expressly done, which is not true in this case. "My
personal observation" is an observation that I have made, kept to myself, but not claimed ownership and responsibility for,
which is also not true. "My observations" is technically proper, but it is unmodified and half-reflective of what is to be
expressed, ideally. Therefore, "my own personal observation" not only provides solid emphasis on the fact that this
observation is entirely mine, it is also the proper way of expressing what exactly I wanted to say.
Here is a discussion on an English forum discussing why "my own personal" is acceptable grammatically: https://
english.stackexchange.com/questions/499057/my-own-vs-my-own-personal
An excerpt from the discussion:

Here is a language-learning service that uses "my own personal" as a proper English statement: http://www.elllo.
org/english/1301/T1350-amy-money-floor.htm

Again, Grammarly does point out issues with commas multiple times, and while it is easily apparent that the placement of
commas in my submission is to modulate stress, and to direct flow and diction, I would point out that Grammarly routinely
registers the Oxford serial comma as an error, and that it cannot predict when a comma is being used intentionally for
stress, and when it is not.

With that, sir, I feel I have addressed the issues that the rubric might have had with my submission. If that is indeed the
case, I would request that my marks be updated, since this course greatly affects our final grades at the end of the term,
and it would cause me a lot of pain if it was English, a subject that I deeply love, that led to a dip in my grades.

Thanking you,
Yours Sincerely,

Progyan Das.

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