MARKING

For many students, a lot of effort goes into the writing of an assignment. Much effort also goes into
marking it. Except for papers marked in D2L, assignments are always graded with the names hidden. I
do not grade to a curve or a quota. My purpose in marking your papers is to identify areas of
competency and weakness in your writing skills and analysis. I hope that you use my comments to
build on your strengths and to improve any skills that are substandard.

Often I circle mistakes in spelling, capitalization, and the like. The marking symbols and abbreviations I
use are listed below. For more information, consult me or a handbook.

agr agreement error (subject does not agree with verb or pronoun does not agree with
antecedent)

awk awkward expression

cap capital letter required

coll colloquial language (language inappropriately informal)

cs comma splice (sentence error: two complete sentences joined by a comma)

frag sentence fragment (sentence error: incomplete sentence incapable of standing on its own)

fs fused sentence (sentence error: two complete sentences joined together without any
intervening punctuation or conjunction)

lc lower-case letter required

ll error in parallelism

pe punctuation error

poss possessive (apostrophe required)

pro ref pronoun reference error (unclear to whom or what the pronoun is referring)

qm quotation marks

rep repetition

sp spelling error

t tense incorrect

ts tense shift

wc word choice error

wdy wordy

ww wrong word