20 Common Problems in Student Writing

Consider how director George Lucas used text to orient audiences to the 5Ws at the start of every chapter of the Star Wars saga. The first thing you see in the 1977 original are these words appearing on screen: ”A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...." Then a sudden orchestral blast happens and the title appears along with the opening chords of a John Williams overture. Next that iconic vertical crawl of yellow text emerges from the bottom of the screen reading: “Episode IV, A NEW HOPE. It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire...” Less than a minute in and we already know what's going in. Who? It’s about rebels and an "evil Galactic Empire" Where and when? It’s happening “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” and also a "hidden base." And what’s it about? It’s "STAR WARS," more specifically “a period of civil war,” and the events immediately following the rebels' "first victory." And why should we care? Apparently there's "a new hope," likely a turning of the tide. We know this strategy worked because 40 years later, we're still hooked. Here are a few ways we can borrow this cinematic device and adapt it to our academic purposes:

1a. Example: "When it comes to knowing what it is like to fight in Iraq, most Americans have an incomplete picture. in 2006, the New York City-based Roper Public Affairs polling group published a survey showing that 63 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 failed to correctly locate Iraq on a map of the Middle East. This raises the question of how much more we fail to understand about the war. Just how accurately does the depiction of war in popular media reflect the reality of life for the men and women in uniform?"

1b. Here's what I think when I read an essay begins with a sentence like this one: "Since the dawn of time, mankind has struggled to find the answer to many problems..."

For a start, the universe is 13.8 billion years old while humans date back only about 300,000 years, so what you're claiming is factually off by several orders of magnitude. Second of all, I have no idea what you're writing about. It's sooooo vague. This could be about anything from astrophysics to Zen Buddhism. The only thing that is clear here is that people who write openings like this have not yet found a way to get your reader to care about what you're saying.

So how do you hook your reader? Show us why your topic matters, don't tell us. Take us to a specific time and place, the precise moment when your topic matters the most. Replace "mankind" and "many problems" with the actual topics of your paper. Swap out "dawn of time" for the time and place you're writing about. Look here to see an excellent example of an opening to a student essay that shows rather than tells.

There are other options, too:

For essays where your examples come from the distant past and far-away places, a way to get your reader's attention is to quickly prove that the past is connected to the present in a surprising way. e.g. "Think of a leader who comes to power during a huge financial crisis, a losing war in Iraq, and who has big plans for building lots of infrastructure, but he has to deal with a Senate who regards him as an illegitimate foreigner because of what he looks like and where he is from. This description obviously fits President Barack Obama, but it also accurately describes the Roman Emperor Hadrian. We've been here before."

Another strategy is to start your essay like a Bond film, put us right in the middle of the action when your topic matters the most, when a crucial decision was made. "In 509 BCE, the Romans had successfully expelled the Tarquins, a family of foreign rulers who abused their authority. Winning the war wasn't easy, but replacing the Etruscan monarchy with a system that would be less corrupt would prove to be even harder. Lucky for Rome, a handful of brilliant patrician revolutionaries thought of some great ideas that changed the world and that we continue to benefit from."

A related approach is to open with an interesting paradox or puzzle that your claim will solve. "Many of us like democracy, but what happens when a majority votes to kill the wisest person alive? The story of the Athenian philosopher Socrates invites us to think about how can we balance the desires of the many against the few."

1c. Body paragraphs need topic sentences, too. They should always do two things, first identify the example you'll be analyzing in the paragraph and second, transition gracefully from the previous paragraph. A good way to link them is to show how the topic of the previous paragraph connects to the new one by singling out the most significant similarity or dissimilarity they have, or how the earlier caused or inspired the latter. Read #15, too. Here's how I would do one moving from the plan I've written at the bottom of problem 3:

Examples: "In 1972, the U.S. Surgeon General reported that by the age 18, a U.S. youth will have seen 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence on television. Certainly with the proliferation of video games like Call of Duty and Fortnite, the numbers are likely higher for today's children. But the impact of witnessing virtual killings pales in comparison with the effect of experiencing real violence and death on the battlefield in Iraq as reported by U.S. soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq."

Here's another model topic sentence with a transition from a paragraph about one person to another. Note that it references a similarity and a causal connection: "Another leader from the ancient middle east was the Hebrew prophet Moses, a leader who seems to have followed in the footsteps of Urukagina by liberating slaves."

2. No claim, limited claim, or unrelated claim: You've written a report, not an essay. The purpose of the essay is to prove a point or 'claim'. For example, a claim for the topic mentioned above might be, "My research has shown that most veterans generally see a large disconnect between the portrayal of war in media and in their own lives." You need to say your claim up front and use the body paragraphs to prove it.

Solutions: A. Perhaps your essay has a point to prove but you never came out and said it (or you left it to the end). Read it over and see if you can discover its unconscious claim and add it to the beginning.

B. You need to study the material more. In order to defend your claim about an issue, you first have to know something about it. Nobody wants "a side order of nuthin'."

C. Make sure your claim actually answers the question that is asked. Read the prompt very carefully. And then read it again. Seriously. Seek clarification if you're confused or read it again slowly taking time to parse out every issue.

D. Your claim may be provable, but it's too broad or obvious to be useful. The problem with a broad claim is that it doesn't draw a clear line between what is okay and what isn't. Even people like Hitler and Stalin followed broad rules like to "be yourself," "work hard," and "stick to your values." You need to drill down to something more specific to avoid the Nazi problem.

E. Your claim is more a descriptive than prescriptive, and therefore it is not a rule. A way to kick it up to the next level is to ask the following question: if your claim is true, what should we do? What concrete actions should we take to make good things happen or avoid something bad? A specific answer to that question is a better claim. The best claim statements go beyond saying "it's like this," they follow this formula: "it's like X because of Y, and therefore we should do Z." Please substitute specifics for each variable. Yes, you probably need to do a bit more research to find out what works in the real world. Key search terms: study, policy, effect, outcome, reduce, mitigate, eradicate, limit, increase, better, improve.

3. Plan? What plan? You haven't set up the organization of the essay in your introduction. Why does this matter? It's like telling your reader to drive to Sequim, Washington without a map. Tell your reader where the major stops are on your journey to proving your claim! In other words, please list your reasons!

Solution: Give me a plan by listing all your examples. Building on my model from above, I might set up the plan of my essay like so:

"First, interviews revealed that many soldiers claimed that killing and death were much more difficult to deal with than what they expected given what they saw in the media. Second, many claimed that the press and entertainment industry does not show the tedium and boredom involved in military life. Lastly, however, they did report that the friendship and camaraderie between themselves and their fellow servicemen and women to be just as important as it is typically depicted in film and television." Each of these three claims will be the basis of its own body paragraph or section designed to support the primary claim.

Here's a plan I might expect to see in a Wisdom from History essay: "The history of Rome furnishes us with several examples. The legendary Rape of the Sabine Women, the career and laws of Publicola in the founding of the Roman Republic, and the career of Julius Caesar in ending the aforementioned Republic all support my rule, the second showing the benefits of following it and the first and third showing what can go wrong when it is not adhered to."

4. Little or no support: You need to refer to relevant facts to make your claim valid. This part is like a prosecuting attorney without any evidence or a car without gas. It's going nowhere!

Solutions: A. Study! The more fluent you are with the material, the better able you'll be to bring it into your writing. As you read material, make note of issues that are most relevant and store them for later use. Remember, knowledge is the only weapon you have in the war against your own ignorance. As I read, I record and copy relevant quotations into a google doc along with citation information so I can build my writing around it.

B. Maybe you have the facts, but didn't actually use them. Returning to the above examples, I would use relevant quotes from interviews of soldiers and Pentagon statistics into my body paragraphs to demonstrate the veracity of my claim and supporting claims. For example, this quotation from a 2006 NPR story by Daniel Zwerdling with an Iraq war veteran certainly has what it takes to drive home the first part of my claim that I articulated in #2 & #3:

“It really pisses me off when people going round saying I saw what you guys went through on TV. No one saw what we went through on TV. They can’t show you little four-year-olds screaming because their leg just got blown off!”

That's powerful stuff, right? Don't hold back; you need all the proof you can get. Read about problem #9 to learn how to use impact to maximize the power of quotes. And if you need more information first, Click here to link to resources to get informed and get support.

5. Wrong! Sorry, this isn't factually correct, but thank you for playing. Errors undermine the credibility of your claim. Yes, I know political campaigns have increasingly relied on manufacturing alternate realities to get our support, but I do not believe this practice should be encouraged.

Solution: Well, study of course. The more time and care with the reading & thinking about your topic, the less likely you are to make a gaffe. And when your facts are right, readers will be more sympathetic to arguments. Remember, since Socrates the scholar's goal is to uncover and share the truth. Conversely, lies, errors, and distortion tend to gum up the works.

6. The Department of Redundancies Department: You said that already. You said that already. See how annoying this is? You really should have at least three unique arguments behind your claim, each in its own section with its own logic or reasoning.

Solutions: A. Outline the three or four issues before beginning. For example politics, economics, religion and art.

B. If you're repeating yourself because you have nothing else to say, it means you need to study more before writing.

7. No citation: If you don't explain where you're getting your facts from, why should anyone believe you? If you suddenly introduce a quote without giving your reader any information about who wrote it and where it came from, why should they care? I've never been to Iraq much less fought there, and you've never been to ancient Athens or Revolutionary France, so where do we get the authority to say anything about them?

You can solve all these problems by acknowledging your sources before inserting a quote. All of us depend on information provided by others to back up the point we are making. And beware, if you use someone's ideas without giving them credit, consciously or not, you have committed the heinous sin of plagiarism. Read number 19 to learn why this is so crucial.

In addition to giving credit where credit is due, citations also serve the even greater purpose of helping academics to accelerate their work and make it more precise. This leads to quicker advancements in science, technology, medicine which in turn have a massive impact on everything you care about. Read number 18 to learn more.

Yes, my system is different from what other teachers ask for. APA parenthetical citation might be appropriate for citing psychology studies with four co-authors, but for the work you do in my classes, I believe my model is better suited. Moreover, it forces you to be more conscious of where your evidence is coming from, so you might handle it with greater precision.

Solution: Build the 4Ws, the who, what, where, and when of your quote into the sentence right before it appears. You can build the author, date, publication, and even the source within the source seamlessly into your sentences. Below are several formulas and models for embedding the 4Ws seamlessly into sentences that contain short quotes:

WHEN, WHERE, WHAT, WHO

In the 2008 ABC-CLIO article entitled "Hathor," author Geraldine Pinch wrote, "SHORT QUOTE."

In the 2004 essay on ABC-CLIO about Moses, J.B. Tschen-Emmons described how this prophet worked to, "free the Hebrews from bondage, lead them out of Egypt, and present them with God's laws."

Here's a variation, show how you can add a second "who" to increase accuracy:

In a 2006 story about PTSD among soldiers at Fort Carson, NPR's Daniel Zwerdling quoted an Iraq war veteran as having said, “It really pisses me off when people going round saying I saw what you guys went through on TV. No one saw what we went through on TV. They can’t show you little four-year-olds screaming because their leg just got blown off!”

WHAT, WHERE, WHO, WHEN

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States adopted in 1789 invests Congress with several sweeping authorities, among them the ability to "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States" and "To declare War."

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was adopted just after our Civil War in 1868 as an attempt to insulate Americans from discrimination by guaranteeing to all citizens "the equal protection of the laws."

In the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice Marshall in 1803 wrote, "it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is."

WHEN, WHERE, WHO, WHAT

In the 1938 case Palko v. Connecticut, Justice Cardozo wrote in the majority opinion that a fundamental right is one that is, "of the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty."

What happens when your source quoted another source? Well, in those cases, you effectively have either two "whos" and two "wheres" to cover. It's tricky, but doable Here's one for a newspaper reporting on a scientific study:

WHEN, WHERE, WHO, WHAT, WHERE

In May 2009, the New York Times' Erik Eckholm reported on a study from Columbia University's National Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse that concluded that the total cost of addiction-related services in America was $468 billion in 2005 alone.

Notice how I embedded the link within the sentence like bloggers do. You should do the same thing. Select the relevant text, click the chain-link box and plop in the correct link. It's a staggering stat, isn't it? Definitely worth a read.

Here's another model for what do do when quoting a judge who quoted another judge:

WHEN WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHAT

In 2003, Justice Kennedy in the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas reinforced a 1996 decision, Romer v. Evans, and wrote that it, "confirmed that the Due Process Clause protects personal decisions relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, child rearing, and education."

Here's a bonus formula for students of English, one I like to use when quoting fiction. Note how I'm able to reference both the author and the character, thus setting the stage for the quote:

WHEN, WHAT, WHERE, WHO, WHO

In his 1945 novel Animal Farm, author George Orwell made a famous comment about authority and obedience through the character Boxer, a horse who said, "If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right."

When dealing with complex texts with multiple characters, it's necessary to distribute the citation information into a couple of sentences as you'll see below:

WHEN, WHAT, WHO, WHERE. WHERE, WHO, WHO, WHO

Despite the immediacy and viciousness of Twitter and other social media, arguably the most potent insults in the English language still reside in Elizabethan drama, specifically Shakespeare's tragedy, King Lear. Early in the second scene of the second act, the bard through a character called Kent berated Oswald, a treasonous politician who was described among several other profoundly unpleasant things as "an eater of broken meats" as well as "a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch." Even the most vindictive internet trolls seem mild in comparison to the elegant brutality of an angry Shakespeare.

And when dealing with translations of primary sources, I advocate this model that lets you cite the translator and the original author while plugging in the dates of both:

WHO (translator), WHEN (translation), WHEN (the original text), WHO (the original author), WHAT (title or name the text or object in italics), WHERE

According to Douglas R. Frayne's 2007 translation of the 24th-century BCE tablets called Urkukagina's "Liberty Cones" now housed at the Louvre, "When a royal subordinate on the narrow side of his field built his well, blind workers were appropriated for it, and for the irrigation channels(?) located within the field blind workers were (also) appropriated."

According to Burton Watson's 2007 translation of Confucius' fifth-century BCE masterwork, The Anelects, "The Master said, Virtue not sufficiently practiced, learning not sufficiently digested, to hear what is right and not be able to do it, to have shortcomings and not be able to remedy them— these are the things that I worry about."

What if you want to use a image as evidence? This model would work for works of art, photographs of buildings, people, events, stills from videos, and anything else where a picture is your proof. Ask somebody if you want to learn how to learn how to capture screenshots.

WHERE (the feature you will analyze) WHERE (online), WHAT (image), WHO (artist), WHEN, WHAT (media), TITLE, WHERE (location), WHO & WHAT (who is doing what)

"In the center of the Web Gallery of Art's reproduction of Raphael's 1511 fresco called The School of Athens which adorns the Papal Apartments at the Vatican, one can see Plato pointing to the sky while his student Aristotle gestures toward the ground."What if the picture is moving or the source is just audio? Here's a formula you can use to quote and cite things said in films, movies, television, podcasts, radio stories, and videos, too:

WHEN (year of the film), WHAT (kind or genre of film), TITLE (of the film and an embedded link #cntl-K cued to the right spot), WHO (the speaker on screen who you're quoting), WHAT (what the speaker was talking about)

In his 2012 Ted Talk called "Schools Kill Creativity?" Sir Kenneth Robinson recounted the advice given by a psychiatrist to the mother of future choreographer GIllian Lynne, "Gillian isn't sick, she's a dancer."With most films, citation information is found in the opening or closing credits. Still, with many film clips you find online, you may need to use clues in the film to google around to find out what year it was made, who the director or writer was, and even the title. If you need help with that, just ask.

And there are many other variations on citation for different kinds of sources and for varying amounts of available information. Experiment and find your own to suit your purpose, provided that they work when read aloud.

Note that throughout these citations I have used the past tense "wrote" and "said" instead of "says." Even if what you're quoting was published an hour ago, it's still the past you're writing about, so your verb tenses should reflect it. The one exception to my use of the past tense was for my citation of Raphael's fresco. In The School of Athens, the image of Plato was pointing upward in 1511 and he's still doing it today, so the past tense isn't required. Nevertheless, the act of painting the image of Plato was now long ago, so we would say "painted" when describing Raphael's work. Also note also that I used italics for the name of the court case and put quotes around the titles of all the sources I used.

Oh, and please NEVER CITE WIKIPEDIA! Wikipedia is a portal, not a destination. Sometimes it can link you to useful resources if you click the footnotes or try "external links," but you cannot use it by itself. Only use information from peer-reviewed, reliable sources with attributions and citations. You'll rarely get a complaint about using abc-clio or primary sources from .edu university websites. Scroll to problem 18 to learn how to build citations into your bibliography.

P.S. Once you've covered "who," "what." "where," and "when," you must not forget about "why." Once you've finished a citation and a quote, please tell your readers WHY your source and evidence matter. Regardless of how awesome your citations and your quotes are, they're only as good as the impact that follows them. Never move on to the next paragraph until you've made very specific links between your source and your evidence on one end and your claim or rule on the other. Show us how the facts prove you right. Scroll down to problem #9 for advice on how to get this right.

8. Quote abuse & faulty logic: The quote or evidence you've chosen doesn't actually say what you claim it does or it is taken out of context. You probably used one or more logical fallacies.

Solutions: A. Read it again with special attention to passages preceding and following the quote. Make sure you correctly grasp the author's point.

B. If you find that the quote doesn't agree with your claim, maybe try to explain why the author is in error. Scholars tend to be impressed by people who can successfully challenge the so-called experts.

C. Keep reading while you consider the possibility that your interpretation may be wrong.

9. Little or no impact: I don't see how this evidence supports your claim. Facts don't speak for themselves – you need to show what they MEAN. You need to give your logic, just like we ask you to write proofs or 'show your work' in math. If you don't explicitly show why the facts you cite link to the point you're trying to prove, then that evidence has no place in your essay.

Solutions: Build a bridge between your support and your claim. Consider this example of how to link a simple statistic with the claim I used in problem #4. Notice how I bring in additional evidence to help make sense of how the first quote proves my claim:Here's a model topic sentence followed by a sentence with a citation and the quote...

"Investigative reporting has revealed a chasm between the experiences of soldiers at war and the way the public perceives their service has widened in the present century. In a 2006 story about PTSD among soldiers at Fort Carson, NPR's Daniel Zwerdling quoted an Iraq war veteran as having said, “It really pisses me off when people going round saying I saw what you guys went through on TV. No one saw what we went through on TV. They can’t show you little four-year-olds screaming because their leg just got blown off!”

Without interruption, I continue this paragraph with this following impact analysis, attempting to link supporting evidence to my claim:

"This heartbreaking anecdote shows the extreme type of violence and carnage American infantrymen encountered in the line of duty in Iraq. This stands in marked contrast to the preponderance of news stories involving war fatalities which leave out any detail beyond time, place and the number of people killed. Reporting that, "a car bomb killed seven in a Baghdad market" glosses the over the part of the story involving the physical and mental anguish suffered by the injured, the victims' families, and the men and women in uniform tasked with responding to these horrors and restoring order. The effects of witnessing such unimaginable carnage are surprisingly large. Since a recent Pentagon report that claims that over a third of returning soldiers display symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, clearly the media's treatment of these events does not do justice to the most difficult aspects of the soldiers' experiences. Moreover, having no clear idea of what they "went through" leaves both politicians and voters with little sense of what war is actually like, and those misconceptions have significant policy implications that I will discuss in my conclusion."

Note how I built in other pieces of evidence to help make sense of the quote. Also note how I requoted a small fragment of the quote within my impact analysis to reinforce a point. A tiny bit of repetition can add rhetorical power, but use it sparingly or else you risk problem 6.

10. Über-quote: There's more quote than you in here. Whose essay is this anyway? Remember, you only use quotes and evidence to back up your claim, it's not the other way around. Are you padding this out because you don't have much to say?

Solutions: A. John Locke famously wrote, "reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours." Keep quotes short & sweet. In fact the best thing to do is imbed a fragment in your sentence. Use the bit that ties most closely to what you're trying to prove. Look at #4 to see how I pared my source down to the most powerful bit.

B. Study. You cannot write anything valid without understanding the issue first.

11. Vague language: This word or passage isn't clear so I have no idea who or what you're talking about. Writing vaguely is highly annoying because it's pointless for you to write it and it's a waste of time to read it.

Solutions: A. Get specific! Avoid pronouns and phrases like "they", "them", "back then", "he", "she" or "it" because your reader can easily be confused about what or to whom you are referring to. Reliance on pronouns is usually the consequence of having too little to say. In such cases, you simply need to read and think more about your topic before attempting to write about it. Dig up some proof and quotes to analyze.

B. Confess to yourself that you have nothing to say and STUDY until you do. This will spare me the aggravation of trying wade through your obfuscation, not to mention saving yourself the trouble of trying to build a paper of out of hot air that might convince your instructor that you are dishonest.

12. Run-On City: You cannot fit more than one idea into one sentence.

Solutions: Split them up or scrap the spare. One idea per sentence is the rule.

13. Huh? I don't get it. This doesn't make sense to me. Why?

A. This part is hard to understand. Grammatical, spelling, syntax, usage, typographical errors, or other problems with your use of language have interfered with your message. It looks like you just don't care.

B. What does this have to do with the topic or claim? Did you misinterpret the prompt? Are you just filling the page, attempting to snow me, or is there something important that hasn't come across?

C. You seem to be contradicting something that you claimed earlier.

Solutions: A. You should take enough pride in your work to polish it. Seriously. Proofreading OUT LOUD to find and fix language problems works most of the time. Are you so busy that you cannot spare a few extra seconds to run spell check? As you read the writings of the pros, pay attention to how they build their sentences and try some of their strategies. Remember to always use the past tenses of verbs when quoting or discussing anything already said or done, even if it happened this morning.

B. Link this point more clearly to the topic, or scrap it. Read the prompt carefully. Study so you actually have something interesting to say!

C. Which is it? Pick a side and be consistent. Maybe come up with a new, more complex claim that accommodates ALL the facts. Strive to be logical.

14. Δυσανάγνωστο: Since this isn't legible, it's all Greek to me. That's bad luck for you as I cannot read Greek – although I do love their culture & cuisine. Studies show that examiners generally rate students with poor penmanship with lower scores, even if the content is the same.

Solution: Work on your penmanship, or in the worst case we can discuss arranging access to a computer.

15. Poor organization: You began the paragraph with one idea and finished with a different one. Does your essay have any paragraph breaks at all?

Solutions: Split this into separate paragraphs or abandon the weaker claim and maintain your focus on the stronger one. Once you set up the topic sentence, supply the proof and analyze it thoroughly, it's time to hit 'return'.

16. Not enough: While I do tend to value quality over quantity, this assignment requires more than what you've given me so far. Did you have at least three unique examples, each with its own paragraph? That means you haven't achieved either the stated or the assigned purpose of the writing. This could be because you're missing a whole part of the assignment, lost sight of what you were trying to prove, or didn't explain your logic clearly. There's probably something valid here, but you need to give your reader more examples and elaboration to develop this point effectively.

Solutions: A. Show your logic! How did you arrive at this idea? Don't leave out any steps! Just like they tell you in math, you must show your work. You may be right, but without supplying the logic, why should anyone believe you? Number 9 gives you some good advice on this, too.

B. Study more & you have more to say next time. You can win if you don't play. Do it now!

C. This writing hasn't achieved your stated objective. At least you had a claim, but you missed the mark probably because you don't have at least three unique examples. Maybe your supporting evidence or impact aren't connected to your claim. The solution is to take your time. Don't rush through an assignment just to be done with it - take more pride in what you do.

As you move from one paragraph to the next, look back periodically at the intro to remind yourself of what you're trying to prove. If you start to give up, relax, give yourself a breather and then do some more when you're ready. Those with extra time accommodations should use every scrap of time they can get.

D. This writing hasn't achieved its assigned objective. Read the directions carefully and then read them again to make sure you've addressed the WHOLE prompt and haven't left out anything. You should really have 3 or more unique examples in any persuasive writing.

17. Weak Conclusion: Having no conclusion or merely repeating your introduction is a sure-fire way to bore your reader.

Solutions: Good conclusions typically...

A. tie up your argument elegantly

B. show why your argument is important to your reader and the today's world in general. You will need to prove this with a quote and a citation from a recent, reliable news article or document to prove it.

C. establish what the next step, question or logical path of inquiry should be.

D. Wisdom from history papers must use the conclusion to explain how the rule should be applied in today to address the actual challenges we face.

18. No works cited, bibliography (or an incorrectly formatted one): I don't always ask for a works cited, but when I do, I want it done right. Why bother? Academics like to share reading lists and to check each other's facts. Providing a complete set citations in a works cited makes the process of communicating and verifying scholarship a lot easier to do. This enterprise is called peer review and it's so important that it could be the reason that you're even alive. Peer-review helps academics keep one another both informed and honest, and that in turn improves the research that has brought you the miracles of modern medicine, safe food and water, the automobile, the iPhone, social media software, television, video games, and... oh, and it's also the basis of what happens at every college or university that you'd ever want to get into, so don't knock it! Even the Beatles took it seriously, putting a visual representation of all their influences on the cover of their most famous recording.Solution: Provide one. Remember, any type of source you use in your paper, from print to film to blog to a conversation with your mom can and should be cited. Consult Barlow's Writing Tools guide to learn how to format it correctly:

Using the Writing Tools guide, here's a bibliographical entry I made for the quote I used in problem 4:

Zwerdling, Daniel. Soldiers Say Army Ignores, Punishes Mental Anguish,

All Things Considered, National Public Radio, WNPR. Fairfield.

4 Dec. 2006.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6576505>

P.S. Despite a Congressional investigation and new laws, nine years later, things have not improved...

Zwerdling, Daniel. Missed Treatment: Soldiers With Mental Health Issues Dismissed For 'Misconduct'

All Things Considered, National Public Radio, WNPR. Fairfield.

28 Oct. 2015.

<http://www.npr.org/2015/10/28/451146230/missed-treatment-soldiers-with-mental-health-issues-dismissed-for-misconduct>

19. You cheated: Shame on you! You copied most or all of this section or the entire essay from work written by someone else. Do you really believe that you deserve the same credit as someone who actually does their own work? If you do, you are not only dishonest, but probably selfish, irresponsible, arrogant, in over your head and/or lazy - precisely the qualities of the people whose fraudulent behavior caused the financial crisis of 2008 which ruined the job market for young people like yourself. School policy necessitates the automatic zero.

Solutions: You can change, but it won't be easy. Begin the process of restoring your honor by

A. growing a conscience capable of taking responsibility for your actions,

B. realize that those who put grades before learning often lose their positions to people who actually know what they're doing and do their own work, and

C. NEVER doing it again.

20. Lame or absent title: Good titles include three things - your topics, your claim & catchy language. It is the perfect distillation of what your essay attempts to prove. Here are some examples beginning with a title to the paper that I set up earlier that includes all three elements. Also notice how I borrowed a phrase from a primary source that spoke directly to my question:

"No one saw what we went through on TV": How the Soldiers' Experience of War is Distorted in American Media.

Here's a title typical of a grade nine wisdom paper. Note how I used a quote from my primary source on Urukagina as the catchy part!:

"No longer at the mercy of the powerful man": How the stories of Urukagina, Solon, and Sicinius can teach us to protect the vulnerable

Here are a few from books written about the 2008 presidential campaign: Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise or The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate.

Since this is the hardest part, write it last.

Here's a title I might have written for my own lens paper:

"The Power and Glory" How the Mixing of Musical Traditions Made Might in the Han Dynasty, Mughal India, and Modern Germany.

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