INDENTING THE PARAGRAPH:

The first rule students learned about writing paragraphs back in second and third grade was that you indent the beginning of the paragraph to signal to the reader you are moving on to a new idea or portion of your writing. Not indenting your paragraph is an automatic 1 point deduction from your score, but can be avoided easily. If you are not sure how big the indentation needs to be, just press the ‘spacebar’ 5 times to begin the paragraph and you will be safe. This is not the correct approach in word processing programs, but it will be consistent and is an easy temporary fix until you learn to properly set a first line indent.

PROPER CAPITALIZATION AND PERIOD USE:

Capitalization and simple punctuation should have been mastered by the end of 3rd grade, but for most students, it was not. Writing in school is meant to help practice these simple and necessary rules to communicate clearly and with purpose. When capitalizing, remember two things: 1) ALWAYS capitalize the first letter of a sentence, and 2) ALWAYS capitalize the names of things (proper nouns). DO NOT RANDOMLY CAPITALIZE WORDS IF THEY ARE NOT PART OF THE PREVIOUS TWO RULES! If you can remember these two things, then almost all your capitalization errors will be fixed!

When it comes to not using periods to end your sentences, this just shows a complete lack of attention to your work. This is a 1st grade standard and should not be an issue for a middle school student. Check your writing to make sure you used punctuation at the end of your sentence!

CORRECT SPACING BETWEEN WORDS AND PUNCTUATION:

This is an easily avoided mistake if the student is paying attention to their work. To correctly space you only need to remember two things: 1) never use more than one space between words and 2) do not use a space before punctuation, only after. While punctuation like hyphens may not follow this exactly, following these two rules will eliminate almost all the spacing errors that student make when they write. Also, NEVER PRESS ‘ENTER’ WHEN TYPING A PARAGRAPH! Pressing enter begins a new paragraph and automatically gets a score of 0 if done on the test because you will not have produced an actual paragraph if you do so.

CORRECT SPELLING:

This correction requires students to pay more attention than the previous three. Spelling is a skill that comes with practice, attentiveness, and a willingness to correct mistakes. Fortunately, students have multiple opportunities to check for spelling errors through reading their work out loud, having peers review their writing, typing out practice paragraphs to use Google spell check, and employing the Free Grammar Check website. SPELLING IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST REASONS STUDENTS LOSE POINTS! Sometimes they only need to correct the spelling of one or two words to increase their score on a retake. Notice how many times ‘achievement’ and ‘because’ were misspelled in the example below. Arguments about spelling not being important have no merit. Proper spelling shows the reader that the author cares about their work and gave it the appropriate attention.

PROPERLY USING COMMAS:

The dictionary definition of a comma reads as follows: a punctuation mark (,) indicating a pause between parts of a sentence. It is also used to separate items in a list and to mark the place of thousands in a large numeral. Using this common and simple punctuation device is easy if students read their sentences out loud and pay attention to pauses and the parts of sentences they are writing in their paragraphs. Since our paragraph sentences often contain transitions and two or three pieces of information, using commas will be frequent. Be sure to master these to help your score!

PROPER GRAMMAR:

In simple terms, the definition of grammar is the study of the way words are used to make sentences. The easiest way to check for grammar is to simply read your writing out loud. Does it sound like the way someone would speak or does it sound awkward and strange? Most grammar issues can be corrected when written words are spoken. When we do that, it is possible to hear our mistakes, instead of trying to locate them in the writing itself. Proper grammar does take more attention to fix, but it is something that can be greatly improved with a little effort consistently applied over time. Read the examples below out loud and try to hear the difference.

WRITING STYLE:

Style is the hardest thing in writing and is very difficult to develop. You should not even worry about style if you are making any of the previous mistakes touched on in this document. Worry about the foundational writing mechanics like spelling, grammar, and punctuation before you tackle the subject of style. Your writing style is made up of your word choices and the form you put them in to communicate with the reader. A great example of style is the chef Gordon Ramsey. When he describes a plate of food, the listener really wants to eat it! Instead of just saying “meat with gravy”, he would say “a succulent lamb dish, seared to perfection, with a spicy au jus sauce drizzled over a mint reduction.” Two different styles describing the same thing, but with completely different results.

Style comes over time, but the fun thing about writing is that you get to choose your own words and make decisions about how you want the reader to see what you are telling them.