Guide to Essay Comments
(rev. 09/12)
Content
As-R
- Assume that your readers know this.
Com C - Complete the claim. How? Why?
Dev
- development. Your paragraph lacks the development of ideas and details necessary to
support your main idea. You need to be attentive to your idea to be certain you have
followed through with the kind of development and support that idea itself demands.
CD – Concrete details are needed to support claims. Offer facts, evidence
examples, quotations or paraphrase, or plot references as appropriate to the
discussion.
CM – Commentary sentence or sentences are needed on the CD. Following
a CD offer your own analysis, interpretation, insight, explication, personal
reaction, and so forth. Without commentary on the CD you risk mere summary.
Ex
- examples. Your paragraph lacks sufficient examples and details to develop the topic
sentence adequately. Be sure that you have included several specific reasons, explanations,
examples, illustrations, or quotations that will support your topic sentence. If you are
writing about literature, be sure that these examples help your reader understand the text
with deeper insight.
GDev - Effective series of supporting examples/details.
G intro – Good introduction. Let’s see how you develop and support this.
GO
- Good observation.
GSQ
- Good supporting quote.
GTS
- Good topic sentence: clear and direct.
GTxtEv – Good work incorporating textual evidence.
LQS
- Let the quote speak. No need to explain or paraphrase the quote for your reader. Instead,
simply let the quote speak.
QL
- The quote is too long. Find the essential matter and feature it.
SDT
- This means “show, don’t tell.” Better yet, it means “show quoted detail, don’t just tell.”
This will help the development of ideas. Let the authors or characters speak for you.
Using quoted details from the reading shows an intimate understanding of the work.
SNS -
As hard as I try I cannot understand what you are attempting to say. Try to write more,
to explain more, to reword.
Ser Tps – The paragraph offers a series of topic sentences (claims). Where’s the focus?
TAG
- Remember, when writing about literature, to offer the following in the introduction:
title of work, author, genre. Informing the reader, if necessary, of the cultural/historical
period can also be beneficial.
ThS
- Your essay does not have a clear, specific thesis that expresses a judgment in line with the
demands of the assigned prompt: an effective thesis must be debatable, express your point
of view, and add to the reader’s sense of meaning.
TpS
- Your paragraph lacks a clear topic sentence. A topic sentence should convey a judgment in
support of the essay’s thesis. A topic sentence should not merely express a fact.
Organization
a,b,c
- a,b,c format is an approach to structuring interior paragraphs in a literary analysis paper:
a= topic sentence (a judgment supporting the essay’s thesis); b= evidence in the form of
paraphrase, summary, or quote; and c= sentences that provide needed connections and
commentary.
Coh
NPar
- coherence. The ideas in your paragraph do not blend together in a logical sequence which
is unified. Each sentence should flow naturally to the next and the connections between
sentences should be obvious to the reader.
- A new paragraph needs to begin here.
No Par - You should not begin a new paragraph.
Org
- organization. You have not selected the most effective order of presentation of your ideas
in a paragraph or your paper as a whole lacks a logical and effective organization. Do an
outline of what you have written. Is it a logical sequence? Is there a better mode of
presentation?
Trans - transition. Create effective transition sentences between paragraphs. Use transitional words
and phrases or, better, create paragraph hooks that link ideas.
Expression (at the sentence level)
Awk
- awkward. The way you have worded your sentence is unusually unclear, ineffective,
or inappropriate.
E
- exactness. Your wording is general and vague; you need to substitute specifics which
will refer exactly to your meaning.
Cl
- clarity. Effort is required for me to decipher your meaning; your expression of your
idea is not clear. You should work on rewording of the sentence in order to express
yourself with more precision, accuracy, and effectiveness.
EQE
- embed quotation effectively. A quotation which appears in your writing should be
embedded in your own text—that is, you should compose a sentence and place your
quotation effectively in it. Your sentence should provide a meaningful introduction
to the quotation without repeating it and should make clear to the reader the significance
of the quotation as a means of supporting the point you want to make. Quotations should
not occupy a disproportionate amount of space in a piece of writing.
Omit
- The sentence is better without the highlighted section.
PV
- point of view. Select an appropriate voice for writing. Avoid shifts in point of view. The
second person (“you”) point of view is rarely appropriate in formal writing because direct
address is appropriate for conversational dialogue.
Q length – The quote is too long. Locate the essential matter and feature it.
Rep
- repetitious. You are unnecessarily and ineffectively repeating ideas, phrases, and words.
Scb
- Use sentence combining to show the relationship of ideas, to create sentence variety,
and to avoid choppy sentences.
WDY - wordy. There are far too many words in the sentence. Your ideas can be expressed
much more clearly by eliminating words. Change clauses to phrases, phrases to single
words, and reduce the words to the absolute essentials for expressing your ideas.
Expression (at the word level)
D
- diction. The word you have chosen is inappropriate in style or meaning. A better
word choice is possible.
InEfInt - Ineffective intensifier (really, very, definitely and so on). The sentence is better without
this word.
IR
- indefinite reference. The use of “this,” “it,” or “they” to refer to a whole idea or to some
unclear person or thing. This error occurs frequently in student writing and is a real
barrier to clear communication. Avoid using “this” or “it” as the subject of a sentence;
make sure all pronouns have clear antecedents or use a noun instead. Replace the
indefinite pronoun with a concrete, exact noun or a fuller explanation.
TS
- tense sequence. Maintain a logical sequence of verb tense. Use present tense in discussing
what happens in a literary selection. In a passage of writing, keep the tense sequence
logical.
Wdg
- wording. Although I can understand what you say, you have not chosen the most
effective wording of your ideas. Try to rearrange the word order, to eliminate
unnecessary words, and to improve diction.
WO
- word omitted. A word necessary for sentence sense has been left out.
Grammar/Mechanics
Agr
- agreement of subjects and verbs or of pronouns and antecedents. A serious error that
indicates the writer is not in control of sentence sense.
CS/RO - comma splice, run-on sentence. A comma splice is the use of a comma to punctuate a
compound sentence. You can use a period and separate the thought into two sentences.
or you can use a semi-colon. Or you can use a comma with a coordinating conjunction
to separate the two clauses of a compound sentence.
FP
- faulty parallelism. Ideas or grammatical structures are not parallel.
FS
- fused sentence. The joining of two independent clauses: a major sentence fault.
SF
- sentence fragment. An incomplete sentence: a major sentence fault.
Cap
- The essay either fails to capitalize when necessary or capitalizes unnecessarily.
Contr - You have used a contraction in formal writing—inappropriate because contractions are
used to indicate conversational dialogue
GAG! - Remember: titles of short stories and poems are indicated with quotation marks; titles of
long poems and titles of books and plays are indicated with italics or underlining. The
title of your essay when placed at the top of the page does not get any special treatment.
MLA - Be certain that citations follow all the conventions established for MLA form.
MF
Fails to adhere to the conventions of MLA manuscript format. Check header, heading.
Paper should be double-spaced throughout--no extra spacing between paragraphs or
before and after title.
pe
- punctuation error.
sp
- spelling error.