Correction Marks for Freshman Composition
Caveat Scriptor: The following tips and guidelines for freshman composition
classes are provided by P. Aaron Potter, an instructor of English at the
University of California, Riverside, for the benefit of his composition students.
Other composition students or instructors are welcome to make use of
this material with the understanding that while much of it reflects generally
accepted writing practice, it is also indicative of the personal tastes of
the author and should in no way be considered an authoritative document.
This is advice I give to my students on how to succeed at writing
in my class -- your mileage may vary. All material is solely
a product of P. Aaron Potter and does not reflect the official policy or
opinions of the Department of English, the University of California, the
government of the United States, or the United Federation of Planets.
Short Marking Guide: The following are some of the most common marks
made on student papers, and their meanings. The mark is given first, then
its literal interpretation, and a brief explanation. All marks are in standard
format for the University of California campuses :
-
AGR -- "agreement error" -- Elements of the sentence do not agree
with one another. This disagreement can take several forms including:
subject/verb disagreement ("I walks to the
graveyard") ; pronoun/antecedant disagreement ("He picked up
the stone and dropped
them on the rat"). One very common form
of the latter is the misapplication of "their" as the possessive form of
"one" or "a person" ("one should be careful
with their grammar.")
-
FRAG -- "sentence fragment" -- The sentence is incomplete, usually
because it is missing one of the essential elements of a sentence (a verb,
for example ("I the graveyard")) or implies an element which is not present:
("I walked to the graveyard and picked up").
-
GR -- "grammar error" -- This symbol is may denote a variety of
errors in grammatical form or choice of form including errors in verb form
("He use to do that.") or word form (an adjective used for an adverb, for
example: "She kicked the vampire very
efficient.").
-
INC or COH -- "incoherant" -- A mark indicating the
grader was unable to determine the intended meaning of the sentence. This
usually indicates extremely confused sentence structure, a sentence which
is missing elements necessary for meaning to be determined or other serious
errors in construction. More than one occurence of this error mark
strongly implies that you should consult with your composition instructor.
-
MAL --"malapropism" -- The word chosen is absolutely wrong
but looks like the word the student was groping for. This error
often occurs when a student allows her word-processor spell-checker to do
the thinking for her: "The English department was
congenially located next to the library." (the
student clearly intended "conveniently"). The word may also be
close to the meaning intended by the student, but misapplied in context:
"The vampire laughed notoriously." (the student
meant something closer to "nefariously" or "cruelly.")
-
LOGIC -- The student has committed an error or misapplication
of logic. This error is sometimes the result of simple logical error
("All leeches suck blood. Vampires suck blood.
Therefore, all Vampires are leeches.")
or a failure to correctly modify statements or clauses (that is, a
claim is made as universally true when it is true only under particular
circumstances or conditions, or only for the majority of cases). Another
common logical flaw is ANTITHESIS: the juxtaposition of contrary
statements.
-
MOD -- "modifier error" -- This mark indicates a misuse of a modifying
element or clause. Dangling modifiers have no referent within the sentence,
and often arise from initiating a sentence with passive verb forms:
"When starting to discuss the undead,
nothing was planned at all." Misplaced modifiers seem either to refer
to an inappropriate subject, or have an indeterminate referent: "The vampires
approached the quivering boy scouts, drooling
blood." (who is drooling blood? the boy scouts?) "Uncle Fred stabbed
the burglar wearing his pajamas" (who was wearing
the pajamas? Whose pajamas were they?) The golden rule of modifiers
is to keep the modifying clause near the element of the sentence which is
being modified.
-
MXD CONST -- "mixed construction" -- This error results
from a change in syntactic form in mid-sentence: "The terrorists hope that
when the bomb goes off, blowing the Hula-Hoop factory to kingdom
come."
-
PUNCT -- "punctuation error" -- Punctuation is misused in the
sentence. Often occurs when attempting to formulate a list of like elements
after a colon or semicolon ("I lit the candles;
black ; wax ; dusty."), with misuse of quotation marks ("'I can't
believe you staked me!", the vampire said"),
or in appending the wrong terminal punctuation to a sentence, particularly
rhetorical questions ("What is life. Chopped
ham! No, chopped
steak?").
-
REF -- "referent error" -- This may indicate a pronoun lacking
an antecedent, an overly vague pronoun (usually "it") without clear referent,
or sentence in which it is not clear to which subject a clause or clauses
refers: "The ghouls approached the high priest, mumbling profane chants."
"My mother, my sister, and my aunt went shopping last Wednesday.
She bought an axe."
-
SP -- "spelling error" -- A word has been misspelled.
-
// STR -- "parallel structure" -- A particular form of false
construction, involving incorrect use of parallel structure: most commonly
occurs when elements of a list do not follow the same form ("I had entered
the crypt, picked up the axe, as the candles flickered, didn't know what
I would do next." "I like hiking, reading, and to drink tequila.").
May also indicate an incompatible parallelism of ideas: "We fought
for our right to party, the law, and our bitter enemies." All the elements
are objects one might "fight," but "fight" is being used in a different sense
in each case.
-
TENSE -- "tense error" -- An unwarranted switch in tense.
Usually occurs when a student switches tense in mid-sentence, often when
referring to 'universal' or eternal events or conditions: "This land
was made for you and it
is made for me too." Tense errors may
also be indicated when chronological order or logic is violated ("I removed
the gold from the safe. Then I carefully
picked the safe's lock." "Yesterday, I will be
going to school.")
-
WC -- "word choice" -- Similar to "malapropism," above,
a word choice error occurs when the student selects a word which is
close in meaning to that which they desire but is wrong in the context
of the sentence, or which establishes the wrong tone toward the material:
"Rutherford B. Hayes was an idiot when it came to foriegn affairs.
His domestic policy was similarly
despicable." (in this case despicable
does indeed mean something was wrong with Hayes' domestic policy...but
its meaning is closer to "criminal" or "reprehensible" than to "ill-conceived"
or "ineffective," which seems to be the intended meaning.)