Grammatically Horrendous

During this past semester as a GTA, I have had the distinct pleasure of getting to grade literally hundreds of student papers. After a semester of reading such papers, I have compiled a list of general advice that I feel needs to be imparted on future paper writers, because frankly, some of the essays I had to grade made my soul bleed.

10 TIPS FOR WRITING PAPERS:

1. This may come as a shock, but all sentences must contain both subjects and verbs. Sentences are not contingent on the number of words. For example:

I am. <----This is a sentence. "I" is the subject and "am" is the verb.

Because he is a philatelist, which is a person who collects stamps as a hobby. <----This is not a sentence. Yes, it has many words, but it contains neither a subject nor a verb.

For further clarification:

You are a dipshit. <---- Sentence
Because I want you to fall in a hole and die. <----Not a sentence.

2. A homophone is a word that sounds like another word, but is spelled differently and has a different meaning.

Common examples:

Their, they're, there
To, two, too
Hear, here
Bare, bear
Ho, hoe
Hoar, whore

Please learn the difference between all these words, and double check that you are using them correctly before you turn your paper in. Otherwise, I will hunt you down and kill you.

3. Nobody likes exclamation points in papers! You are a moron!

4. punctuation and capitalization are important

5. Sew iz spelleeng and proper ward usage.

6. Just as sentences can be too short, they can also be too long. Sometimes people start to write a sentence and then don't know when to stop, so they just continue to write as they try to get out every single possible thought they can muster even though they are just rambling and have long since left the reader sitting in a massive pile of utter bewilderment, even though the sentence makes complete sense to them because they accidentally dropped acid that morning instead of taking their Flintstones vitamins which usually help them get through the day without making stupid mistakes such as writing sentences that are far too complicated and can be easily broken down into an entire paragraph, which would make the paper flow much more smoothly, but unfortunately you are a certifiable moron whose parents should seriously consider a retroactive abortion. Stop it.

7. By no means utilize terminology that you do not comprehend merely to appear to possess auxiliary acumen. You simply sound bombastic and obtuse. Idiot.

8. William Shatner once said, "The worst thing anyone can do in life is cut corners."

Okay, no he didn't. I made that up.

Don't invent sources. It's ethically irresponsible and you are probably far too stupid to get away with it anyway.

9. Don't never use no double negatives, you fucking redneck retard.

10. I don't care who you are or where you are from. You have never aten. You have never might could or usedta could do anything. Don't ever ask anybody where they are at, and if you ever manage to turn up missing, I will print off these suggestions, dip them in cow manure, light them on fire and shove them up my grammar-happy ass.

Please stop offending my senses with your poorly written nonsense. Every time you break one of these rules, not only does a part of my soul die, but in some distant land, a vagabond is unceremoniously drawn and quartered. Master the English language, or get the hell out of my country.

For more on this subject, please check out a related post in my blog.