The Principle of Poor Writing - Literature review Example

The Principle of Poor Writing: Connection Essay Introduction From the reading “the principles of poor writing” by Paul Merrill, it is clear that the author exposes many of the writing errors committed by beginners as well as experts in writing. Many of the mistakes pointed out are those that many overlook, and keep repeating – over and over – in throughout school of careers (Jones and Farness 24). In particular, the section under the title, “do not revise’ resonated to my writing and my writing experience, particularly the experiences that I had during my first week after joining college; the experience pressured me to work extra-hard, so that I could reduce the writing mistakes pointed out by my tutor (King 25). That section of the article stood out to me, because; similar to my case, many of my friends were not used to revising their work before returning papers to tutors and teaching assistants. Like Merrill reports, the papers that I could submit to my lecturers were usually full of punctuation and content mistakes. The mistake of not revising my work was made worse by my lack of paying attention to the reader, during the writing of my papers. This paper will discuss one of my experiences after joining college, which exposed my weakest points in writing, by connecting it to the mistakes pointed out by Merrill; the mistakes explored include that of not revising completed work and that of ignoring the reader, during the writing of the paper (Merrill 72). Discussion The discovery of my writing mistakes came soon after the start of my second class in college. During the particular class, the tutor had returned the previous papers that we had submitted. One of the papers was a model college application essay and the other was an explicative essay about our previous writing experiences. Upon receiving the marked papers, I found myself puzzled by the many question marks marked all over the first page of the paper. Without opening the paper, I quickly inspected the paper and noticed that the first question mark corresponded to a typing error of my name, and the second was marked next to the title of the college application essay. After all the students received their copies of the two papers, the tutor informed us that he had made another copy of the marked papers, for the purpose of pointing out our mistakes as poor writers. He also noted that the marks given on the first pages of the assignments had not been made using the contemporary rating of marking, which denotes the marks earned. Instead, he had assigned the different papers marks, depending on the respective levels of our poor performance from the wring tasks. For example, in my case, I had noted that my score was 34 out of 40 marks in the college application essay, and the tutor informed me that a mark of more than 20showed that a student was among the worst writers of the class. Upon notifying us of our mistakes, the tutor instructed all the students that had scored a mark of more than 20 to stand up, and I found it interesting to see that three-quarters of the class was among the poor writers; only a quarter had hit the threshold mark of 19 out of 40 marks in the scale of poor writing. At that point, while standing among the poor writers of the class, I noted that “the average student finds it surprisingly easy to acquire the usual tricks of poor writing” (Merill 72). It also surprised me that, all through high school and other learning institutions, where writing was at the core of study, none of the tutors had awakened me on the proportions of the students that were excellent at writing poorly. While standing among the poor writers of the class, the tutor called my name, and noted that I had done a very good job of writing a paper, which no reader would read without encountering a lot of difficulty. He started by pointing out my name, which I had mistyped, and informed me that, in the case that I was always writing a paper for myself, I could keep up with my poor writing skills (King 47). At that point, in emphasizing the point, he made the point that ignoring the audience locks out every other person, including the reader or the tutor from reading the work. In emphasizing the importance of the audience in writing, he retorted to me that: “the world is divided into two great camps: yourself and others. A little obscurity or indirection in writing will keep the others at a safe distance” (Merill 72). After making that statement, I realized that I had excluded him from my work, right from the start, by demonstrating that I could not write my name properly (Jones and Farness 24). In giving further explanation, he noted that the strategy had worked well, because it was easier for him to read the mistakes and not the content of the papers, which implied that in the area of content, I had received an automatic fail. In pointing out the second major mistake, which was remarkably explicit in my papers, the tutor pointed out the typing errors on the first page of my papers, and went ahead to point out others that stood clearly in the second and the third pages. In making his point clear to me, as well as the class, he wrote my name on the blackboard, and then wrote the mistyped name next to it (King 48). After that, he called on two different students, and asked them to point the person called by the mistyped name (Merrill 74). Obviously, the two students noted that there was no one in the class by that name, and then he pointed out that the second worst mistake made by many writers was that of failing to revise finished work. Right from that point, I noticed that, my major problem was that pointed out by Merill, which is that of writing “hurriedly, preferably when tired” (Merrill 74). The comments of the teacher showed that my main areas of weakness lied in the areas of failing to revise finished work and also that of ignoring the reader. Conclusion From the article, “the principles of poor writing” the author exposes different mistakes, which are made by many writers – starters and experts. The mistakes discussed through the article, together with an experience that I had after joining college pointed out that the mistakes pointed out by the author were very common; I was making the same mistakes. The mistakes that were evident from my work included that of ignoring the reader and that of failing to revise finished work. Through the experience that I had with the tutor after joining college, it became clear that I needed to nurture my writing skills, because it connects a writer to the world. Works Cited Jones, Peder, and Farness, Jay. College Writing Skills. Fifth Edition. San Diego, CA: Collegiate Press. King, Diana. Writing Skills. Cambridge, MA: Educators Publishing Service, 2004. Merrill, Paul. “The principles of Poor Writing”. The Scientific monthly, 64.1. (1947):72-74. Read More