I received these paper-grading guidelines when I was an undergraduate at Princeton University. They were so helpful I held on to them and used them when I myself began teaching English. After all these years, I still have them and still find them illuminating. These guidelines are useful not only to students and teachers but also to professional writers, who even at their advanced level of proficiency can benefit from measuring their work against these high benchmarks.

PAPER-GRADING GUIDELINES

“D” Essays and Below

These are some of the general tendencies that mark inferior writing:

1. A tendency to exploit the obvious, either because of lack of understanding, failure to grapple with the topic, or, in many instances, lack of interest. The substance varies from superficial to barren.
2. A tendency to wander aimlessly because of a lack of overall conception, or, in some instances, to have a semblance of form without the development that makes the part a whole.
3. A tendency to play it safe with words, using ones the writer can spell or ones the writer ordinarily speaks. Such inclinations place obvious limits on the variety and reader-interest of the essay.
4. An inability to make careful distinctions between periods, commas and semicolons, although some “D” writers can write correct sentences if they keep their syntactical structure simple. The incidence of error, however, is usually high.
5. Either a tendency to write highly convoluted sentences, resembling near-random thought-association or stream-of-consciousness prose, or a tendency to play it safe by avoiding the stylistic elements that invite error.

“C” Essays

CONTENT: The writing may be padded and repetitious, and the tendency to keep thought on a high level of generality without sufficient reference to detail or specific supporting illustrations causes the prose to seem thin. There is little indication of the writer’s intellectual involvement with the subject. Summary will predominate over analysis. The surest mark of a “C” essay is the preponderance of self-evident statements—all true, often clearly phrased, but predictable and often trivial.

FORM: Most “C” writers will reveal that they are aware of organization, but to them form is formulaic. They have real difficulty envisioning form as setting a direction for thought, or as a way to set expectations for the reader.

DICTION: “C” writing depends on the cliché. Lapses into jargon, and/or rapid shifts between the highly formal and the markedly colloquial, are common. The diction of the “C” essay is best explained as having a lack of range. The writing is undistinguished because the writer has limited verbal resources with which to work.

MECHANICS AND STYLE: “C” writing may be perfectly correct, but often lacks a sense of ease with language—at best, perfunctory and uninspiring.

“C” QUALITY WRITING USUALLY DEMONSTRATES:

1. A tendency to depend on the self-evident.
2. A tendency either to make organization obvious or to write without a plan.
3. A limitation in the range of words, and thus a distinct dependence on the clichés and colloquialisms most available.
4. An ability to use mechanics correctly or incorrectly in proportion to the plainness or complexity of the style.
5. A generalized unawareness of the choices that affect style and thus an inability to generate or control the effects a more ambitious writer may seek.

“B” Essays

CONTENT: The material of the “B” essay shows signs of independent thought and gives evidence of the writer’s active engagement with the topic. Something illuminating is said, in the sense that an insight is presented in such a way that the reader sees anew.

FORM: “B” writers show a clear sense of order. They are conscious of planning and crafting their material to relate it to the central point or thesis being presented. Their formal control should also show evidence of transitions and thematic and verbal echoes that hold the thoughts together.

DICTION: “B” writers, like “A” writers, have developed a vocabulary that allows them choices, and a sense of linguistic variety and freedom. They are able to select the “right” word or turn of phrase from a wide range of possibilities.

MECHANICS: “B” writers turn in clean, correct essays. Few errors in the prose interfere with the writer’s thoughts. Control of grammar is sure.

STYLE: “B” writers are aware of rhetorical strategies and can often call on devices such as parallelism, repetition, contrast and the rhetorical question with effect. Mature use of subordination permits concise, varied prose. The “B” essay has both distinguishable strengths and flaws, but the flaws are not so numerous or serious as to throw doubt upon the writer’s proficiency. The writer is in control, investing the essay with purpose, direction and strategy.

“B” QUALITY WRITING USUALLY DEMONSTRATES:

1. An ability to absorb ideas and experience and interpret them in a given context.
2. The capacity to develop an idea with a clear sense of order.
3. An ability to use words precisely.
4. An ability to use mechanics as an integral part of the meaning and effect of prose.
5. The capacity to make stylistic choices, and to consider alternate ways of expression.

“A” Essays

The clearest difference between the “B” writer and the “A” writer is that the “A” writer often brings intellectual and imaginative resources to the task of writing in order to transform both material and language in some unusual way.

“A” writing is usually distinguished by:

1. CONTENT: The ability to avoid the pedestrian, the stilted and the obvious, and to present insights both personal and illuminating.
2. FORM: The ability to develop complicated ideas flexibly and fluently, yet with control and purpose.
3. DICTION: A special concern for the right word; individuality and aptness of diction; absence of cliché and jargon; concern with subtleties of expression as well as with precise communication.
4. MECHANICS: An ability to use punctuation rhetorically, for effect as well as clarity.
5. STYLE: The desire and willingness to be inventive with structure and phrasing in order to craft an identifiable style; fluency; the ability to create effects that not only emphasize meaning but evoke reaction, and might even change opinion.

Perhaps the most marked characteristic of the “A” writer is the inability to suppress the personal voice—the sense of a lively intelligence behind the page—whether such emerges through viewpoint, metaphor, vocabulary or any other quality that announces the writer’s individuality. “A” writers have something worthwhile to say, and say it. They read perceptively, support their insights with judiciously selected evidence, and often respond by linking ideas with other ideas, books with other books. What they see is unexpected, what they write is fresh.

Literary critics and layman alternatives such as SparkNotes and CliffsNotes will—with varying degrees of accuracy and depth—summarize and analyze scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. Even when these sources get it completely right—and they don’t always—they don’t necessarily leave you with permanent skills so that you can decipher Shakespeare’s language on your own. Accounting for inversion (words and phrases in places you don’t expect them) is one of several strategies that can help you understand what the great Bard intends to convey.

In Macbeth, when King Duncan sees one of his wounded soldiers, he declares:

                                    He can report,
As seemeth by his plight, of the revolt
The newest state.

With phrases moved into positions we’re more accustomed to, the passage might read like this:

                        As seemeth by his plight,
He can report the newest state of the
Revolt. 

Or:

                                    He can report,
As seemeth by his plight, the newest state
Of the revolt. 

So why does Shakespeare place phrases in such odd positions? Partly for emphasis. Partly to maintain each line’s iambic-pentameter structure. If these lines were from one of his sonnets or from a rhymed section of Macbeth for that matter, rhyme (i.e., getting words into rhyming position at the ends of lines) would likely have been an additional factor.

Let’s examine a longer passage from the same play:

Brave Macbeth,—well he deserves that name,--
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour’s minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave.

Moving phrases around in line four helps clarify matters:

Brave Macbeth,—well he deserves that name,--
Disdaining fortune, with his brandished steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Carved out his passage like valour’s minion
Till he faced the slave.           

Even with the change in line four, this sentence remains complex given that the subject, Macbeth, is still separated from its verb, carved, by two and a half lines, a reality that certainly challenges comprehension. Be that as it may, the change in line four has at least peeled away one layer of reading-comprehension challenge.

Anticipating Shakespeare’s profuse use of figurative language and translating such passages into something more prosaic can also aid understanding, but that is a subject for the next blog post.

Just because you care about your students and yearn to see them succeed doesn't mean you don't sometimes chuckle at some of the mistakes they make in their writing. Below are some unintentionally amusing passages from student essays. Each passage is guilty of a forced simile. As any good English tutor (or editor) knows, it's better to use no figurative language than to use it badly.

1. "Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center."
   
   
2. "He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree."
   
   
3. "The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease."
   
   
4. "John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met."
   
   
5. "The thunder was ominous-sounding, much like the sound of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play."

Whether you’re a writer or editor, student or teacher, you may sometimes wonder how to explain “voice” or how to use it effectively in your writing. There are two major definitions of the term:

1. "Voice" is the author's style, the quality that makes her writing unique (or at least different) and conveys her attitude and personality.
2. "Voice" is the characteristic speech or thought patterns of a first-person narrator. These patterns reveal attitude and personality. Voice and character go hand in hand.
   

Aside from defining “voice,” the below slideshow does three things. It explains that voice is created by the writer’s diction, syntax (including sentence length) and tone; examines the often false dichotomy between voices that are written/formal and those that are spoken/informal; and provides several examples of first-person prose, each exhibiting a different voice. Examples include excerpts from the following texts: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, “On Being a Cripple” by Nancy Mairs, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes, Edisto by Padgett Powell, Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and “Issues I Dealt With in Therapy” by Matthew Klam.

In its examination of “voice,” the slideshow focuses mainly on the second definition above, but its findings are also relevant to an understanding of “voice” as defined in the first definition.

View the slideshow here: