Decoding Cryptic Grading Comments

First of all, I should probably apologize for my frequent use of Prince-style abbreviations in my comments:  people sometimes complain about it, but writing longhand feels so slow compared to typing; I try to speed things up where I can.  (In the immortal words of a dude in the subway, upon noticing  that everyone in the car was looking at him after he hocked a lugie onto the floor: ‘I cain’t always keep it pretty for y’all muthafuckas!’)

Aside from the speed issue, I find it necessary to repeat certain comments so often that I’ve developed some shorthand for them. While there are often links below to help you correct specific errors, you might also check out the Purdue Online Writing Lab for help with general writing issues, as well as with specific kinds of error.

• ANNO. = Please attach a proper reference list; the annotated bibliography was a different assignment. Follow instructions!
• ARB. = Your design choices seem arbitrary/whimsical. Explain what the options are, and why you made the choice you did.
• ARG? = What’s your argument for this assertion? An argument is kind of like a story, only backed by empirical evidence and logical reasoning—if you don’t have at least one or the other, all you’ve got is a Just So Story (JSS).
• ASA = Formatting (esp. for in-text citations) doesn’t correspond to American Sociological Association guidelines.
• AWK. = awkward phrasing.  This can also refer to an awkwardly integrated quote; novice writers often quote sources in a jarring fashion, without any kind of introductory phrase or contextualization (yet another issue arises when one quotes a passage that could easily have been paraphrased, or at least quoted more selectively–see chapter 13 [specifically, 13.3-4] of The Craft of Research). In other cases, inexperienced writers, in their (understandable) eagerness to use newly learned vocabulary, misuse their shiny new acquisitions or employ combinations that don’t quite cohere—sometimes with humorous results.
• Bb = Please see Blackboard, where I have posted comments next to your grade.
• Book Report (BR)/Data Dump (DD) = Reporting everything you’ve learned about a particular topic–a.k.a. a book report, a.k.a. a ‘data dump’–is not the same thing as pursuing a specific line of inquiry, articulating an answer (your thesis), and supporting this answer with reasoning and evidence.  Do the latter, not the former. If you’re unclear on the difference between the two, review The Craft of Research, Chs. 3-4.
• BTQ = This statement begs the question (petitio principii); ARG.? To beg the question is to assume what you should be trying to prove (‘Well, abortion is wrong because life starts at conception‘). So a question-begging argument is one that does exactly what its name suggests—namely, it simply states a conclusion without introducing any premises or evidence to support such a conclusion, so that the conclusion begs to be turned into a question. Question-begging arguments are often presented in the course of building up to a larger conclusion. I might claim, say in the course of arguing for the virtues of free trade, that of course we know that capitalism is a necessary condition for democracy. But if that’s all I have said, then my claim of course begs the question—Is capitalism a necessary condition for democracy? Such an unsupported assertion shouldn’t go unchallenged, especially when there’s a wealth of empirical and historical evidence to be sifted through.
• CIT.? = Where’s the appropriate citation here? This may indicate that, although you have provided a citation, you haven’t provided a page number for reference to the quote in question.
• Colloq. = Your language here is too colloquial or informal; what is appropriate on the street or in casual conversation isn’t necessarily appropriate in an academic paper (it can also inhibit your thinking).
• DD = See BR.
• EDIT = More than one draft! I can’t emphasize enough the importance of drafting, revising, and re-drafting. Moreover, you need to get a pair of friendly eyes to look over your efforts; an impartial (but sympathetic), third-party reader can spot problems that you might miss because you’re too close to the work. If you simply turn in the first draft you come up with, you shouldn’t be surprised at the grade you receive–however disappointing.
• EVI.? = What is the evidence for this claim?  As Christopher Hitchens once put it, ‘What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence’ (apparently, this was simply a gloss on an old Latin proverb). See, e.g., Chapter 9 (‘Assembling Reasons and Evidence’) of The Craft of Research. (When this comment is attached to a quote, the issue is that you cite claims made by your sources … but that by itself doesn’t tell us why we should believe them. As Booth, Colomb, & Williams remind us (2008:93), ‘Many claims show nothing more than that another researcher agrees with you–useful support, but not evidence. To use such claims as evidence, you have to report not only the conclusion of the source but its reasoning and supporting evidence as well’.) Consider the claim that the high incarceration rates in America relative to the rest of the world are warranted because ‘the US has a lot more crime than other countries’: notice that the author offers no evidence to support this claim! (And just how much higher would our crime rate have to be in order for a country with 5% of the world’s population to incarcerate nearly 25% of the world’s prison population without that being disproportionate?)
• HW = Do your homework!  Anyone exercising due diligence should be able to find this out in the course of doing basic background research (‘We are blessed to live in an age in which no subject has gone unresearched by scholars, scientists, and journalists. The fruits of their research are available within seconds to anyone with a laptop or smartphone, and whin minutes to anyone who can get to a library. Why not take advantage of these blessings and try to restrict the things you know … to things that are true?’ — Pinker 2014:302). Alternatively (but perhaps also additionally), this comment indicates that you’ve used a source (e.g., a dictionary, an encyclopedia, or some other tertiary source online) that is woefully inadequate for college-level research. (As one author of a book about dictionaries explains, a dictionary should be considered a very partial report on the use of the language.) Yet another reason for this comment is to indicate that there is little or no reference to the relevant research literature.
• JSS = Just So Story. A term coined by the writer Rudyard Kipling, now commonly understood as shorthand for a deceptively simple myth.
• JW = ‘Jesus wept’. Famously, the shortest sentence in the King James version of the Bible (John 11:35). Often used as an expression of utter dismay, and that is the sense in which it’s used here.
• Meh = An expression of studied indifference, as in ‘This is so-so’.  Not terrible, but not all that great either.
• Non seq. = Non sequitur, Latin for ‘it doesn’t follow’.  IOW, ‘What you’ve just said doesn’t follow from the sentence that precedes it’; also, ‘This inference doesn’t follow from your premise’. This can happen for any number of reasons; perhaps you’ve committed an obvious fallacy in your thinking. (There’s a useful discussion of this subject in Pinker 2014, Ch. 5.)
• NS = This is not a sentence. For a quick breakdown of what can and cannot count as a sentence, go here.
• Op-Ed = You’re engaging in a gratuitous, possibly parochial airing of your views that is tendentious at best.  Stay focused and stick to the task at hand–you’re not writing a column for the college newspaper!  There’s a time and a place for moralizing, and this is not it.
• Op-Ed Improv = Not only do you sound like a college newspaper columnist, but you sound a bit like one who’s desperately trying to make a deadline.  Don’t pontificate, bloviate, or otherwise tread water just to fill up space.
• OPP.? = There ought to be much more attention here to contrary arguments, opposing views, and conflicting evidence–are there any important studies that challenge your own view? Why do you nevertheless believe they’re wrong?  Where’s the ‘opposition research’?
• PARA. = Paraphrase this quote!  You’re quoting a (typically lengthy) passage in order to convey ideas or facts that could just as easily be summarized in your own words.  To, um, quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘I hate quotations. Tell me what you know’ (Journals, 1849). When you quote in a mechanical way, you come off as an unpolished writer, you undermine your reader’s confidence in you as someone who knows what she’s talking about, and you arouse the suspicion that you’re engaging in Op-Ed Improv (see above).  See also The Craft of Research, pp. 96-7.
• PLAG. = This passage has been plagiarized; you have appropriated someone else’s words or ideas without giving them due credit. This is one of the most serious crimes you can commit in academic work; please review the statement on plagiarism in the ASA Quick Style Guide, as well as this overview in the Purdue Online Writing Lab.
• Pro Forma = The requirement has been met, but in a perfunctory manner; you seem to be merely going through the motions, or cutting corners, rather than making a genuine and committed effort to do the work that is asked for here.
• PROMISSORY NOTE/Prom. Note/PROM. = A research proposal describes a problem, develops a research question, and outlines in detail how that question will be answered (research design, IOW).  A research proposal is not a promissory note (e.g., ‘Here is my topic and I will read, Google, and think more about this topic’).  Do your homework (that is, get up to speed on your topic by doing background research and a proper literature review) and then figure out what methods are appropriate to your chosen line of inquiry!
• ROS = Run-on sentence:  you’ve got some commas missing.  Or perhaps you’ve used a comma where a semi-colon is warranted.  Or perhaps, more generally, you’ve just got a beast of a sentence that would enjoy life a lot more if it were broken into a number of smaller, simpler creatures. This is no small matter! As Pinker (2014) observes, ‘a few common errors are so uncontroversial — the run-on sentence, the comma splice, the grocer’s apostrophe, the comma between the subject and predicate, the possessive it’s — that they have become tantamount to the confession “I am illiterate,” and no writer should be caught making them’ (p. 285; see pp. 285-97 for specific, indispensable advice about the uses of the comma).
• RPT = Repetitive.
• R&R = Review and revise. Your use of this concept bears little if any resemblance to its meaning as discussed in our textbooks, so please take a second look at the relevant material.
• SE = Syntax error.
• SG = This is a sweeping generalization. Typically, a further problem is that such SGs that are unconnected to any empirical research or analysis. This is often due to a reliance on tertiary sources. College-level research goes deeper! Please review ch. 5 of The Craft of Research.
• SOPH = Sophomoric. A sophomore is, roughly translated, a ‘wise fool’; a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and experienced writers learn to recognize the kinds of mistakes (especially in tone, style, and voice) committed by inexperienced writers eager to show off what they know or think they know.
• TEN. = ‘Tendentious’. Inexperienced writers sometimes provide too little detail–but often they provide far too much. Tendentious writing is writing that goes off on too many tangents or provides more detail than is necessary–forgetting the forest for the trees, as it were.
• TENSES = Different communities tend to generate their own languages and ways of talking; if you want to be a part of the conversation, you’ve got to learn to speak the language. In the community of scholars and researchers, the convention is to summarize other people’s arguments in the present tense (see, e.g., Strunk & White, The Elements of Style, Sect. II, Part 21; also Section 13.3 [‘Quote, Paraphrase, and Summarize Appropriately’] of The Craft of Research). Also, be careful not to shift tenses within the same passage.
• THEORY/THRY = You reference a number of different theories in your discussion of the phenomenon–but you don’t acknowledge the important differences among them. Don’t use theory as a grab-bag of ideas to be applied in an improvisatory, ad hoc fashion: consider how different theories suggest different conclusions to be reached about the causal connection in question, and explain which conclusions are best supported by the data. Kieran Healy is especially helpful on this point.
• THESIS? = What’s the ultimate significance of your thesis? You lack a focused research question, as well as a discussion of your sources that would link it to theoretical, empirical, methodological, or other debates in the relevant literature.
• UGC = This is a cliché of undergraduate writing (e.g., ‘Since the dawn of history, man has…’ See Professors’ Pet Peeve #8 here).
• Words, parts of words, or phrases that are circled/underlined = grammatically incorrect, misused, or misspelled
• WC = Rethink your word choice here. The student who wrote, ‘Many people see gentrification as […] helping society grow into a better community…’ (italics mine), for example, was not using language with much care or precision. On other occasions, ‘WC’ indicates that you’ve misused the word in question — as a wise man once said, ‘You keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means’.
• ? = This is a confusing line or passage

Grammatical, spelling, and syntactical errors are usually just circled, underlined, or marked with an ‘X’. Such marks don’t necessarily indicate specific points being deducted; but in a holistic sense, such marks do take their toll. Hopefully, once you’ve taken the time to figure out what’s wrong, you won’t make the same mistake again.

Further Reading/Notes Toward a Personal Canon

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Ed. 2011. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Steven Pinker chaired the Usage Panel, and he makes copious reference to what he learned there during his tenure in Pinker (2014).

Huddleston, Rodney, and Pullum, Geoffrey. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Huddleston, Rodney, and Pullum, Geoffrey. 2005. A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Patten, Mildred L. 2014. Proposing Empirical Research: A Guide to the Fundamentals, 5^th Ed. Pyrczak Publishing.

REFERENCES

Booth, Wayne, Gregory Colomb, & Joseph M. Williams. 2008. The Craft of Research, 3^rd Ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Pinker, Steven. 2014. The Sense of Style: A Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century.

Tags: abbreviations, code, grading