English

Content & Structure

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This paper does a great job of appealing to your readers and presenting information, and I have no suggestions for improvement in terms of the basic content.

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A more effective or developed “hook” could help engage the reader from the beginning of this research paper.

This is an interesting topic, but it’s also rather broad. A more specific focus would have been helpful.

A clearer persuasive thesis would have been helpful.

The purpose of your paper seems more informative than persuasive at times.

This paper is a bit too short and would benefit from further development. Please keep in mind that the research paper should be at least 1000-1500 words minimum.

Further work on organization and/or previewing your points at the beginning of this essay would have been helpful.

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More work on transitions would also be helpful throughout this paper. Remember that transitions can be helpful at the beginning or ending of paragraphs, places where the paragraph break also signals that we’re moving onto a new idea. However, transitions can also be helpful within paragraphs, when moving from subpoint to subpoint.

Source Citations

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More work on incorporating sources would be helpful. Please remember that anytime you take information or ideas from a source---even when you put it into your own words--you should still use the correct intext parenthetical citations to indicate where you got the facts themselves. Right now, you seem to be missing some of the intext parenthetical citations within the paper, and these are a required portion of any academic research paper.

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It would also be helpful to introduce all of your sources on first reference within the text of the paper, so that the reader understands the credibility of the material. For instance, if you just quote something, I have no idea who is being quoted and what his or her credentials are. Therefore, as a reader, I am distracted by this and I’m unsure about whether this information is credible. To fix this, just introduce your source informally with a clear title, something like this: According to Dr. Smith, a cardiologist at John Hopkins, “whatever he said here.” You do this with some but not all of your sources.

This paper seems light on research overall, at least in some places.

Right now, some of this material seems to be taken from sources word-for-word, without using quotation marks. This is technically plagiarism. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this was unintentional, but any time you take something direct from a source (word-for-word) it needs to be in quotation marks. Otherwise, you should put it into your own words (and still use the correct intext parenthetical citations to indicate where you got the facts themselves).

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Either intext parenthetical citations or the final Works Cited (or both) are not in the proper MLA format.

Editing Issues to Watch Out for in the Future

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Misspelled or misused words and/or names

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Run-on sentences

Incomplete sentences

Shifting verb tense

Shifting point of view

Awkward/unclear phrasing

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Missing words

Capitalization errors

Missing/misused commas

Missing/misused apostrophes

Misused colons or semicolons

Problems with agreement

Misplaced punctuation in relation to quotation marks

Errors in end punctuation

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Spacing errors

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Misused hyphens

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Missing or misused articles