Argument Essay

English 1302 – Tips and Tricks Review Sheet for Essay #4

As you work to polish up Essay #4 for submission, use the following list to help you think about your paper and review it some final times to ensure its success.

The main thing to pay attention to is whether or not you did the assignment. If you have a paper that is a lovely analysis of the story, it will earn you a D because that is not the task the assignment asks for. You need to argue whether or not the story should be included in future courses and the rest of the paper also needs to still prove that point.

Things to avoid:

· Using the title of the story as the title of your essay. It is only appropriate if you add some more of your own content. However, your paper cannot be titled just “The Yellow Wallpaper,” as that is basically plagiarism.

· Any use of first person, which includes “I,” “we,” “our,” “me,” “my,” etc. They can only appear in quoted material, not in your own writing.

· Any use of second person “you”. Use the computer’s CTRL F feature to find these “you”s. They can only appear in quoted material, not in your own writing.

· Any use of contractions. They can only appear in quoted material, not in your own writing. If you turn your grammar checker on the highest setting “grammar and style,” it will point these things out to you.

· Using quotes back to back. Your own words need to be in between quotes, even if it’s just something small like “The story goes on to say…” before the next quote.

· Letting quotes stand alone as complete sentences. Introduce your sources and quotes with something like “Faulkner writes…” You can also add your own words to help explain how the quote works, how it ties into the thesis, etc.

Things to be sure that you have done:

· Place the names of the short stories in quotation marks.

· Ensure that your entire paper is formatted in MLA style, including quotes and citations. The Little Seagull Handbook gives an example of how a paper should look in the MLA section. If you didn’t purchase that, you can go to the OWL at Purdue website. Be sure that you also get rid of the extra spaces between paragraphs by setting the “Before” and “After” spacing to 0 in the paragraph function.

· Ensure that you have properly credited and cited everything you take from the story that is word for word. Please be careful, as this could result in a significant lowering of the paper grade if sources are not cited correctly. If you use a quote with no citation, that is technically plagiarism and can result in a major penalty. Each quote needs its own citation.

· Stay in present tense when discussing the story. It still exists out there in some sort of weird time and space continuum, so that is the tradition in MLA format. The correct way to talk about a story is to say “Faulkner writes about…”, NOT “Faulkner wrote about…”

· Use clear nouns, rather than depending on vague words. Ex: “They say that the amount of violence in the story…” Who is “they”? Use specific language so a reader does not need to guess at what you mean.

· Tie each paragraph back to the thesis. Sometimes it only takes a sentence at the end of the paragraph to make sure it relates to the argument.

· Identify characters with the correct name and correct spelling.

· Introduce the topic well. Do not just jump into your argument in the paper’s first sentence. Realize that your reader does not know the nature of your assignment, so you have to ease him/her into the topic.

· Included a counterargument. If you don’t know what this means, look it up. There are some great examples on the Internet. Refer back to the assignment sheet for where the counterargument usually falls in the paper.