Take note, everybody! This is good advice...
1. Plan Ahead
Unless you routinely get A's and B's on the first draft of your paper, you NEED to write out a plan to organize your ideas before you start typing paragraphs. None of you are used to spending a lot of time planning and revising your papers. You need to find a plan that works for you and practice it every time you write a paper. You can outline, use a graphic organizer, rearrange notecards, come up with headings and subheadings, or any other method that feels right. If you don't plan out your ideas, don't expect to get a good grade.
2. Show, Don't Tell
Commentary is all about explaining why and how your ideas are right, not just stating your ideas like they're indisputable facts. Stating an idea without backing it up and explaining it makes you seem arrogant and less credible. You need to have the confidence to prove your ideas are not just "some kid's opinion" while respecting the fact that your reader can only read your words, not your mind.
3. Never Use First- or Second-Person Pronouns
I, me, my, mine, we, us, our, ours, you, your, yours. Short answer: never use these in a literary analysis. They distract your reader from your ideas, or worse: they draw attention away from the text.
4. Don't Do Not Use Contractions.
They're werid to say and they'll look funny on the page or screen. Contractions (using an apostrophe to replace letters and combine two words) always lower the formality of a written paper. While it's fine for a blog post like this, contractions are not allowed in formal papers. Besides, they'll make you sound like a hillbilly (not that there's anything wrong with that).5. Plagiarism - The Kiss of Death
If you get an idea from a differnt source, EVEN IF you don't use a direct quote, you MUST give them credit. Anything else is stealing. If you don't know how to cite your sources, for now just get the web URL or bring the book in to class and I can help you cite it. Citing reliable and relevant sources automatically gets you bonus points for Evidence.Stealing someone else's ideas automatically gets you an F on the paper, with no chance to rewrite.
6. Be Aware of Pronouns
Do not use these things, because they might make it make less sense to them. I'm talking about misuse and overuse of pronouns. Be particularly careful of personal pronouns (she, her, he, him, it, they, them). These words can make it confusing for your reader to figure out what you're talking about.
7. Never Refer to Your Own Writing
Many young writers love to say "My first topic is about..." or "This concludes my essay." Some writers learn these tricks around third or fourth grade, when they have to "pad" their papers and write a certain length. In more sophisticated papers, these tricks distract the reader. Take a look at these examples:
"This paper will explain how the clock symbolizes the inevitability of death."
"The clock symbolizes the inevitability of death."
At first glance, they look similar. However, look at what each is about. The subject of the second sentence is "the clock." The subject of the first sentence is "this paper." I don't want you to write ABOUT your own writing; I want you to write about the text we are analyzing. Make sense?
8. Review, Revise, Rewrite
At some point before you hand it in (or email and ask me to grade it), you need to reread the whole paper. Look for ways to make your ideas more clear. This might mean rearranging paragraphs or even rewriting a good chunk of your paper. Next to planning, revising is what young writer spend the least amount of time doing. Revising doesn't just mean fixing capitals and commas. It means making your ideas as clear as possible and refining your voice.
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