My hands smell like mustard, a consequence of having eaten lunch in front of my computer while reading and trying to respond to student drafts. Probably my computer keyboard smells like mustard too. But not the drafts. They're nice drafts and I'm enjoying reading them, but I really don't want to take them home this weekend so I'm sitting here in front of my computer and responding to drafts one after another after another until they're done. Ten down, six to go. Think I can do it? The race is on!
I don't mind copying certain types of comments over and over: When you use a complete sentence to introduce a quotation, use a colon. Titles of poems should be in quotation marks, titles of books in italics. Please learn the important distinction between "then" and "than."
Today's papers, though, introduced a repeated error I've never seen before: using "eludes" where one would expect "alludes," as in "The poem eludes to Greek myth." This showed up in one-fifth of the papers I've read so far, and it made me want to compose an etude conveying the illusion of an allusion that would elude comprehension. But I'll never get out of here if I keep waxing poetic over amusing errors in student writing.
I'd like to insert a comment saying "Don't you mean Quaaludes?" But I fear that the allusion would elude my students.
1 comment:
I'm glad to see that you have a sense of humor when it comes to grammatical errors in your students papers! One of my favorites is your post on the comma virus.
I was just wondering, what are some things that you wish your students had learned in their high school English classes before they turned up in your classes at Marietta?
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