Where have all the paragraphs gone?
My deadline to submit final grades for three courses looms. My stack of assignments needing evaluation slowly sinks to a manageable level.
In the middle of providing feedback on over 40 detailed case studies I realize I’ve written: “when you shift subjects, insert a paragraph,” on about 100 per cent of them.
It begs the question: how come university graduates (some of them English majors) don’t know when to use a paragraph? For that matter: why do college professors need to teach university graduates that commas actually serve a useful purpose in a sentence? Or that semi-colons can break up two thoughts very efficiently? Or, that drafting short, declarative sentences improves a writer’s overall clarity?
We certainly try to remedy our students’ writing flaws. We offer intensive courses in copy editing and PR writing. On virtually every assignment, we provide feedback on both their ideas and how they express them. Often, students submit brilliantly creative but technically flawed assignments riddled with run-on sentences, comma faults and words used incorrectly—nouns as verbs, adverbs as adjectives, etc.
In some cases, students unfamiliar with the precise meaning of a word use it anyway. Just in case it’s the correct one.
Spiritually, students feel quite broken when they receive their first assignments after their instructors (also trained editors) red pens their grammar. Many feel devastated to receive a “C” grade that’s mostly the result of sloppy editing and weak application of the basics of grammar and punctuation.
For some, it’s a wake-up call to bone up on CP Style or pay more attention to proofreading. Or, to begin to actually consult an dictionary. Others have such ingrained habits they’re never able to conquer subject/verb agreement, possessives, or contractions.
As an educator, I feel discouraged knowing that however much feedback and extra help I provide, many PR students graduate with less-than-stellar writing skills. Their habits run too deep. Or, acquiring the basics this late in their educational journey is just too hard. Or, they’ve managed to earn a university degree without mastering the basics of grammar and may ask: what’s the point now?
The point for me is that many employers ask: “why can’t graduates today write?” And, that’s why I continue to provide the feedback I do.
