PAPER AND TEST MARK-UP KEY

The following is a list of likely marks you will find on your corrected paper or test. These are also listed in THE BRIEF ENGLISH HANDBOOK. Generally, word errors will be circled. Sentence errors will be underlined.

Ap...apostrophe missing or not needed

Awk...awkward sentence, usually because of word choice or word order problems

CS...comma splice: using a comma where a period is needed

cs/runon ...comma splice and/or runon…using a comma or nothing where a period is needed

DNF...did not finish. Failed to finish a minimum of 5 complete paragraphs in a 50 minute test. Automatic fail.

Frag...fragment: incomplete sentence

//...faulty parallelism, usually because of word choice in a list. All items in a list must be the same word form...all nouns, all verbs, etc. For example, the sentence "I like cheese, tomatoes and to drink beer" suffers from faulty parallelism because the first two items in the list (cheese and tomatoes) are nouns and the last item (to drink beer) is a verb phrase. The sentence should read, "I like cheese, tomatoes and beer" or "I like to eat cheese and tomatoes and drink beer."

Nº or #?..number...often a request for page or line number of text in a source citation

¶...paragraph…new paragraph needed or condense two paragraphs to form one

1º...primary...usually refers to primary source text desired

Rep...repetitive: either the point was made in another sentence or the word itself is being repeated: reword or omit the repetition

2º...secondary...usually refers to secondary source text desired

Source?...asking for source citation of claim or information in the essay

SP...spelling...word is misspelled

SP/W...spelling/word choice. The word you chose is a word...it's not the one you needed (where instead of were)

sp/w/homo...spelling/word choice/homonym error...the word you chose sounds like the one you wanted but is not the one you wanted (too or two instead of to)

W, word, or word choice...word choice: the word chosen does not make logical or grammatical sense

There may be others. Ask me if something is unclear.