Common errors that students often make on Project #1 and how to avoid them

When putting together Project #1, students often rely on how they were instructed to write essays in high school or how they were taught to write timed essays for the SAT and ACT exams to be accepted into college. As you have probably already picked up on, ENC2135 is not like high school. Here are some errors that students often make when writing their first papers, and how to avoid them.

1. Writing about too broad of a topic. You have selected three different artifacts from a Pop Culture Icon to examine and analyze the message of these compositions promote or damage their brand. Beware discussing that artists' Instagram account as an artifact. An Instagram post is a great artifact, but an Instagram account has too many things to discuss and your focus will not be specific enough to make a true assessment.

2. Not choosing diverse artifacts. If you are writing about a musician, don't choose three different songs. In fact, do not select two songs. You need three different artifacts. Musicians compose many things: videos, album covers, Tweets, Instagram photos, T-shirts, etc. In fact, almost all Pop Culture icons compose many different things to make sure they remain a Pop Culture Icon. What do you think Snoop Dog makes so many appearances with Martha Stewart? He is maintaining his relevance as a Pop Culture Icon.

3. Organization. You have practice now in putting together an outline. Also consider how you structure your paragraphs.

4. Generic Statements. I hate generic statements with a fire of a thousand suns. "In the digital age" is a generic statement. "In the last 10 years" is a specific one. It provides a time frame. When you were responsible for writing timed essays for exams, generic statements were passable because you were not provided the tools to look up specifics. This is not a timed essay and you have blessed with the Internet. You can be specific.

5. Assumptive statements. Any time you generalize about a group of people, you are going to come across as being misinformed. Statements like, "This appeals to Millennials because they have shorter attention spans" will always be a false statements because A) you cannot back up whether this is true or not and B) it assumes that everyone who was born during a certain time period is exactly the same. It erases the individual. Don't assume about people or groups. These assumptions are not common knowledge.

6. Common Knowledge is information that 5 a minimum of 5 individuals know for certain. Don't make assumptions about common knowledge or begin sentences with "Everyone knows that..."

7. Avoid sentences which begin "This is", "There is", "That is", "There are", "It is". These are not strong sentences.

8. Repetition. Use the three line rule. If a word appears over the space of three lines more than once, then change of those words to avoid repetition. Repetition works great in children's books, poetry, and speeches, but not text based informative genres.

9. Choose the right word, not the almost right word. Don't worry about using advanced academic language. Write clearly. Know what you are saying. Context is everything. Remember a word can be correct, but carry with it a negative feeling. This is called negative connotation.

10. Using unearned pathos. As you have learned, pathos is a rhetorical appeal which connects to the reader on a personal level. Using the word you or telling the reader that something is fantastic, wonderful, or very important is unearned pathos. You are too thirsty for me to love this thing you are writing about. Make me love it by showing all the awesome things about your icon's artifacts.

11. DO NOT WRITE IN FIRST PERSON. I will repeat: DO NOT WRITE IN FIRST PERSON. Before you turn in your paper, do a find/replace for the following 8 pronouns and change any that you find. I will count off for this.

12. Do you know what a Proper Noun is? It's cool. iPhone is a proper noun, but you don't capitalize the tiny i. I understand that when working with brands, that whether to capitalize or not is confusing. I will clarify it. Always capitalize proper nouns, even if their logo is lowercases. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr, etc.

13. Introductions: Don't waste words writing into your paper. Students have a tendency to start with a broad statement and write about everything except their icon until the last sentence. Don't do this. You have 50 words to convince your reader that they care about your subject. You should have named your icon and listed your artifacts in the first 50 words.

Here are a few examples of introductions which are ineffective and should be avoided:

• Since the dawn of time...

• People our parent's age ...

• Everyone knows ...

• In today's world ...

• Nowadays ...

• Before the invention of social media ...

• Since the invention of technology ...

• What is Pop Culture? Webster's Dictionary defines...

14. Conclusions: Don't sum up your paper. Your paper is only 1,500 words. If I can't remember what you said in 1,500 words, then I have a problem with my memory. Tell me what it all means. Answer this question: after reviewing all the analysis of artifacts, so what?

15. Too long body paragraphs. If your paragraphs are a page long, that is too long. Read the paragraph, find the subtopic, make a new paragraph break.

16. Not reaching your word count. The paper which will be graded absolutely must be 1,500 words. Any less, I will immediately give it an F, with no opportunity for revision. I use Microsoft Word's word counter, which is different from Google Drive (be mindful of that). I do this because I cannot provide feedback for words which are not there. And while you might think you have covered everything which can be said about your artifacts, I disagree. Grad students write entire dissertations about artifacts.

17. Summary instead of analysis. You will summarize what your artifact is about, but don't spend too much time with the summary. Get to the analysis so the reader understands what it is doing rhetorically. I want to know: Mode, Media, Audience, Style, Design, Rhetorical Appeals, Purpose and Genre.

Which may lead you to ask how I assess Project #1.

Analysis - Did you cover all aspects of the rhetorical analysis? Mode, Media, Audience, Style, Design, Rhetorical Appeals, Purpose and Genre.

Organization - How is the essay structured? Did you adhere to your outline? How are the sentences arranged inside the paragraphs? Was your introduction effective? Does the conclusion answer the so what question?

Clarity - Can the reader understand you statements and analysis? Did the words you chose make sense? Punctuation and sentence structure will be assessed here.

Ability to Follow the Prompt - Did you do what was asked of you for this specific project? Did you write in third person? Did you select a Pop Culture Icon? Did you analyze three artifacts? Were the artifacts diverse?

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