For my Rhetoric & Writing class, we were assigned to write a conflict narrative, and I decided to pick my "struggle" with coming out and how it impacted my life. He wanted us to show the conflict in multiple perspectives as well. I was just wondering what others in the GLBT community thought of my paper. [link]
Commas go inside of quotation marks! Graghhhh! EDIT: Also, em dashes don't contain spaces around them—like that. Also, you need to write out numerals if they're in the single digits. You left a space after the closing parenthesis on the second page before the period. The second person pronouns seem a bit elementary too. All in all, it was a great paper! I liked it. I like your flow of ideas in the organization, and the conclusion was awesome, but seriously—put your damn commas and periods on the inside of your quotation marks. EDIT 2: Also, there's a pronoun-antecedent error when you said "The WBC . . . is best known for their phrase . . ." EDIT 3: You used a semicolon incorrectly in the second paragraph. It should be a colon since you're introducing a list after a clause.
The point of this paper isn't about grammatical perfection. And yes, I tend to overuse comma's. The only grammatical issue that my professor pointed out was the fact that I needed quotes for the first sentence. Other than that, he made no comments. Thanks .
Well since you did not ask for a grammar lesson, i will not comment on that, all in all i think your paper was very good and you where very brave to write it, A++
http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html I am the world's biggest grammar pedant, and I will argue to the death that the positioning of commas (and periods) with regards to quotation marks (and parentheses) should be dictated according to logic, as in the British system. The American "put everything inside the quotation marks" rule is an outdated convention based on obsolete technology (namely the printing press). The purpose of punctuation is to provide sense and order to a series of words, and thus should reflect the syntax and semantics of the sentence. ---------- Very nicely written and well-organized. Also, you introduced me to a new word (egodystonic)!
Nohantes and Chandra, you both MUST read "Eats, shoots and leaves" It is a book written for grammar nazis, and is both a wonderful exposition on grammar and syntax (both the British and American variants) and has a tremendous amount of humor in it. I know I'm a nerd for reading a grammar book for fun, but hey, that's who I am. Chris, I'll look forward to reading your paper a lil later on when I finish up a project I'm working on
I love that book! The next one on my reading list is The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed.
Thanks for the comments. I got the paper back today and I got a C on it. He said my ending was "hurried" and that I didn't spend enough time doing a cultural analysis (describing the point of view of the conflict from other people like my parents or friends). As a matter of fact, 15 out of the 18 people in my class got grades in the C-range.
