Common Abbreviations
- || CON - parallel construction; the clauses in a list should be of the same construction. EX: I like to ride my bike, knit scarves, and surf the Web. NOT: I like to ride my bike, knitting scarves, and I enjoy surfing the Web.
- ANTHRO - anthropomorphic; you have assigned human characteristics or sentience to a nonsensient object. EX: Does a building hope to be rescued from teh wrecking ball? No, because buildings don't hope. I try to give some leeway here for creative license.
- AWK - awkward; your phrasing is difficult to understand.
- CAP - capitalization; you need to capitalize (or not) one or more words.
- FRAG - fragment; the text is not a complete sentence.
- GRAM - grammar; you have a particular grammatical error.
- LRWB - Little Red Writing Book by Brandon Royal. I will cite rules and principles from it when correcting your grammar and mechanics.
- MW - missing word; the sentence is missing a word, perhaps as a typographical error.
- ORD - ordinal; you have an ordinal number (1st, 19th, etc.) that should be spelled out (first, nineteenth, etc.). Also, never place the suffix (th, nd, rd) in superscript (raised).
- PLAG - plagiarism; four or more consecutive words is too many to use without quotation and citation. If you have done so, I likely gave you zero points for following directions and deducted points from content as well. If the situation were severe enough, I would give a zero for the entry; if egregious, then a zero for the whole assignment.
- QM - quotation marks - may also be "". Don't use quotation marks as emphasis. only use them for quotations and coined terms.
- REP - repetitious; this may mean you literally repeated yourself word for word, said the same idea twice, or are overusing a particular word or phrase.
- TENSE - your tense is incorrect, either in time or number.
- TONE - your tone is most likely too informal, such as the use of vernacular language, cliches, etc. It may also be the case that your tone was inappropriate for the assignment.
- UNCLR - unclear; your meaning is not clear. I also use this in phrases, e.g. "UNCLR how this is important."
- WC - Word Choice; I believe that you are using the wrong word here, either because the one you've used doesn't make sense, or because I recognize that you made a typo. EX: If you say "curtain" instead of "certain" I might just correct it, or I might say WC. If I'm not sure, I say WC so as to avoid putting words into your mouth. N.B.: relying on a thesaurus to supply words you aren't familiar with is risky. This is especially true with the law. "Common land ownership" means something specific, and substituting "universal", "familial", or "general" for "common" would completely change its meaning. If I don't understand your bigger point, I will likely say UNCLR, but if I can tell the problem is really a single poor word choice, I'll use WC.
Last Updated: February 21, 2008
