Hints for Improving Your Writing

Excellence in writing is rarely a "black and white" judgment. While there are many "right and wrong" dictums in grammar, many "gray areas" also exist. The goal of emphasizing writing in HORT 315 is not to have you become accomplished literary technicians. Our goal is to introduce you to a style of writing that is acceptable in the discipline of horticulture, with an emphasis on general business and management styles rather than scientific writing style.

The Texas A&M University Writing Center is an outstanding resource. You may obtain assistance with your assignments either in person by setting up an appointment or by using their excellent online grammar tutorial.

Having said that, I think most of you can achieve the level of writing competence expected in this course by following some basic recommendations, allowing yourself an appropriate amount of time to do good work, researching your topic before you begin, and careful proofreading of your work.

The HORT 315 Essay
Organizationally, you should plan for your essays to include the following:

A brief introduction stating the thesis (or premise) of your composition;
A body section in which you outline the major information relative to the stated topic; in certain types of essays, an interpretation of the meaning or significance of a concept will be argued in the body section;
And a brief summary paragraph in which you state your conclusion or summarize the significance of the analysis you have done.

Frequently Encountered Pitfalls
After many years of evaluating essays, I would like to say "I've seen it all!" I'm sure I haven't. Listed below are some of the most frequent grammatical and general writing errors I've encountered. (I will probably be adding to this list during the course of the semester!)

Missed the point entirely. On very rare occasion, an individual has completely mis-read the essay prompt, writing an otherwise lucid response. Unless I suspect it to be purposeful, I will expect a re-write on this one for a reduced grade.
Finessing the teacher; The act of basing your entire essay on feelings, emotions, opinions, half-truths, urban legends, etc. rather than searching for and interpreting facts. This one elicits severe penalties.
Misspelled words. Technical jargon is particularly susceptible to this abuse, but it can happen to even common words. Improper proofreading is usually at fault.
Correct spelling; wrong word. Some pairs oft confused include: their/they're; to/too/two; affect/effect;
Improper capitalization. Web is capitalized because the World Wide Web is a proper noun; horticulture is not capitalized unless it begins a sentence; DNA is capitalized because it is an acronym.
Incomplete sentence; either the subject or verb is missing. Sometimes compound sentences are so long and convoluted that one forgets to match subjects and verbs in the clauses.
"Commatosis"; bastardization of the word comatose. The act of placing a comma in a sentence for looks rather than effect.
Inventing words; as in "Googlizing" or "Googling" a word when one actually uses the search engine,
Google (http://www.google.com/), to find links using the word. Horticulturists invent words frequently, since we "meristem" orchids meaning that we propagate them from meristems. Often involves inventing a noun for an action verb.
More to come...

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