# What is the most common comments instructors make on your papers? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 16, 2003, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572 "2003-05-16T00:17:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Incubus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/1 "2003-05-16T00:17:22Z")
One particularly frustrating thing I have had in writing papers is fairly consistent comments about them. Generally, I can weed out 99% of typos and other errors on a paper so long as I’m not rushing, and especially if I make it a point to write multiple drafts. But even when the paper looks ‘perfect’ to my eyes (along with at least 2 other people who I get to proofread my paper), instructors always put in comments like ‘wordy’ and ‘awkward’ under certain sentences or phrases. The problem is that I don’t see what makes them wordy or awkward. When writing a paper, I try to avoid using absolutes that I can’t substantiate. So I rarely use words like ‘always’ or ‘never’ unless I have a cite to back it up. But apparently instructors don’t like reading the words ‘generally’ or ‘rarely’ because these seem to get underlined with the words ‘wordy’ or ‘awkward’. Another thing I have a hard time with is passive voice. I tend to write in the passive voice, and when Microsoft Word points this out, I have a hard time correcting it without changing the meaning of the sentence (or making it sound illegible). ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/2 "2003-05-16T00:21:03Z")
“You’re not in this class. Please stop showing up.” ---
**Author:** ![Incubus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c68b51/32.png) [@Incubus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incubus)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/3 "2003-05-16T00:23:20Z")
:eek: ---
**Author:** ![Lsura](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Lsura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lsura)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/4 "2003-05-16T01:11:00Z")
“Use more examples from class, readings, class discussion board, etc”. I got that on basically every paper I turned in for one class last semester. Beyond that, I’ve pretty much broken myself of using the passive voice in papers…I still overuse commas, but my biggest issue is “expand on this more, explain better…give more information” This is a problem I didn’t have as an undergrad but find myself struggling with in grad school. I think it comes from years of business writing between finishing my undergrad and starting grad school - I started writing for people who understood the basics of the business, and just needed the issues explained so that they could be corrected - there was no need to go into every minor detail. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/5 "2003-05-16T01:18:17Z")
Back when I was writing such things, “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” was fairly common. ---
**Author:** ![Duke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Duke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/6 "2003-05-16T03:04:33Z")
I can hear my supervisor saying it now, even though she is in England and I am in upstate New York: “You should _really_ try to make your sentences shorter.” Well, it’s not my fault I like to write 120-word sentences. ---
**Author:** ![beegirl13](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/848f3c/32.png) [@beegirl13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beegirl13)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/7 "2003-05-16T03:20:23Z")
“Stop ending sentences with prepositions”. I though that was something that was allowed now. Oh well. I also tend to start sentences with “however” and some professors don’t like that. ---
**Author:** ![Super\_Gnat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e274bd/32.png) [@Super\_Gnat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Super_Gnat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/8 "2003-05-16T03:48:57Z")
“Analyze, don’t summarize.” I tend to forget the “idea” parts of oreo paragraphs :). ---
**Author:** ![DadWagonDriver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/edb3f5/32.png) [@DadWagonDriver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DadWagonDriver)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/9 "2003-05-16T03:56:33Z")
“This is a good idea. You need to expand on it more.” Look, I coulld expand on it, but you said no more than six pages. I could give you six pages of just that section of the piece, but that’s too much. Make up your mind, Professor. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/10 "2003-05-16T04:14:17Z")
I get a lot of “expand on this”. Sometimes it is something that I genuinely did treat too lightly. But often it is just a little point in my bigger argument, and while it supports my paper it isn’t really the main emphasis. If I expanded everything to the level of detail that they want it, I’d end up writing papers about four times longer than the ones assigned. It’s not that my papers are just full of generalities, either. I often make it a game out of writing on the most narrow and specific subject possible (For example, I’ll often write on a single scene in a movie). After four years of university writing I’m still figuring out how they expect me to fit in twenty pages worth of subject matter into a five page paper. The best comment I ever got on a paper was “With a little revision, this paper will make an excellent addition to the body of work you’ve cited.” In other words, she thought my paper was as good and as important as the theory I was working off of (which was the like of bell hooks and other theory giants). Wow. The most surprising thing about my papers is that nobody ever calls me on how far out they can get. My opening paragraphs are often very narrative and sometimes outright poetic. I’ll write a paper on Soviet Cinema during Glastnost and start out with some extended metaphor about thawing limbs and snowstorms and Sibera and whatever crazy images come to mind. My professors are pretty strict with their writing. They’ve told us they expect work of publishable quality (in undergrad classes!) I can’t figure out why nobody ever gets mad at me for how overwraught and silly I can get. ---
**Author:** ![Eternal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ecb155/32.png) [@Eternal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eternal)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/11 "2003-05-16T04:20:45Z")
Just a lot of question marks. ---
**Author:** ![AnnaLivia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/edb3f5/32.png) [@AnnaLivia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AnnaLivia)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/12 "2003-05-16T04:22:52Z")
Most common? “Where is this going?” Most interesting: “So, you know a lot about Rousseau, do you?” “Hooray, AnnaLivia can read- unlike some of her classmates.” (No one else read the Maria Edgeworth) “So, are we a nation of wh—s then, ma’am?” “Good on you” “What a fun title” AL ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/13 "2003-05-16T04:55:59Z")
“Why the hell are you doing this?! You’re not in my class!” ---
**Author:** ![DreadCthulhu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DreadCthulhu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DreadCthulhu)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/14 "2003-05-16T05:04:57Z")
“Get help now. Please, for the love of all that is holy, see a pychologist soon.” ---
**Author:** ![dwc1970](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a183cd/32.png) [@dwc1970](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwc1970)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/15 "2003-05-16T05:51:21Z")
I had lousy penmanship in school (my handwriting still sucks, perhaps it’s gotten worse since I hardly write things by hand anymore, and for good reason), when most assignments were handwritten. Because of this my teacher circled a lot of words with red question marks and comments such as “try to write more neatly” or “I can’t read this!” ---
**Author:** ![Stainless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Stainless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stainless)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/16 "2003-05-16T05:55:42Z")
Well, seeing as how my monographs are forged with an eye toward the utmost in poignancy and perspicuity, coincided with a circumspect, apropos manipulation of grammatical acrobatics, it is laborious to descry imperfections within suchlike narratives in any connotation. Uh, it’s usually “wordy” on mine, sometimes written in blood. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Colunga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/22d042/32.png) [@Rick\_Colunga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Colunga)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/17 "2003-05-16T11:56:25Z")
I think anybody that feels they are pre-judged feels this way. Life is hard enough on our own actions so the last thing anyone needs is people judging us on what people that look and or live like use do. The irony is that the harder you work as an individual, the more you cringe when the news shows Blacks, Hispanics, Chinese, Jews, Red Necks, Gays, etc, etc acting badly. You don’t have to be an actual “Minority” to feel this way. Everyone is capable of being in the minority depending on where they chose to live. Anybody who has felt in the minority can understand what it is like to see an opportunity side step you for reasons unknown to logic or reason. Being Hispanic, I also cringe when the news shows young Latino boys thinking with their balls and not their brains. I used to live in an up-scale Yuppy part of San Antonio, Texas. The area of town had gone so far as to become it’s own city within a city to control it’s police force and Mayor.(Not to mention protect thier tax money) Their Police only pulled traffic duty and let the San Antonio Police force handle the real crime. If you drove a Hummer, you could drive 90 miles an hour down the road and never get a ticket, but if you have a faded paint job or a P.O.S., it only took one or two miles above the speed limit to get a ticket. When I started ridding my 100 dollar Huffy mountain bike for excersise around the neighborhood, I was watched as a perp scouting the nieghborhood for something to steal. When I got into ridding a lot more, I moved up to a Trek mountain Bike. Now the question was which garage did the perp lift that nice bike from? I hated living in that area of San Antonio, everytime I started to feel that I was over reacting, some a police cruiser would slow down and pace me riding my bike to see if I would try and get away or some bitch at a store would be overly helpful to me and follow me around the store until I left. (On a side note, where the hell do retail sluts get off acting like their shit doesn’t stink? If they were all that, they wouldn’t need the shitty retail job in the first place.) Thankfully, my solution was simple. Once my lease was up, I move to another part of town and blended in. I now live a quarter of a mile from a police sub station and have never been made to feel uncomfortable around the parade of San Antonio Police officers driving all around me. \ Don’t get me wrong, most of the people in that small city within a city where nice people who didn’t care one way or the other of my heritage. It’s not like I lived in Naziville, Texas, but it only takes a few to build that feeling inside you. \ I may not be the smartest person in the world but I trying my best to better my life so it does hurt when Hispanics screw up on local, state, and national television. For every news broadcast, or news article, I have to work a little harder to get where I want to go in life. Everyone has at least a slight tendency to pre-judge what they don’t understand. The Middle East comes to mind. People don’t understand that it doesn’t take a large population or mob to make you feel helpless as a minority, only that one asshole in front of your goals and dreams. My father worked at a refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas. His workers, who were all Black or Hispanic, used to kid him that if he gets promoted on more time, he would have to change his last name. He was the only manager that had an office outside the main building. His office was in the warehouse with his workers. My father is a very rational man, so he saw it as bonus since they never really bothered him and he didn’t like them anyway. He saw it as something better to ignore and draw a pension rather than make a statement about. He’s a smart man. \ The minority will always have to oversell themselves to the majority. Saftey in numbers damands that. There is nothing wrong in cringing or feeling unease when one of your own does something wrong, it just means that we all need work alittle harder to disprove the image. Just remember that the people before us had it alot worse than we do. Only fifty years ago, certain parts of San Antonio, Texas had shopowners posting signs that said “No Dogs or Mexicans allowed.” Today, our Mayor’s last name is Garza. Times change, even if it doesn’ t move at a pace we like. \ \JaunitaTech\ If you think about it, the closest thing ever to a “Master Race” is the African American population. Slavery was a business and it’s “Businessman” only brought the strongest and the healthiest Africans to the Americas. From the ones brought to the Amercas, only the healthiest and the strongest of that group survived the trip. Once here, the best of a race began to breed. The food that was feed to African slaves combined with the denial of education were the only two things that held them African American from taking over this country from the beginning. The Jim Crowe mentality has done it’s best to hold the Black race down since the end of slavery but I really feel the next century will go to the African Americans. Micheal Jordan, Coby Bryant, the Williams Sisters, Tiger Woods, Shaq, Ken Griffey Jr., Samy Sosa, Ali, etc, etc, are not flutes or freaks of nature. Narrow minded people three hundered years ago created these superstars strong in mind and body without ever knowing it. With every victory or title African Americans consume, the doors open wider for their race and soon the only place left to kick this countries ass in will be the classroom and there isn’t anything that will stop that. Cheer up JaunitaTech, The future belongs to you. ---
**Author:** ![Mariemarie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58f4c7/32.png) [@Mariemarie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mariemarie)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/18 "2003-05-16T12:16:01Z")
**Rick\_Colunga** , do you often get comments on your papers that go something like this?: “You have some interesting ideas, but what you’ve written has nothing to do with the assigned topic!” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Phlosphr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c68b51/32.png) [@Phlosphr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phlosphr)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/19 "2003-05-16T13:01:40Z")
Oh I wish I discovered this thread earlier. As a college instructor I’ll tell my tale of woe for the last 9 days… I’ve graded upwards of 246 papers this week, final after final after final!! List of the top ten marks I’ve put in peoples blue book: Frag para (sp?) frag frag frag more descriptive elaborate explain ??? Most of the students I had this semester are sophomores, so I know I will see them next semester, but I always try to steer them in the right direction, instead of oppressing their viewpoint. Have a good summer!! I DON’T HAVE TO TEACH SUMMER SESSION THIS YEAR!!! ---
**Author:** ![MSU\_1978](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac8455/32.png) [@MSU\_1978](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MSU_1978)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2003, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572/20 "2003-05-16T13:43:27Z")
“Please see me after class, you hunk of man.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-most-common-comments-instructors-make-on-your-papers/175572.md?page=2)