Some general comments about the minipapers:

 

Many of you have issues with grammar and punctuation.  I highly recommend that you seek a tutor for English to help your writing skills if you were asked to do so.  I know that this is not an English writing course, but it is a college course.  In the real world, the skill of written communication can make the difference between being stuck in a dead-end job and being promoted to a higher-paying, more satisfying position.

 

Things to note: 

 

“It’s” means “It is”.  This is not the same as the word “its”.

 

“There”, “Their” and “They’re” are not interchangeable—nor is “hear” and “here”.

 

An auto spell check will not always give you the right word.  Jupiter is not the largest PLANT, it is the largest PLANET!

 

The Moon and Sun are capitalized when referring to the specific name of the object (e.g., the natural satellite of Earth is the Moon).   It is not capitalized when used to refer to the satellites of any other planet (e.g., the moons of the planet Uranus).

 

“Frag” means that the attempted sentence is fragmented and is not a complete sentence.

 

“Run-on” means that the attempted sentence is either way too long, or that it has lost its meaning from being too long.

 

“Sp” means the word spelling is incorrect.

 

If I circled a word or a section of a phrase, it means there is something either grammatically wrong with that section, or that there is an issue with punctuation.

 

If I underlined a section, this means that I either didn’t understand your word choice, or that the meaning of the phrase was too vague, too informal, or too unfamiliar to the reader.

 

Please PROOFREAD your papers before submitting them.  Let your peers read and edit your papers for mistakes—it is the only way to get better.

 

A lot of you do not give credit where credit is due.  Citations are made for this purpose.  Please cite your references in the body of your text!  Also, I can easily tell when you copy directly from the source—the writing style changes dramatically.  I may not catch you all the time, but some college instructors are notoriously diligent at finding plagiarists—and they have every right to do so, because plagiarism is illegal and it can cause you to be expelled from the college.  Be careful—cite your sources.

 

When you apply for a job position, one of the things the job may require is a job application letter.  If you are hurting in your writing skills, especially in a job that requires you to write notes or letters to the team, it will eventually be discovered, and your coworkers will start relying on you less and less to get written tasks done. 

 

I know--this is an astronomy class.  It is NOT an English course.  You may not have put your best effort in writing a paper in here.  I’m just letting you know that some of you really need help in your written communication skills, and I am asking you to PLEASE go seek a tutor for assistance before you graduate.  You are here to learn—you might as well take advantage of this while you are here.  It only gets harder once you leave here!