The Rules

The following lists contain the most fundamental writing rules of my class.

First, there's the "zero" rules. These are rules that are so fundamental (and so easy to follow) that breaking them tells me you really don't intend to do the actual assignment you were actually given, so I might as well not even read your paper. Papers that break rule 1, rule 2, or rule 3 receive zero points, and are not eligible to earn a bonus.

Second, there are the "credit" rules, which say what you will and won't get credit for. If your paper doesn't break any of the zero rules, it may still get a zero if it doesn't properly follow the credit rules.

Zero Rules

Papers that break even one of these rules will receive zero points. Seriously, that's zero points. I'm tired or reading timewastes.

Be Prompt: Get right to it. You will not write an introduction. (It's a waste of time.) If you do, your paper gets zero points.
Be Blunt: If you have a thesis, your first sentence MUST be your THESIS. A paper that wastes time "leading up" to a thesis gets zero points.
Be Candid: If you don't have a thesis, make your first sentence your takeaway. Again, time wasting means zero points.
Be Brief: You will not write a conclusion. (It's an annoying waste of time.) If you do, your paper gets zero points.
Be Original: Do not limit yourself to rehashing other people's ideas. A paper with no original work is worthless.
Be Readable. Don't use "impressive" words or weird sentence structures. Pretentious papers will get zero points.
Be Yourself. You will not even think of starting your paper with a dictionary definition. If you do, your paper gets zero points, and a rude note.

If you don't have a specific thesis, you can write a thinkathon.htm

Credit Rules

Running foul of one of these rules doesn't automatically zero-out your paper, but staying within them is your only chance of getting any credit.

Doing what the prompt for your topic tells you to do is the only way to have a chance to get credit for your paper.
Parts of your paper that do not help you do the things the prompt told you to do do not earn credit.
Writing about the topic in a way that doesn't do any of what the prompt told you to do will not earn any credit.
Changing the prompt, and then writing in response to your prompt instead of to the real one will not earn any credit.
Writing based on definitions that are not those given in the prompt will not earn any credit.

Basically, "stick to the prompt" is what I'm saying. The prompt is your assignment. Non-prompt stuff is not assigned, and does not help fulfill the assignment.

For this reason, it is vital that you do not allow yourself to form a false impression of what the prompt is asking. It doesn't happen frequently, but every so often, a student decides to skim for key words instead of reading the prompt, or finds some other way of deciding that the prompt is saying something other than what the specific text of the specific prompt actually says. Don't do this,

Notes

Rules A through E can be summed up as "material submitted must respond to the relevant prompt, and to the general writing instructions to receive any credit at all". So if you do things I did not tell you to do, those things will not earn you any credit. This applies even if you devote hours and hours and hours of effort to doing these wrong things. If it's not stuff I told you to do, it earns no credit. (And if all you do is the wrong thing, and thus don't do any of the right things, you will get zero points for that work.)

Bear in mind also that a thing that only kinda sounds like what I told you to do is not the thing I told you to do. If the thing you decide to do sounds (in your mind) close to the thing I told you to do, but does not specifically address the thing I specifically told you to do, then it is not what I told you to do, and is therefore worthless.

Also be aware that things that other people told you to do are not things I told you to do. If someone who is not me tells, urges, or advises you to do something that is not what I told you to do, then that thing is not what I told you to do, and will earn no credit. If you have a way of writing papers that worked for all your previous instructors, but which does not conform to the way I tell you to write, that way will not work in this class.

Finally (again) take me seriously when I say that "your very first sentence must be your thesis (or takeaway"). You should not write an introduction, or any kind of prefatory material. Just jump in and state your biggest thought about the topic without wasting time on any of the faff that some English teachers seem to be so fond of.

Any questions, please contact me for clarification. Don't tell yourself it will be all right to go ahead with something that isn't specifically what I told you to do, because it probably won't be all right, and you might waste a lot of effort. Email me and ask.

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