Errors in Exercise Two

CRTW 201

Dr. Fike

The Biggest Problem

• The assignment was to discuss the background story that informs your position on capital (not corporal) punishment.

• The assignment did NOT ask you to argue about the two articles or to summarize them.

MLA Format

• Signal phrases

• Parenthetical citations

• List of works cited

Clarification

• The following examples are quotations from your exercises, but I have not used double quotation marks.

• Thus they appear exactly as they did in your papers.

Examples

• As Polite[s] says in her article, “personal involvement with the horrible crime renders the academic arguments for or against capital punishment meaningless” (“Constantine’s Murderer”).

• In Anna Quindlen’s editorial she points out, “The question isn’t whether executions can be made painless: it’s whether they’re wrong (Quindlen para.14).”

How #1 Should Appear

• As Polites says in her article, “personal involvement with the horrible crime renders the academic arguments for or against capital punishment meaningless.”

• Do you know why?

How #2 Should Appear

• As Anna Quindlen’s editorial points out,

“The question isn’t whether executions can be made painless: it’s whether they’re wrong” (par. 14).

• Do you know why?

I will have a conversation if you to this:

• “Justice John Paul Stevens is right: there are serious flaws in how we apply capital punishment (Polites).”

Question

• Does a URL belong in a citation?

Answer

No!

How Your Works Cited List Should Appear

Works Cited

Polites, Olga. “I Want Constantine’s Murderer to Die.” Newsweek 23 Jan. 2006.

5 Sept. 2006 <http://msnbc.msn.com>.

Quindlen, Anna. “The Failed Experiment.” Newsweek 26 June 2006. 5 Sept. 2006

<http://www.msnbc.msn.com>.

See Prentice Hall, page 418, Section 58d.

Clarification

• The following examples are quotations from your papers, and I have used quotation marks this time.

Stop Feeling!

• “I feel that it is our job as humans to try to prevent and reduce crime.”

• “I do feel that my background is an impediment.”

• “Though I feel have [sic] mixed emotions on the death penalty[,] I feel that the best answer is not the death penalty.”

The Omnipresent Comma Splice

• “She feels that the idea of capital punishment overall should be abolished, however, she says that an execution should have taken place in the murder of her cousin.”

Correct Version

• “She [believes] that the idea of capital punishment overall should be abolished; however, she says that an execution should have taken place in the murder of her cousin.”

Tense Problem

• “If Polites would have come up with a justifiable reason why she agreed with capital punishment in this one situation, then I would not have taken the idea into more consideration, but she did not do this.”

Sequence of Tenses

Distant past Past Present

Past Perfect Simple Past

I had gone I went I go

• “If Polites HAD come up with a justifiable reason why she agreed with capital punishment in this one situation, then I would not have taken [past conditional tense] the idea into more consideration, but she did not do this.”

Passive Constructions

• “Capital punishment is viewed differently by everyone, but everyone has their particular stance for a reason.”

• Better: “Everyone views capital punishment differently.”

• Make the subject the subject.• And remember that “everyone” is singular,

so you may not use “their” to refer to it.

Dangling Modifier

• “After reading this heinous article, my views have not changed.”

• “When reading the two articles about capital punishment one of the articles really seemed to match my point of view on the subject.”

• Note well: Articles cannot read. Nor is an article itself heinous. The crime it describes is heinous.

Many People

• “Many people feel very strongly for it or very strongly against it….”

• See “Forbidden.”

In regards to

• “In regards to capital punishment I agree with Polites[‘s] view as opposed to Quindlen’s.”

• In regard to, as regards, or regarding: all three are acceptable.

• But do not say “in regards to.”

That vs. Which

• “For the most part, however, it [is] due to the basic sense of logic which most people tend to ignore.”

• See Prentice Hall, pages 155-57, Sections 25a and 25b.

• Rule: Essential clausethat Nonessential clausewhich with commas

Can not vs. Cannot

• Which is correct?

That vs. who

• “I see so many teenagers that act so bad[ly]….”

• “The kind of sick person that would do that needs to receive the death penalty.”

• “Olga Polites was one person that was against capital punishment….”

Like vs. as if/though

• “It seems like a murderer can kill someone without having a second thought….”

• “I will always feel like what my religion has taught me is right….”

• Likenoun

• As if/as thoughnoun + verb

It’s vs its

• First of all, do not use contractions.

• “It’s” = ???

• And “its” is ???

How do you form the possessive of a name that ends in –s?

• Olga Polites

• Olga Polites’s

Hopefully

• “Hopefully, as in my case, we are taught a framework to allow us to think rather than a strict set of ideas and absolutes.”

• “Hopefully that will never happen.”

• See Prentice Hall, page 545: “This adverb means ‘in a hopeful way.’ Many people consider the meaning ‘it is to be hoped’ unacceptable.”

• I am one of those people.

Semicolon Again

• “Also, it gives one a chance to feel remorse; a chance to regret his or her wrongdoing.”