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My 10th grade English teacher told me I wasn't very good at writing essays. She didn't use those exact words. It's just that every essay I got back had a D' written in red ink at the top and something about needing to support my thesis statement throughout. She didn't actually tell me how to go about doing that, but when I heard about it later in a college class, I knew I needed to pay attention.

Here are some other things I should have known about essay writing while ascending the ranks of academia.

HOW TO PLAGIARIZE:

Unlike today's cut and paste world of Internet plagiarism, plagiarism was difficult when I attended school. I had to go to the library, get a book, and copy things by hand. Because of the work involved in plagiarizing, I decided to use my own thoughts and ideas. Sure, I learned the writing process, how to string thoughts together, and how to communicate clearly and effectively. I'll admit that writing original material helped me succeed beyond high school and college-but I would trade it all in to just to have gotten an A.

THE EMERGENCE OF SPELL CHECK

Y did eye waist awl that thyme learning how two spill correctly. If only eye wood have known about spill chick, eye could have saved a lot of thyme doing important thins like playing video games or watching TV. Today, u do knot even kneed too no how too spill when righting an s, eh? I did knot use it won thyme wile righting this hear won. These teachers knead too stop wasting hour thyme with spilling tests and learning Greek and Latin roots.

WRITE A GOOD INTRODUCTION

All I had to do was write a really snappy introduction and it wouldn't matter how bad the rest of the essay was. Be careful not to write too good of an introduction, though. The teacher might read the whole thing and foil your plan.

PRONOUN USE

Me had a lot of trouble making I understood back when me wrote in high school. Luckily, me had a really good English teacher that taught I how to use the correct word. Us worked hard!

CORRECT GRAMMAR

Why did it never occur to me that everything a writer needed to know about grammar was contained in a 5th grade grammar book? Instead of taking the requisite 5 seconds to actually find out the correct usage of a word, I insisted on handing in essays full of grammatical miscues. I read an essay I had written my first year in college, it was riddled with comma splices, I felt really stupid, I'm so glad somebody taught me how to avoid them.

HOW TO CORRECT SENTENCE FRAGMENTS

Related to the last section. Hearkening back to the 5th grade grammar book that could have taught me so much about using correct grammar, a rather simple way to improve grades for the not-so-skilled-writer who plans on making money as a writer or just being able to communicate effectively.

CHOOSE EASY COLLEGE PROFESSORS

Before taking English 101 in college, I had very poor writing skills. Not knowing who the hard teachers were, I signed up for Dr. Coburn's class. This guy made me learn. What a jerk!

CORRECT USE OF EXCLAMATION POINTS

Too many writers overuse exclamation points! How stupid! If your writing doesn't emphasize your main points with words, then maybe you should rewrite it!

PREWRITING

So many losers waste time with their silly little outlines, web diagrams, and thesis statements. Why waste those five minutes when you can just start writing? Sure, it might save you an hour or two in the long run, but you're not looking for long term success. You're looking for short term gains. So what if your persuasive essay on the death penalty turns into a discussion about the mating habits of Australian muskrats. If you organized your essay before writing, it would make sense, and then people would expect you to make sense more often and treat you as if you were intelligent and thoughtful. That just isn't cool.

Learn more about this author, Trent Lorcher.
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