Errors

All papers submitted in a college-level class should conform to the rules of Standard American English.  In other words, papers should include correct spelling, usage, punctuation, and grammar.  Inevitably, of course, most students miss a couple of details when proofreading: they may forget a comma, type a word twice, or substitute one homonym for another.  If such errors are minor, many readers may overlook them. 

However, there are many errors that readers will not overlook or ignore.  Most readers are annoyed by a paper that includes frequent errors, patterns of error, or stigmatized errors.  Such papers are not acceptable in college classes.

• Minor errors.  Some errors are inconspicuous.  For example, if a writer forgets to insert a comma before a coordinating conjunction in a compound sentence, most readers probably won't be bothered.   Readers see this error so often that it may fail to register.  In fact, many of your readers may be unable to remember whether a comma is required in this situation. 

Such subtle errors are considered minor errors.  If you make a single minor error in your paper, your instructor may mark it--but that error is unlikely to affect your paper grade.

• Frequent errors.  Even the most tolerant reader is apt to lose patience with a paper that is laden with errors, even if all of the errors are minor ones.  Even though a minor error is not apt to detract from your overall paper, a cluster of minor errors will.  Most readers resent being expected to invest their time in a paper that the writer did not bother to proofread.

• Patterns of error.  The first time a writer makes a fairly substantial error, the reader may ignore it.  But when the writer makes the same error over and over again, the error becomes more difficult to ignore.  For example, although confusing their and there is a fairly substantial error, it is also a fairly common and understandable one.  If a writer uses their instead of there once, the reader might think, "I've accidentally done that, too."  But when the writer uses their instead of there three or four times, the error becomes more annoying each time the reader sees it. 

• Stigmatized errors.   Stigmatized errors are errors that distract readers who are anticipating Standard American English.  These errors typically disrupt the flow of the text; some even make the text difficult to understand.  Some composition experts call these errors stigmatized errors because readers may assume--often unfairly--that the writer who makes such errors is uneducated or unintelligent. 

The authors of The Longman Concise Companion surveyed college instructors to find out which errors are most likely to bother them.  The back cover lists the top 10 stigmatized errors:

1. Fragments,

2. Fused sentences,

3. Unclear pronoun references,

4. Double negatives,

5. Dangling modifiers,

6. Missing possessive apostrophes,

7. Missing punctuation marks,

8. Lack of subject-verb agreement,

9. Shifts in person, and

10. Unnecessary commas.

While errors like these will detract from the papers you write in college, there are, admittedly, situations outside of the college classroom where stigmatized errors are acceptable and Standard American English is unusual.  If you consistently type out you instead of u when text messaging a friend, your friend will probably wonder why you are wasting so much effort.  If you carefully enunciate, "I have already seen that movie" instead of mumbling, "I've already seen that" (or, perhaps, even "I already seen that") when you and your friends are discussing what movie to see, you may sound pretentious. 

Different situations call for you to adapt different styles of speech and writing.  The Longman Concise Companion explains, "Becoming a flexible writer means developing awareness of differences between the habits of your own community and the expectations of more general communities of readers and writers" (53).

Even though u (instead of you) or I seen (instead of I have seen) may be acceptable in certain non-academic situations, if you use these constructions in a college paper, you will be penalized for making stigmatized errors.