Patterns of Error

Three patterns of error that I can easily identify when looking back at my first two papers written for English 101 are excessive wording, sentence fragments, and an over usage of commas.

• Excessive wording as a result of a constant formal tone- For myself, I struggle with writing in a constant formal tone when it is usually never needed. As I find myself often writing in a way that I do not EVER speak in,  excessive wording seems to be a major downfall throughout my work. I tend to add in words that literally have no meaning.  I feel that if I make my work more wordy, it will appear to my teacher that I am placing more emphasize or greater meaning upon what I am speaking of; clearly that has not been the result of my word choice.  Our first essay was a Narrative essay, while the other was an Ad analysis. Writing in a formal tone, which resulted with being excessively wordy took meaning away from my Narrative essay. Instead of my essay being written in a more personal tone,  my bad habits took away from the meaning of my paper. It sounded as if someone else wrote my paper. For my ad analysis, I tended to repeat myself over and over. I found myself just rewriting the same thought over and over but in different ways. This affected my paper because it resulted with the little evidence that I was able to present as weak. Also, in result of being excessively wordy, my work appears to drag on for too long of a time until my main point is able to be identified.
• Sentence fragments as a result of a constant formal tone- While also looking back at the first two essays that we had written for English 101 sentence fragments seemed to be a constant mistake as well. As I had already explained before, writing in a formal tone has affected my writing overall. Because I write in a formal tone 9 out of 10 times, sentence fragments are repetitively seen throughout my work. This affects my work because my thoughts never appear to be completed. My work seems to always be grammatically wrong. Because I write in a formal tone, I sometimes feel that sentence fragments sound appropriate. This is only because I rehearse my work in a different way than others.
• Commas- Personally, I feel that I use commas too often in my work. In result of this bad habit my work is often grammatically incorrect. Clearly, this results with the grammatical portion of my papers to lose points.

To avoid making these silly mistakes that can be easily fixed, I will make sure that I reread my work over and over to make sure that these errors vanish from upcoming papers that are due soon. Also, I will have either my older brother or mom who is extremely good at writing to revise my work.