Writers Response 2

Brandy Hendon

English 3310-01



Writers Notebook Response (37)



         In the four and a half years since I started college, I have tried very hard to improve my writing skills. Although I have been told that I am a good writer, and I have received good grades on almost everything I have written, I am still trying to improve where I can because I believe that there is almost always room for improvement. I have not written much in the way of fiction, so the majority of my “improvement” has come in the form of technical writing.

         I think that by far, English Composition Two has been the toughest writing I have had to do. It was an online class with an instructor that I had never met in person, and I will never forget that she told me two things that I thought I needed to really pay attention to: She said I was “comma happy” and that I needed to pay closer attention to my word tenses because I was mixing them. Another time she said that I needed to be mindful of my contractions. I remember being irritated at the time, but I understood where she was coming from after closer review of my writing. Until then, I had not been told to watch these common errors.

         In the time since that class—which started out with fifty students and finished with 11 who all got A's—I have been very mindful of these three items that were pointed out to me. Although I sometimes forget or think that it sounds weird when I read my work, the contractions are the one thing I think that I have conquered. I know that I probably still use too many commas. I cannot help myself. I AM comma happy! In all of the papers I have written since English Composition Two, I do not remember a single professor pointing out to me that I was still doing it. Maybe I have and they were just not as particular about it as she was. I hope not. I hope that if I were writing a paper at the college level, that the professor—regardless of the class—would tell me if I was doing something incorrectly.