Guilford College Writing Manual

In its treatment of subject the D paper may:

• offer distractingly unclear thinking, or not carefully follow the assignment, or give the appearance of having been conceived and written in haste
• contain promising ideas which have been left seriously undeveloped.

In its organization the D paper:

• may be unfocused with no evident organizing principle.

In its content the D paper may:

• provide too few or seemingly irrelevant examples
• lack credible, authoritative evidence in several places
• offer few expert views.

In its style the D paper may:

• confuse the reader with its disjointed language, including jargon
• possess imprecise, redundant, inappropriate word choice
• mislead reader with immature, monotonous sentences that detract and confuse
• have apparent but distracting rhythm
• use weak, inappropriate voice
• present an inconsistent, inappropriate tone
• be lackluster, with little energy.

In terms of rules and conventions the D paper:

• may have some real problems with the mastery of grammar and usage conventions; may have several recurrent problems (e.g., sentence fragments, errors in agreement, comma splices, misused semi-colons, run-ons)
• may contain several technical barriers to reader understanding
• may have many spelling errors
• may not use proper MLA citation.