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English Composition 1

Understanding Editing Marks in Essays

This page should help you understand marks that appear in your graded essays, with links to additional information designed to help you understand and eliminate the errors. Other marks not listed here may appear in an essay, but this page covers most of the marks. (See Identifying and Correcting Common Errors in Writing for more information).

(')
A missing apostrophe, an apostrophe in the wrong place, or an apostrophe where one should not be (more information)

(")
An error involving a quotation mark: a missing quotation mark, a single quotation mark (') used where a regular quotation mark (") should be, or a quotation mark where one should not be

(;)
A semicolon used incorrectly, usually because what comes before or after the semicolon is not a complete sentence (more information)

(:)
A colon error: a colon used incorrectly or a place where a colon is needed but is missing

(//)
Faulty parallelism: two or more items in a series that are not presented in a parallel fashion (more information)

(#)
An error involving spacing, either spacing between words or punctuation or the spacing of lines (all lines of an essay should be double spaced, with no extra spacing anywhere)

(awk)
Confusing or awkward wording: usually a part of a sentence with flawed grammar or syntax

(c)
A comma error: a comma is needed or a comma should be deleted (more information)

(cap)
A capitalization error: a word or words that should be capitalized or that should not be capitalized

(cs)
A comma splice, a serious sentence-boundary error involving a comma separating two complete sentences (more information)

(font)
An error involving fonts: fonts too large or too small, fonts different from the rest of the paper, fonts in bold that should not be, etc. 

(frag)
A sentence fragment (also called an incomplete sentence): a serious sentence-boundary error involving a "sentence" that is missing a subject, a finite verb, or a completed thought (more information)

(mix)
Mixed construction, occurring when two parts of a sentence do not go together grammatically or logically (more information)

(mod)
A modifier error, often a phrase beginning with an "-ing" verb (more information)

(pron)
A pronoun error, usually a pronoun that does not agree in number with its antecedent, such as "they" used for "a person" (more information)

(quot)
An error involving a quotation, often an inaccurate quotation, quoted words that appears differently in an essay than they appear in the original source

(run-on)
A run-on sentence, a serious sentence-boundary error involving two sentences (or independent clauses) not separated by any punctuation (more information)

(sp)
A misspelled word

(s/v)
A lack of subject/verb agreement: a verb that does not agree in number with its subject (more information)

(typo)
A typographical error

(u)
An error involving underlining, either words underlined that should not be or necessary underlining that is missing  

(w)
An incorrectly used word, such as "there" used where "their" is needed or "alot" used instead of "a lot" (more information)