CS3604 - Professionalism in Computing - Dr. Hartson - Fall 2002

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Writing Assignment #3

Table of Contents:

• Due Date
• Learning Objectives
• The Task
• Audience
• How to do it
• Deliverables
• Honor Code Statement
• Plagiarism Warning
• Cover Sheet

Due Date:

See the course calendar for all due dates.

Learning Objectives:

Like many other disciplines, a good place to learn about writing is to review and criticize someone else's work. This writing assignment will help familiarize you with the reviewing process for writing, helping you find problems of writing and the pitfalls of the kind that you can also expect to find in your own work.

The Task (What to do):

This assignment is to:

1. Read, review, and mark up (in red) for editing this article: pdf version Word version
2. Write additional comments as specified for the process of reviewing.

Audience:

The audience for your review is mainly the author of the paper and the editor who is in charge of the revision process. The audience for your written question answers also includes your instructor and the GTA.

Breaking it down into steps (How to do it):

Here are the details of how to do this assignment:

1. Download the article from the course Web site (use pdf or Word links above). Print off a copy and read it with a red pencil or pen in hand. As you read it, mark it up (with a red marker or pen; please use red) for spelling, word use, and grammatical errors. You can consult the editing guidelines from Prentice-Hall to learn about the markup symbols used by professionals, but we want you to use the simpler set of editing marks we covered in class. Simple insertions and deletions should suffice for most of it. You are not required to use these symbols, but your markings are expected to be clear and easy to understand so that the audience (the author, the instructor, and the GTA) can easily understand the point you are making or change you are suggesting and the text to which your comments refer. There are about 50 "seeded" errors in this article and you might even find some that we didn't put there. We don't expect you to find all the cases we think are errors, but you should get most of the ones that are more clear-cut.

2. Look over the section of the web-pages on writing which refer to Doing a review for a colleague and follow the links there to Jolliffe's questions that should be asked (and answered) regarding reviews, plus another useful set of questions, originating from the Department of English, Virginia Tech.
   

   Then write answers to these items mentioned in the Joliffe's "process of reviewing" article:

   • Has the writer met the expectations of his intended readers in terms of quality and salience of ideas, organization and support, and usage, mechanics, and punctuation?
   • Are the central ideas clear, correct, appropriate, and adequately developed?
   • Is the paper organized in some acceptable fashion so that the parts stick together and one part leads to the next?
   • Add any overall comments you have to make about the writing style (e.g., too much repetition) and writing quality and support with examples.

Supplement your answers to the above questions by giving specific examples on how the paper can be improved.

Deliverables:

1. A cover sheet (grading form with criteria for evaluation ), with top portion (down to the horizontal line) filled out. Print the grading from specific to this assignment from the course web site, by following the link given in this item. Staple grading form {link} as cover sheet to the front of your paper and fill out the top two lines. Papers without cover sheets will get a deduction of 5 points. No proofreaders are needed for this assignment.
2. The marked-up paper copy of the article.
3. The detailed answers to the reviewing questions posed in item 2 above.

Honor Code statement:

The Virginia Tech honor code is in effect for all work. This means that this writing assignment is to be done alone, without help from someone else. Exceptions: Getting help in your writing from the Writing center is an important exception, and is always encouraged. Further, this application of the honor code is not intended to interfere with the free exchange of ideas and peer assistance that support learning, including general discussions about the assignment and the type of writing involved with other students, the instructor, and/or the GTA.

Plagiarism Warning:

NOTE about plagiarism: We will be especially zealous in prosecuting Honor Court cases involving plagiarism, especially those where material is taken from other students or from the Web or Internet. Plagiarism of any work from a current or former student in this course is considered to be an honor code violation. Through the use of peer evaluations and collaborative development, and the use of the WWW, there is a strong possibility that you will be exposed to concepts and ideas that you can use in your own work. Getting permission to use those ideas and concepts from the originator (except when it is already in the public domain) and/or giving appropriate acknowledgment in your own work circumvents a charge of plagiarism.

 

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Last Updated 2001/02/28
© J.A.N. Lee, 1996-2001.
Modified by Rex Hartson, 2002