The Diagnostic Essay

How to Write a Paper of Collegiate Quality: The Diagnostic Essay

The first molecule of knowledge, in regard to writing, ingrained into the grey matter of my brain dictates that the use of first person should rarely occur, and the use of second person results in certain death, unless the purpose of the written piece is to directly violate such mandates.  Therefore, within the very first sentence of my essay I have broken two god-given writing 140 rules: do not use the first person and do not use a passive voice or the word “is.”  I might even have rebelled against the academic tendency to discredit the use of dry, sarcastic humor within a metaphorical, creative writing tone, syntax, and diction in an academic paper or context.  Oh well.  I have now given you yet another example of improper syntax, which would be perfectly acceptable within another genre but not in academics.  Furthermore, this lovely scrolling listing of my flippant thoughts is quite unacceptable; ideas should be incorporated into logical, premeditated, and organized sentences and paragraphs.

While on the subject of structure, every last paradigm, to which most elementary, secondary, and high school teachers cling, that resembles a writing plan with five paragraphs bleeding the “proper” transition words should suffer a most painful death.  With this golden rule I vehemently agree; I will sever the head of a five paragraph essay from its spinal chord and feed it to myself on a silver platter.  My other pet peeves in regard to writing exist as follows: use of contractions, writing devoid of a voice, run-ons, confusion of words such as “affect” and “effect,” and the list continues indefinitely.  And in case you are wondering, yes I did just begin a sentence with the word “and,” and some college students unfortunately do not possess the capability of constructing a full, complete sentence.  Papers should obviously be intelligible and address the topic, and they should not end abruptly.