Simple definition strategy
Makes correct punctuation do-able

Teachers shouldn't correct students' errors in grammar and punctuation. Students should make their own corrections.

Teachers can, however, help students by giving them a carefully phrased checklist of punctuation errors and common grammar mistakes students can look for in their own writing.

Prerequisites

For this trick to work, you must

• Identify a few frequent errors in student writing that you want students to eliminate by year's end.

• Flag those errors any time they appear in students' final drafts.

• Penalize students' grades when the errors appear in their final drafts.

• Teach the relevant grammar and punctuation rules of many times, many ways.

Define your standards

Define correct punctuation and each of your other standards of writing mechanics in terms of

• Items you can count

• Sentence-specific questions that can be answered yes or no.

Let me give you an example of how the trick works.

Let's one of your annual goals is

Students capitalize the first word of each sentence.

When you see a word group between periods or other ending punctuation in a student paper, you ask, "Did the student capitalize the first word of this sentence?"

The answer is either yes or no.

You can count the number of times the student did capitalize the first word of the sentence and the number of times the student did not.

Unhelpful mechanics standards

What usually happens is that teachers have an objective such as

Students will use commas correctly.

That objective is too broad to be useful to either the teacher of the students.

If you ask, "Did the student use commas correctly?" the answer might be, "Some rules were used correctly some times."

Unless you specify which comma rules you want students to use correctly, you can't count the number of times the student applied the rule correctly and the number of times the student didn't.

What's worse is that you can't tell Joshua to correct his work to make sure he uses commas correctly because he won't know which of the 187 million comma rules (Josh's estimate) to apply.

Helpful punctuation standards

On the other hand, if your goal is that

Students will put a comma between the clauses of a compound sentence.

you make it possible for Josh to determine whether he did or did not correctly place a comma within a compound sentence.

Additional benefits

Phrasing your writing mechancs issues using this simple trick has several benefits.

• Students can review and edit their drafts to correct punctuation and grammar mistakes.

• Students can track how often they make a particular error in each writing assignment.

• Students see how mastering a rule improves their grades.

If you define your mechanical issues using this simple trick, you'll make grading papers easier for yourself.

You will also simplify teaching. Since using correct punctuation depends on knowing correct grammar, the list of rules you develop for punctuation will help you zero in on the most impotant grammar to teach student writers.