Paper Writing Bloopers

Dumbest Things to Write Sensible Employment of Details

        Paper writing is a serious business. And by serious, it only means dead serious as it entails tons of researching efforts and seemingly endless revisions. Paper writing is undeniably one critical activity that demands a lot of the writer: technical writing skills, effective writing styles and importantly, logical employment of details.

     Without sensible employment of details, paper writing can turn from a supposedly academic written piece into a stupid, senseless and most often than not, drop dead hilarious work. Why?

     Technical aspects of writing such as grammar, punctuation or spelling can be corrected by the computer technology, but computer softwares don’t have the ability to distinguish whether what you are typing is already a piece of senseless crap. Technology can tell the writer “that detail is unnecessary” or “this sentence is illogical”. It can only serve as a technical writing corrector not a written substance police.

     As academic paper writing remains to be a serious student learning task, many still commit mistakes that transform their work as one of the dumbest written works. What do they have in common? Except from being tagged as paper writing bloopers, they all most likely employ illogical and oftentimes stupid details that can’t be spotted even by the most advanced technology.

     To concretely show what violation of sensible employment of details can do, here are some excerpts from the 30 Dumbest Things from School Essay (www.algebra.com/fun/Essays).

• • He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
  
  
• • The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM.
  
  
• • The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
  
  
• • From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
  
  
• • Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
  
  
• • Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
  
  
• • John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
  
  
• • The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
  
  
• • The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
  
  
• • The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
  
  
• • Even in his last years, Grand pappy had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
  
  

Whatever paper writing activity it is – essay, term paper, research or review – one thing is evidently important to keep in mind to be not cited in such list of funny and stupid works. Technical side of writing is genuinely essential in academic works, but the main criteria are no less than value and substance.