Blog 67

Dear Author,

After reading your submission I would like you to Revise and Resubmit your article. Though your paper is both timely and relevant and the topic of bullying is always going to be timely and relevant in our society I did not feel that you met all three requirements because I did not find the article to be written in a compelling way. Though the topic is a good one and I believe that the readers of commonplace would benefit from your article greatly after some revision.

The intro was a very good start and made the article very timely. Listing all of those celebrities was effective in reaching a very broad audience. The only issue that I see is that you are assuming the audience feels a certain way on a topic. When you say, “Everybody knows who he or she is and want to meet him or her” it might bristle the audience a little because you are talking for them. Instead maybe say “Many people look up to these individuals and meeting them would be a major highlight in most sports, movie, and entertainment fans lives.” The other thing that makes this article un-compelling is that you also speak for the celebrities. “On the outside you would think all the aforementioned celebrities are attractive and happy, but on the inside they have some bad memories that haunt them each and every day” Do you know for a fact that it haunts them every day? I’m pretty sure that since they are rich and happy they don’t toss and turn at night over the loser who stole their lunch money. Maybe try something like “Though some have probably overcome the bad memories now that they have risen above these events have shaped their lives and bullying will forever have an effect on their person.” This is especially prominent in the last paragraph. Make sure you aren’t speaking for the celebrity.

Throughout the entire paper there are many awkwardly phrased sentences. It makes the paper hard to read and in a way makes you as the other sound confusing. By eliminating these awkward phrases it will help the flow and direction of the paper and even make your argument sound more sincere and clear. One such sentence is “The school building has become a danger zone for certain children because they are constantly looking behind their shoulder to loom out for that person waiting to take their lunch money or give them a daily beating.” Maybe this is just an instance of wrong word choice but when I read the statement it confused me.
Also in the second paragraph when relating bullying to global warming I think that it is a comparison of something that affects our whole world as opposed to one individual. Maybe stick to how murder and terrorism relate back to a person being bullied such as school shootings and other occurrences in recent years.

Minor spelling mistakes and grammatical errors throughout the paper.

Good argument and call to action at the end of the paper! Maybe a personal anecdote or hypothetical situation would be effective somewhere in the paper. Especially if you intro-ed with it and then listed the celebrities saying that this may have been a daily occurrence for these people throughout their teen years, just a suggestion to make it a little more relatable to people who haven’t been bullied.

I hope that you find these suggestions helpful! I really enjoyed reviewing your paper good luck with the revisions!!
Danielle Kurnick

I don't know that I did this right I tried to follow commonplace but is this what everyones looked like?