Tests and Composition Exercises

1 Let the pupils exchange composition papers and see how many and what useless words have been used– how many words that convey nothing new.

2 How many words that obscure the meaning.

3 How many words out of their usual place, and whether this alteration makes the statement in any way more intersting or more energetic.

4 Whether a sentence is ambiguous; whether it really means more than one thing or more than the writer intended; whether it can be so read as to mean something different.

5 Whether there is something clear on paper, but ambiguous if spoken aloud.

–Ezra Pound (again from ABC of Reading(see previous post for bibliographic info))