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THE PROCESS OF COMPOSITION
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I. The Foundation of Effective Writing: Using Rubrics
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The word rubric originally referred to a heading in a book or manuscript, whether it was the work’s title, the title of
a chapter, or an introductory caption. The heading served as a guide to the text and was offset in red ink. The word
itself comes from the Latin rubrica, or “red earth,” a reference to the ink used 1. We start with the etymology to
emphasize that rubrics are a kind of foundation—something of the earth—when it comes to writing and other forms
of communication. This can then be made to fit our current educational definition (taken with a bit of trepidation
from Wikipedia):
A rubric is a scoring tool for subjective assessments. It is a set of criteria and standards linked to learning
objectives that is used to assess a student's performance on papers, projects, essays, and other assignments.
Rubrics allow for standardised evaluation according to specified criteria, making grading simpler and more
transparent. The rubric is an attempt to delineate consistent assessment criteria. It allows teachers and
students alike to assess criteria which are complex and subjective and also provide ground for self-evaluation,
reflection and peer review. It is aimed at accurate and fair assessment, fostering understanding and indicating
the way to proceed with subsequent learning/teaching.
This guide aims to expand on that definition—and to correct several key elements. First, rubrics are no more
subjective than any assessment tool. It is the erroneous belief of many students (and some teachers, unfortunately)
that writing can only be evaluated subjectively, or at least that all evaluations are subjective after a certain point.
While it is tempting to ascribe a kind of ineffable magic to good writing or communication, it is foolish; all creative
artifacts, from poems to speeches, can be broken down, assessed, and reassembled. All art has discrete elements that
are manipulated to produce a complicated whole. It is perhaps difficult to assess communication objectively, but
there is a quantifiable difference between effective and adequate writing. To assume otherwise is to rob great
writing of its human agency.
Second, it’s not about grading that writing or communication. Note that the previous paragraph never uses the word
“grading,” but relies instead on the idea of assessment or evaluation. We must replace the idea of grading with the
idea of learning—that is, applying an expert’s commentary to how well you’ve performed on a particular task. If
numerical shorthand (e.g., a score on a scale of ten, which we will use here) helps to indicate effectiveness, it should
be used; if, however, that number obscures learning, it should be avoided.
With that said, the scales used in this guide can be converted for traditional grading. Where appropriate, that
conversion has been included.
II. All Communication Answers a Prompt
Whether you write in a diary or as part of a final exam, all writing is created in response to a prompt. To return to
etymology for a moment, the word prompt is derived from promptus, meaning “brought forth,” “at hand,” or “ready.”
To prompt is to encourage, to question, to provoke—actions that do not and perhaps rarely require a classroom.
Poets may be prompted by the natural world around them; song-writers may be inspired by the pain of a break-up;
newspaper columnists may be driven by simple curiosity; yet they are only different in a cursory way from the
student who is given an assignment in class. We are all prompted to write. This means that we write for a reason,
with a goal in front of us. And that means that our effectiveness in meeting that goal can be assessed.
Keep in mind that effectiveness is a relative term, too. The goal of a love song is obviously different from the goal of
an academic essay, and neither has much in common with a journal entry; all three are prompted responses,
however, and all three can be planned, deconstructed, assessed, and emulated. This rubric provides a mechanism for
doing that—for planning, deconstructing, emulating, and assessing—almost any kind of communication.
Note: One of the primary purposes of DAMAGES+ is to aid in writing at the high school or college level. To that end,
understanding this rubric eliminates confusion because it can be applied to every mode of discourse—academic
essays, short stories, poetry, speeches, and virtually anything else.
1
Ruber, Latin for “red,” gives us rubrica and rubric, as well as the more common word ruby.
DETAIL | ARRANGEMENT | MEANING | APPROACH | GRAMMAR | ENDING | STYLE | +PRESENTATION
III. The Eight Elements of a Response
The DAMAGES+ mnemonic breaks down into Detail, Arrangement, Meaning, Approach, Grammar, Ending, Style,
and Presentation. Rendered as one sentence, it looks like this: The effectiveness of any response rests on the
meaningful arrangement of detail, especially the approach and ending, in answer to the prompt; poor grammar mars
effectiveness, while purposive style improves it. Because presentation is part of the assessment of only some
responses, it is considered separately 2.
These three elements initially
determine whether a response
will be effective, ineffective, or
somewhere in between.
The approach and ending can
help or hinder the response’s
overall effectiveness.
DETAILS
ARRANGEMENT
MEANING
APPROACH
GRAMMAR
ENDING
STYLE
PRESENTATION
Unintentional errors in grammar can mar
effectiveness; purposive and apt stylistic
elements can boost it. When considered,
poor presentation can lower effectiveness.
The following chart provides a quick delineation:
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∙ Quantity and clarity; incorporation of specifics, including quotations
A
∙ Holistic shape of response; separation of ideas; inter¶ movement
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∙ Central understanding and insight; effectiveness in answering prompt
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∙ Quality and efficacy; effective development of ideas and meaning
∙ Intra¶ logic and transitioning; syntactical variety and effectiveness
These elements are more or less responsible
for an initial assessment of effectiveness —
whether an essay is in the upper-half or
lower-half of all responses, for instance.
∙ Analysis of and insight into ideas and details in each ¶
∙Artfulness and effectiveness of opening ¶; thesis/crux of response
∙Type, frequency, and severity of grammatical errors ( only)
∙ Artfulness and effectiveness of ending ¶
These elements, on the other hand, can move
the effectiveness of a response up or down,
sometimes significantly.
∙ Effectiveness and appropriateness of voice, style, and general rhetoric
Impact of typos, formatting errors, lateness, etc. ( only)
Presentation is considered last, if at all.
It also mucks up the mnemonic to include presentation—although we could go with MAD PAGES…
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IV. DAMAGES+: Further Division and Definition
Each element of the mnemonic 3 DAMAGES+ can be further divided into two sub-categories that contribute to the
effectiveness of a response. The explanations below offer clarifying examples from several fields of writing and
should be studied as entry points for using the rubric to read, deconstruct, and emulate effective writing.
Detail: Quantity and Quality
Regardless of the prompt, all communication relies on an appropriate amount of carefully chosen detail. An
imagist’s poem (like those of Ezra Pound or William Carlos Williams 4) requires few details, but each image
must carry extraordinary weight; a breaking news article for a newspaper, on the other hand, chooses the
most important details for the opening of the writing, sticking as many other superfluous details as possible
toward the end.
Many academic assignments dictate the detail you must use, either through preparatory texts (such as
novels read in class before a test) or passages provided with the prompt (such as the non-fiction arguments
on the AP English Language exam). Regardless, your focus should be on using enough detail and making
that detail work effectively toward your goal. The governing word is efficacy, or the capacity of those details
to produce the intended result.
Arrangement: Inter- and Intra-¶ing
Arrangement, most often notated with the symbol ¶ 5, refers to the overall arrangement of the writing from
start to finish: the division of ideas into stanzas, paragraphs, acts, and so on; the movement between those
sections, with special attention to the transitional tools of the medium; and the cohesiveness of the work
when considered as a whole. A breaking news article must follow a structure, beginning with a lede and
funneling information from there; similarly, all poetry contains implicit or explicit formality (even postmodernist poetry; the deliberate refusal of form is also a kind of conscious arrangement); most plays have
three acts; and in essay-writing, a student might choose to emulate any number of models, from the
traditional five-paragraph essay to the classical model of rhetoric.
The second half of Arrangement refers to the order and coherence of the sentences within each ¶. It isn’t just
that the sentences must make sense, or that variation in sentence structure improves effectiveness (that
falls partially under the heading of Style); this is really an assessment of how ideas are ordered and
connected to each other. Even experimental poetry uses sentences, chopping them down into fragments and
phrases, using enjambment to split meaning across lines, and so on. As long as the prompt’s requirements
are clear, the structure can be evaluated 6.
Meaning: Ideas and Analysis
Analysis does not always refer to the deconstructive writing you are used to doing in school; all effective
poems, plays, and novels analyze something important 7. Of course, the academic responses you are often
asked to produce have clearly defined expectations when it comes to meaning: provide insight into a text or
topic, analyze it, and defend your analysis.
From the Greek mnemonikos, or “pertaining to memory.” Your brain is wired to work this way. To remember the lines of the
treble clef stave, many students are taught that “every good boy does fine” (E-G-B-D-F); to remember the colors of the spectrum,
many students are taught the name Roy G. Biv (Red-Orange-Yellow-Green-Blue-Indigo-Violet); and I have no idea what students
are taught for the planets, as the last few years have seen astronomers recognize anywhere from eleven planets (“My Very
Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants”—the three dwarf planets are Pluto, Ceres, and Eris) to eight (“My
Very Easy Method Just Seems Useless Now”).
4 Here is “The Red Wheelbarrow,” a poem by Williams:
so much depends / upon / a red wheel / barrow / glazed with rain / water / beside the white / chickens
5 This symbol is called a pilcrow, a typographical marking still used by most word-processing programs to designate paragraph
breaks. It may have originated with the Latin capitulum, used to offset the beginning of new chapters in a text. Here is the
possible evolution of the symbol:
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Sentence comes from the same Latin root that yields sense—sententia, meaning “thought, judgment, meaning, opinion,” by way
of sentire, “to have opinion,” also “to feel or perceive.” Sentences are the building blocks of opinion and perception in all writing.
7 Analysis come from the Greek word for “a breaking up,” and that in turns derives from analyein, “to release or set free.” Good
writing loosens our thoughts and frees us—which sounds hokey, yes, but is nevertheless true. Think of the lyrics to the songs that
move you, or the pacing in a movie scene that thrilled you viscerally.
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In general terms, the meaning of a piece refers to its central idea or ideas. How well does it respond to the
prompt? What unique ideas are raised, and how insightfully are they explored? A novel like The Catcher in
the Rye, for instance, explores timeless ideas of authenticity, isolation, and empathy, and is usually
celebrated for the analysis it provides of how a teenager experiences those central concepts.
To return to novels for another example, we might consider the debate over the terms science-fiction and
sci-fi 8. Harlan Ellison has argued that sci-fi refers to texts (novels, short stories, TV shows, films, etc.) that
lack deeper meaning, that are full of detail but lack insight into the human condition. He cites the movie
Independence Day as an example of this. Science-fiction, however, is to Ellison a meaningful genre that
tackles the deeper issues of humanity, such as what it means to be alive and how we interact with one
another. He cites the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep as an example. It isn’t a semantic debate.
Applied to what you might write as a student, the suggestion here is that an adequate paper might connect
the dots, fill the page with detail and perfectly serviceable, if cursory, insight; an effective paper, however,
would offer deeper insight into the same prompt, demonstrating maturity and nuance.
Approach: Opening and Thesis
The first kind of approach is (simply enough) the first thing written. In most academic essays, this is an
introductory paragraph. Students are often taught to begin in a particular way when writing about
literature, for instance; they open with a generality, tie it to the texts being analyzed, and then segue into a
thesis statement. In a journalist’s opinion piece, the approach might be an anecdote, told over several
paragraphs, that ultimately suggests the direction of the argument. More expository newspaper articles
begin with a lede that establishes as many pertinent details as possible in one or two sentences. The first
few lines of a poem set the tone and style. Whatever the form of the response, the introduction is one of the
most critical elements, because it is the first thing a reader sees.
The second kind of approach is a clarification of the overall meaning. In most academic pieces, this is the
thesis—the central claim that the piece sets forth and defends, whether it is a general argument of policy or
an analytical deconstruction. How it appears in a text varies widely 9. In fiction, this kind of approach might
also be called the central theme. In playwriting, it is sometimes called the central spine of the play.
Regardless, the thesis is judged for its clarity, inventiveness, and centrality (i.e., the way it drives the entire
response toward its conclusion).
Ending: Aptness and Artfulness
The ending of any piece is, as you might expect, how it ends. In poetry, it might be the couplet that turns a
Shakespearean sonnet; it might be the final stanza in a ballad; it might be the last few letters and symbols
that end one of ee cumings’ concrete poems. In a novel, it might be the last paragraph, or it might be the last
chapter. In academic writing, the ending is often the concluding paragraph, but it might just as easily be the
final few paragraphs.
Endings are assessed according to their aptness and artfulness, or how well they fit the rest of the piece and
how necessary they are. An ending should never be superfluous, and effective conclusions are more than
perfunctory restatements of earlier ideas. That may be serviceable, but it will never be effective. The ending
should draw from the preceding ¶s and present key insight into the overall meaning of the writing. The
turning couplet of a sonnet is a good example of this. The turn takes the preceding elements of the poem and
twists them (hence the “turn” designation), providing a new perspective not present until those final lines.
While an academic essay shouldn’t invert its argument in the conclusion, it should be indispensable;
otherwise, the writer may as well draw a line under a body paragraph and write “the end” beneath it 10.
Grammar: Quantity and Quality (of Errors)
In writing, grammar refers to mechanical, typographical, syntactical and all other compositional
components. As a term, it means “the rules of language,” and comes from a series of Greek and Latin roots
I’m not sure where the rebranded SyFy network falls here. My best guess: a crass, financially driven attempt to create a
trademarked, copyrighted name. (One can’t trademark “Sci-Fi,” after all, anymore than one can trademark “Romance” or “ActionAdventure.”)
9 Thesis, after all, comes from the Greek for “a setting down or placement,” and in writing refers not just to a proposition (as in
hypothesis) but to any framing perspective.
10 Writing “The End” is also an ending, of course, but not one that would be considered effective in many contexts.
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related to learning, drawing, and the art of letters 11. In a broader sense, grammar can be used to refer to the
rules for any kind of response, as Susan Sontag used it when writing about the “grammar of seeing” in her
collection of essays, On Photography.
When assessing a response’s quality, Grammar is a measure of precision with regard to the rules. Mistakes
can bring down effectiveness, depending on the quantity and severity of the errors. Remember that this is
relative; an absurdist poem has different rules from an academic paper, and an academic paper’s grammar
is judged differently if it is written by hand and under time constraints (see the note on timed and untimed
writing below). A flawless response is also a near impossibility, which contributes to the shifting standards
in grammatical penalties. For instance, even a typed term paper would survive a misused semicolon with all
its points intact (even careful writers make mistakes with complicated sentence structures 12); it wouldn’t,
however, survive more serious or elementary errors, such as confusing “their” with “there” or “they’re,”
splicing commas, or dropping words entirely.
Style: Control and Authenticity
Style, often called voice on other rubrics, is built on a few sub-elements of writing, especially diction, syntax,
and tone, and is assessed usually for effect and authenticity. (Classical rhetoric defines style as one of its
canons, but for the purposes of this mnemonic, we can consider rhetorical devices and rhetoric in general to
fall under this section.) The great difficulty of writing stylistically is that a writer’s voice evolves over time
and is the product of reading, absorbing, and selectively emulating scores of other writers. In fact, what
many writers in your position want to do—avoid copying other writers—is precisely the wrong approach to
take; without trying on bits of the style of those other writers, you will never discover your voice. There is
no spontaneous generation of style, just its careful inculcation.
In brief, the assessment of style is the assessment of a writer’s command of style’s components (diction,
syntax, and so on) in service to a higher purpose. A poem’s use of imagery, pacing, and rhythm is only
effective in connection to a deeper meaning; similarly, a rhetorically effective essay’s style depends on
context, audience, and purpose. Flourishes and ornamentation only help in small doses.
One final note on style: While it usually serves only to increase a response’s effectiveness, clumsy or
distracting stylistic efforts can harm a paper. Swearing in literary analysis, for instance, will only hurt you
(no matter what you think of The Scarlet Letter), and slang in general should be carefully considered in
academic writing; above all, though, you should avoid trying to earn stylistic points by searching for a
random and erudite-sounding synonym 13.
+Presentation: Pride and Propriety
Presentation depends on propriety above all else (I threw pride into the subheading for the alliterative
effect as much as its obvious correlation). For any response, there is an expectation about what it will look
like and how it will be delivered, and a failure to meet those expectations can hurt the overall effectiveness.
This element is sometimes assessed separately, since (for instance) shoddy work with MLA formatting does
not necessarily hurt an argument paper’s overall meaning, detail, or arrangement; in a documented
research paper, however, formatting is part of the prompt’s requirements, and might therefore be assessed
with the rest of the paper.
Regardless, you must strive to avoid serious errors, especially with homophones (“their,” “they’re,” and
“there,” for instance) and the infamous Autocorrect (“defiantly” instead of “definitely”). Here are other selfinflicted injuries, from flesh wounds to mortal blows:
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Comma splices
One of the most interesting words derived from these roots is grammaticaster, or a “mean verbal pedant.” When someone
corrects your split infinitive or dangling modifier and makes you feel stupid about it, he or she might be a grammaticaster. And if
that sounds a bit like a wizard, you aren’t far off. From the Online Etymology Dictionary:
M.E. gramarye also came to mean "learning in general, knowledge peculiar to the learned classes" (early 14c.), which included
astrology and magic; hence the secondary meaning of "occult knowledge" (late 15c.), which evolved in Scottish into glamor.
12 And in this way, I have covered myself in the inevitable event of my own, probably egregious, mistakes.
13 Right-clicking in any word-processing program will give you a list of synonyms, often to unintentionally humorous effect. Run
through this process, the single-sentence articulation of DAMAGES is: The efficiency of whichever retort rests on the momentous
display of detail, above all the loom and finish, in counter to the prompt; underprivileged grammar blights helpfulness, while
purposive fashion advances it. That took far too long to do, by the way.
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Sentence fragments
Dropped words
Misspelling words from the prompt
These errors affect an assessment of your grammar, too, but they more often reflect this category of the
rubric.
V. A Note on Timed vs. Untimed Responses
Simply put, timed responses are held to different (and in many ways less rigorous) standards than untimed
responses. In essay writing, for instance, a timed essay isn’t held to the same standards as one for which you are
given weeks; if they have the same misspellings and dropped words, the timed work might escape unscathed. Timed
work of any kind is almost always assessed as a draft, not a polished product. Too many mistakes, however, will
reveal either carelessness or ineptness, and that can drag your response’s effectiveness down.
When your work is ostensibly edited and revised, on the other hand, the standards are obviously higher.
Grammatical mistakes are more costly, presentation errors are more glaring, and the expectations for effectiveness
are more strenuous. Style plays a larger role, too, as writers with more time gain the luxury of experimentation.
Of course, to keep things in perspective, you should realize that your readers will not linger over minutiae like
missing pagination and split infinitives. Good readers look first for the meaningful arrangement of detail, and then
they consider the remaining elements. This means that even effective untimed responses may have errors of various
kinds.
It is important to emphasize one of those last points: that readers do not sit down with a guide like this and spend
hours deliberating over every essay you write 14. Good readers have internalized something like the DAMAGES
structure; or, to be more accurate, the DAMAGES rubric is an articulation of what they have already internalized. You
are fortunate in that you do not need to memorize this guide or its particulars. You should simply refer back to it,
use it, incorporate it into the processes of reflection and revision—essentially, your goal is the incremental
internalization of the lessons of this guide.
VI. Quality as a Measure of Effectiveness
At the outset, we expressed DAMAGES+ as a single sentence: The effectiveness of any response rests on the meaningful
arrangement of detail, especially the approach and ending, in answer to the prompt. Poor grammar mars effectiveness,
while purposive style improves it.
The key term in that phrasing is effectiveness. The quality of a writing response is classified by many institutions 15 as
either effective, adequate, limited, inadequate, or ineffective. The actual words are unimportant, though; we
might use distinguished, proficient, uneven, unsatisfactory, and unacceptable to refer to the same five divisions.
We might use letters like A, B, C, D, and F. We might also use numbers, checks and check-pluses (which should be
checks-plus), stickers, gold stars, emoticons 16, and so on.
The important thing is that all of these scales are equivalent and can be lined up, as they have been in the other
DAMAGES documents. The point values are arbitrary, at least to a certain extent. They could just as easily be out of
75 points, or 42, or some other number; the relative scale and how it helps us figure out how we've performed on a
task are all that matters.
In other words, you should pay careful attention to the language of each example that follows. Word choice—a term
like perfunctory or artful—dictates the elements of an effective response. The point value (or relative happiness of
the emoticon) is merely a reflection of that effectiveness.
It’s the unfortunate side of most high-stakes assessments and over-scheduled academics: You spend considerable time and
effort to produce something—an application, an essay, a speech, a song—and it is judged in moments by its audience. It is, in fact,
a strange source of pride to some AP Exam scorers to be able to burn through as many as 45 essays in an hour.
15 Including the College Board, the monolithic and hopefully non-litigious entity from which these particular terms are adapted.
16 I don’t know if I should be proud or deeply embarrassed that I researched emoticons in order to use them.
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