A Helpful Comments Key for Grading Essays

Keyed grading is becoming increasingly popular. With it, you can put in shorthand comments that the students can decipher at their leisure, basking in the wisdom of your guidance and policing their own editing and learning process. Here are some grading keys you might want to use in your own classroom in order to maximize your instruction and accelerate student growth.

ü = A good point is made. Nice reasoning, explanation, development, examples, quotes, etc. Where’s my fifty bucks?

¶ = New paragraph is needed. Paragraphs make it seem like you’re exploring various ideas. Teachers like that sort of thing.


? = Were you dropped on your head as a child? Did you inhale paint fumes or something?


Awk / A = Read this out loud. Does it make sense? Of course it doesn’t. Hang your head in shame.


C = Cunning. Devious. Manipulative. And other adjectives I’m too lazy to look up.

D = Okay, seriously? You need to start reading and thinking. I can’t do it for you. Shape up.

Frag / F = Dude, do I have to spell all of these out? You don’t talk. Like this. In real. Life. Do. You?

NBQ = Your quotes and your argument are like two strangers on a train who never actually talk to each other, and therefore have nothing in common and no connection. Also, one stranger murders the other. I love thriller novels, don’t you?

Obv = Great reasoning, genius. “Atticus Finch is a good man.” Right, because it’s real tough to spot the one non-racist white guy in the South before the Civil Rights era. Take a bow, kid. You’re going places.


Org = Last, you should have a good point to make. First, you need to read and think. Whoops, did I mess up my order here? Good thing you don’t do that.


Rep / R = I’ve heard this before. I’ve heard this before. I’ve heard this before. I’ve heard this before.


SP = If you can’t use a dictionary, you’ll probably wind up selling your blood for a Happy Meal by the time you’re thirty.


Sum = No kidding, is Lord of the Flies really about a bunch of kids on an island? Wow! Thanks! I had no idea! Theme and underlying polemic are so last year anyway.


T = Consequently, I can’t understand what you’re saying. Moreover, I used your essay to wipe the tears from my eyes.

WC = I don’t think “consanguine” means what you think it means, bub.



"I used this comment key and my kids wound
up going to Harvard! Thanks, comment key guy!"