An A-B paper will:

• clearly and concisely summarize the argument (elucidating its main claim, reasons, organizational pattern, and other relevant parts)

• clearly state the article's medium and genre

• analyze the ethical, logical, and emotional appeals used in the argument

• use clear explanation to show how the rhetorical appeals operate

• carefully characterize the style of the essay (syntax and diction)

• be developed with specific evidence and amass considerable details from the essay

• follow an effective organizational pattern which is appropriate for the audience and has a logical progression

• include paragraphs which are coherent, unified, and effectively developed 

• contain a variety of skillfully constructed sentences

• promote clarity and effectiveness with standard usage, mechanics, and spelling; and a precise and ample vocabulary  

A C paper will:

• summarize the argument, but leave out a few parts (elucidating its main claim, reasons, organizational pattern, and other relevant parts)

• state the article's medium and genre, but incompletely

• analyze the ethical, logical, and emotional appeals used in the argument, but omit one or two important appeals

• use explanation to show how the rhetorical appeals operate, but have limited explanation

• characterize the style of the essay but in a limited way (syntax and diction)

• be developed with with some specific evidence, but exclude some central pieces

• follow an organizational pattern which is appropriate for the audience and has a somewhat logical progression

• include paragraphs which are sometimes incoherent

• contain sentences which are not always grammatically incorrect

• might contain a couple of major errors

• contain sentences with inconsistent use of standard usage, mechanics, spelling  

A D-F paper will:

• fail to summarize the argument clearly and concisely  (elucidating its main claim, reasons, organizational pattern, and other relevant parts)

• not state the article's medium and genre

• provide an incomplete  analysis of the ethical, logical, and emotional appeals used in the argument

• provide a shallow explanation of how the rhetorical appeals operate

• mis-characterize the style of the essay (syntax and diction)

• use little or no specific evidence to support the analysis

• follow a confusing organizational pattern

• include many paragraphs which are incoherent

• contain sentences which are often grammatically incorrect

• contain many major errors

• contain sentences with very inconsistent use of standard usage, mechanics, spelling