This is an excerpt from an environmental paper I wrote last semester on the plastic islands in the ocean. Reading it when I originally submitted it, I did not see any issues. Reading it now I found MANY comma splices, which is what I have been working on to improve my writing, but I also found commas that I did use in the correct way. I highlighted my mistakes in red and highlighted the commas I used in the correct way in blue. Overall my writing style has stayed the same, which I am happy with, but some of my common mistakes that caused lower essay scores have greatly improved. I noticed that I used vague words often such as things. I found that replacing the word with more details made my paper stronger. I lastly noticed that I did not put commas before words such as which. All of these mistakes are much easier for me to spot when reading my papers over again. This, in fact, has made me a stronger writer and has made my papers stronger.
Overall I feel like I could have used a first and a second draft. For this paper and many of my papers I only had the first draft. It could have been nice to have the first draft and then review it again to be sure I looked over mistakes. This we did in English 110 that would have been beneficial in my other classes.
“Over many decades, we as humans have managed to dump tons of garbage into the ocean and pollute the water. Plastic takes thousands of years to decay and in that time it is eaten by an animal, contaminating the water, and causing us harm. In the most polluted parts of the ocean, the amount of plastic exceeds the amount of plankton six times over. This amount of garbage is in specific areas due to the ocean’s current. These areas are called “garbage islands” and there are five in total, there is still some garbage in other areas of the oceans, but these harbor the majority of the waste. One of these islands is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is located in the central North Pacific Ocean and is larger than the state of Texas. There is also garbage patches in the Indian and Atlantic oceans. The SES (Sea Education Society) studied the plastic in these patches and calculated that there is over 580,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer.
The plastic going into the ocean comes from a few different places, about 20% comes from ships and platforms that are offshore but the rest is either blown into the sea, picked up by the tides or international dumping. In plastic there are chemicals, these chemicals are released into the water and contaminate it. This typically leads to fish being contaminated. Some plastics don’t have chemicals but when they are in the water, they absorb other surrounding chemicals, these are then ingested by animals and then we, in turn, eat these animals. It may not seem like much at first, but it turns into a vicious cycle of events. Some toxins from plastic come from mercury, lead and cadmium which have been found in fish before, and any of those toxins can be dangerous to humans. Other toxins found in plastic have been linked to cancer, birth defects, immune system issues, and childhood developmental issues. One of the biggest types of plastic is BPA plastic which has definitely been avoided, most every plastic drinking bottle that you can buy to refill says “BPA free”, but not all manufacturers don’t use BPA. The polymer chains of BPA are slowly broken down and can enter the human body from eating contaminated fish or drinking contaminated water. This chemical can interfere with human hormonal function.”
