Pickin' a fight

Not sure why I do it, but every once in awhile I end up pickin' a fight I know I shouldn't bother with.  The latest one is with an instructor for one of my current classes.  We were given a group assignment that really should have been an individual assignment, as it in no way lent itself to meaningful division of labor.  Be that as it may, my group produced the required paper and PPT presentation on the ever-so exciting topic of a comparison of the collection development policies of two college libraries. (These policies serve as guidelines for what the library purchases, who does it, and what eventually gets weeded out).

We received very quick turnaround time for the grading.  Normally this would be welcome, however the feedback was limited to saying that our analysis was "good" and all other comments referred to mechanical issues such as proper APA format and some grammatical errors.  But what stuck out for me was a comment on one of the parts I had written in which the instructor said it was not a complete paragraph.  (You can find the exact paragraph in question at the end of this post).

While it is a short paragraph to be sure, this struck me as odd since it seems to satisfy my understanding of a paragraph.  Normally, i'd let it slide, but the lack of substantive feedback on the assignment and the overall empahsis on some nitpicking mechanics chafed me.  I read over the paragraph again.  I checked APA to see if there was some rule about the length of paragraphs (there isn't; they simply note that a paragraph should be characterized by unity and cohesiveness).  I looked up in Strunk and White, who had this to say: "As long as it holds together, a paragraph may be of any length." None of this should come to any surprise to anyone who has decent training in writing (I like to think my education in this area has been above average).

So, I emailed the instructor to express my disagreement.  And I know it's stupid b/c she's got better things to do, and I've got better things to do, but, you know, it bugged me.  I tell her I concede it was brief, but not incomplete, and I cite the above mentioned texts.  She writes back saying she disagrees.  Her rationale: "A paragraph should have at least 3 sentences."  Really?  Is this second grade composition?  I'm thinking to myself, c'mon now, you can do better than that. 

I write back saying it looks we'll just have to agree to disagree, but for the record where is it written that a paragraph has to have at least three sentences?  Her answer: "It goes back to years of education and old Voyages in English grammar books and being taught that all paragraphs require an opening, middle, and ending sentences at least.  It's most likely before your time."  Turns out I was right about the emphasis on elementary grammar school texts, as that turns out to be exactly what "Voyages in English" is.  Puhleez. 

It's all kind of ludicrous.  No doubt she's not happy to have me question her evaluation, and I understand that.  At the same time, I feel if she's going to correct my writing, she ought to be prepared to defend it.  I've let the conversation stop at this point, as I don't see any point in continuing it and the only response I could have going forward would be too snarky.  But, I'll keep writing two-sentence paragraphs where I see fit.

Here's the paragraph in question, along with her comment.

Evans and Saporano(2005) suggest the purpose(s) of evaluation should be made explicit in collection development policy documents, as different purposes will call for different techniques (p. 63). Neither[JMK1]  Chapman nor Saint Mary's heeds this advice.