Dear Guest, Mentor Torment,

I edit bad writers' (primarily engineers') work for a living. Often I am in despair over just such quandaries.

I have fairly significant expertise in the fields of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. I also have a fair degree of disdain for the modern "specialized" education. Moreover, I am a notoriously obsessive proofreader (though not always of my own posts -- sigh).

However, that said, in my professional capacity I would be much more alarmed by your grad student's evident inability to construct and then follow a well-thought-out, logical outline (thesis, evidence, conclusion...) than by her lack of grammatical and spelling expertise. The latter is relatively easy to fix by any competent "live-ware" proofreader; the former, however, can be very difficult to repair, and to do so will probably require the skills of someone who has expertise in the subject matter (and the time to go out and re-research the topic). I speak, here, from a great deal of experience.

At any rate, you might consider giving your problem-child some remedial training in outlining.

It is amazing to me that she could have gotten through graduate school without being able to construct a logical argument. Peace speaks well about every professor's responsibility for a student's writing, but I would take it a step farther and urge every mentor to take responsibility for a student's ability to make and prove a point. Without that skill, I can't think of any profession in which one might excel.

Just my two cents...
Claire