ENGL 1102—Assignment Sheet for Analysis of Writing Style, Evidence Arrangement/Engagement, and
Audience in Patricia Cornwell’s Portrait of a Killer, Chapters 1-5 (Fall 2022)
For this assignment, you will analyze the ways that Patricia Cornwell presents her research in Chapters 1
through 5 of Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper, Case Closed to persuade audiences to believe that
Walter Sickert, the Victorian artist and actor, was the infamous serial killer “Jack the Ripper.”
In this analysis, you will explain how Cornwell uses elements of writing style, as well as how she
arranges and engages with different forms of evidence, to appeal to audiences. You will also examine and
discuss the audiences’ experiences and values, and a couple of reviews of Cornwell’s book from
goodreads.com and a database in Odum Library’s GALILEO.
Stylistic elements include tone (or the author’s attitude toward the subject of the work, e.g. critical,
skeptical, stirred, mysterious, etc. ), point of view (first-, second-, and/or third-person), narrative
voice (that helps us to “hear” the person telling the story and gives us a sense of the narrator’s
personality), characterization (concerns whether a character, such as Walter Sickert or Jack the
Ripper, is presented as round or flat), figurative language (metaphors, similes, personification,
onomatopoeia, symbolism, idioms, hyperbole, understatement, etc.), sensory imagery (descriptive
details that help us to imagine seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, and/or smelling something), repeated
words or phrases for emphasis, sentence types (simple, compound, complex, and compound-
complex), diction types (formal, informal, pedantic, colloquial, slang, abstract, concrete, and poetic),
etc. `
In this essay, you will need to incorporate at least 3 quotations from
the first 5 chapters of Cornwell’s Portrait of a Killer, 1 quotation
from a review of Cornwell’s book on goodreads.com, and 1 more
quotation from a professionally published review of her text in a
database in GALILEO. You may need more than 3 quotations from
Cornwell’s book to adequately support your thesis statement, but this
will depend on the evidence that you include in your paragraphs on
writing style and evidence arrangement/engagement.
It is important that, regardless of the number of quotations that you
include in your paper, no more than 30% of your paper is made up of
quotations. If more than 30% of your paper consists of quotations,
you have plagiarized, even if you correctly cited. Overquoting is one
form of plagiarism.
At least three-fourths of the body of your essay (The body is the
portion of the paper between the introduction and the conclusion.),
should be an analysis of Cornwell’s writing style. If the majority of
your essay’s body is an analysis of Cornwell’s audiences and
evidence, rather than writing style, your earned grade on the final
draft of this essay will be a “D” or less.
The grade for the final draft of this assignment will comprise 20% of
the total course average.
Your Rough Draft for this assignment is due under “Assignments” in
BlazeVIEW by Sunday, August 28, at 11:59 p.m., and the Final Draft
is due, also in BlazeVIEW, by Sunday, September 11, at 11:59 p.m.
On Monday, August 29 and Wednesday, August 31, you will complete
two Peer Reviews in class and submit your two peers’ rough drafts
with your feedback under “Assignments” in BlazeVIEW by Wednesday, August 31, at 11:59 p.m. The
peers in your group and their e-mail addresses will be included on a Peer-Review Group List, which you
will find under “Content.” You will need to answer all of the questions on the Peer-Review Guide that I
will also have posted for you under “Content” in BlazeVIEW. Please cut and paste the Peer-Review Guide
Rationale: This assignment
challenges students to move
beyond the more formulaic
“ethos, pathos, and logos”
exploration of a text and to
take a closer look at how
stylistic elements like
narrative voice, diction
types, tone, point of view,
and sensory imagery can
influence how audiences
think and feel. Additionally,
it allows students to see how
different genres can
influence one another (such
as case studies and book
reviews, letters and
newspaper articles, memoirs
and biographies, and visual
art and drama) and how
genre and where a text is
published largely impact
writing style. A final and
equally useful benefit is that
elements of biased and
objective, as well as
constructive and non-
constructive, criticism will
be easier for students to
identify.
into your peers’ rough drafts (following each essay) and type your answers to each question directly into
the Peer-Review Guide. Once you have embedded the Peer-Review Guide into both of your peers’
rough drafts and answered all of the Peer-Review Questions, you will sit next to each of your two peers
during the last 20 minutes of class on the second Peer-Review Day and orally discuss your feedback on
your peers’ rough drafts with your two peers. Finally, you will e-mail your two peers their feedback and
then submit the two peer-reviewed rough drafts in BlazeVIEW.
Please do not e-mail me and ask me to send you your peers’ rough drafts for you to review. If one or
more peers in your group did not e-mail you their rough draft, you will need to let me know in class on
Monday, August 29. I will send you one or more of your peers’ rough drafts only during class on
Monday, August 29.
The rough draft of this analysis should be a minimum of 500 words; and the final draft should be no less
than 1000 words. Depending on the evidence that you use to support your thesis statement, your final
draft may need more than 1000 words. Some types of evidence will need more detailed explanations than
others.
Both drafts should be formatted MLA style (double-spaced, with one-inch margins all around; name, class
information, and date placed at the upper left-hand corner of the first page; and last name placed one-half
of an inch from the upper right-hand corner of the page) and typed in 12-point Times New Roman font,
and they should also include a Works Cited page. The word count only includes the essay’s title and the
essay; it does not include the words on the Works Cited page.
Please include an introduction with a thesis statement; a minimum of six body paragraphs (1 focusing
on audience interests and values, 1 on the two book reviews, 1 on evidence arrangement/engagement, and
3 on writing style) evidence with textual evidence and explanations to support the thesis statement; and a
conclusion that restates the thesis statement using different words, reiterates the key points of the
analysis, and ends with an intriguing insight. For a complete outline of this paper from the introduction to
the conclusion, please refer to the “Detailed Outline for Analysis of Writing Style, Evidence
Arrangement/Engagement, and Audience in Patricia Cornwell’s Portrait of a Killer” that I posted for
you under “Content” in BlazeVIEW.
Your thesis statement needs four elements. It should comment on how Cornwell uses writing style, as
well as how she arranges and engages with different forms of evidence, to appeal to audiences that
represent a variety of experiences, values, and perspectives, and to persuade these audiences to consider
or accept her argument that Walter Sickert, the Victorian artist and actor, was the serial killer nicknamed
“Jack the Ripper.”
Here’s an example of a thesis statement that you can use if you like:
In chapters 1 through 5 of her case study, Cornwell uses specific elements of writing style, and she
arranges and engages with various forms of evidence, to convince a diversity of audiences to consider or
accept her argument that Walter Sickert, the Victorian artist and actor, was the serial killer nicknamed
“Jack the Ripper.”
This essay should be written from the third-person perspective, which is appropriate for any academic
paper, because it creates an objective tone and therefore enhances the credibility of your argument. In
other words, you want to avoid using the first-person (or “I”) and the second-person (or “you”) points
of view.
Other Ground Rules for This Analysis
If you do not electronically submit a 500-word rough draft in BlazeVIEW when it is due and
participate fully in the peer-reviewing process on both Peer-Review Days, you will lose 10 points on the
final draft of this paper. In other words, you are required to submit your rough draft in BlazeVIEW by
the due date and participate in both peer reviewing sessions to avoid losing 10 points on your final
draft for the rough draft and peer reviews. As stated in the course syllabus, I will not accept a late
rough draft or late peer reviews. If you participate in both peer-reviewing sessions but did not
electronically submit the rough draft of your paper in BlazeVIEW when it was due, you will lose 10
points on the final draft. If your rough draft is from 100 to 250 words in length, you will lose 5 points
on the final draft. If you submit your paper as any file other than Word, you will lose 5 points on the
final draft. Ten points will also be deducted from your final draft grade if you miss the peer-reviewing
process, which means that if you don’t complete the two peer reviews, you will lose 10 points on the
final draft of this paper. If you complete peer-review forms for both of your peers but do not sit next to
your peers and orally discuss your feedback on their rough drafts with them, 5 points will be deducted
from your final draft. Additionally, if you completely review only one peer’s rough draft and orally
discuss your feedback with that peer, you will lose 5 points on your final draft.
Please do not send half of your final draft on the due date and the other half later; 10 points will be
deducted for each day that the assignment is submitted late. I will not accept the final draft beyond
three days after the due date.
Additionally, two points will be deducted for each set of fifty words that you do not include on your
final draft. No points will be deducted for exceeding the minimum word count.
Please don’t risk making an F on the rough and final drafts of this paper. Plagiarism also constitutes
grounds for failing this course. If more than 30% of your rough or final draft consists of quotations,
you have plagiarized. Neglecting to credit a source for any specific information that you include is
plagiarism. Plagiarism also occurs when you do not correctly cite a source and when you fail to
surround an author’s direct words with quotation marks. If most of your paper consists of another
Last Completed Projects
| topic title | academic level | Writer | delivered |
|---|