Although there are many different varieties of the potato, the sweet potato and the idaho potato seem to be the two heavywieghts that dominate the potato conversation and consumption among americans. The sweet potato and the idaho potato could not be more different. Even though one sublte word seperates both of these startches, they could not farther apart in specific characaristics. First of all, the sweet potato has an orange colored startch in its center and usually and its thin skin may either be white, yellow, orange, red or purple on the outside, whereas the Idaho potato is opaque white in the middle and is mostly has a light brown color on its exterior. The sweet potato, which is charactarized by its name, tends to have a sweet, almost sugary flavor in comparison to the rather dull flavor of the unseasoned Idaho potato. Sweet potatoes are grown in relitively hotter, more humid climates, it also contains more carbohydrates. The sweet potato also takes longer to fry due to its different mineral and chemical properties. Sweet potatoes are also higher in fiber and they have a lower glycemic index which is important to diabetics and carb watchers. Overall, while they are very similar in many ways, there are several massive differences beteween these two cousins.
2:09 am on August 4th, 2010
First of all, check your spelling and basic grammar. I’ll take you through your extract in order:
1. ‘Idaho potato’ should have a capital ‘I’ because Idaho is a proper noun.
2. It’s heavyweights, not heavywieghts.
3. ‘Americans’ should have a capital ‘A’, same reason as above.
4. You have a typo with the word subtle.
5. It’s ’separates’, not ’seperates’.
6. It’s ’starches’, not ’startches’.
7. You missed out the word ‘be’ in the clause that starts ‘they could not farther apart’, and I’m not sure if this is just a British thing but I’ve mostly seen it written ‘further’.
8. ‘Characaristics’ is spelled ‘characteristics’.
9. Again, ’startch’ doesn’t need the second ‘t’.
10. ‘…and usually and…’ needs one of the ‘ands’ taking out to make sense.
11. ‘…and is mostly has a light brown…’ – the word ‘is’ should actually be ‘it’.
12. ‘Charactarized’ is spelled ‘characterized’.
13. ‘relitively’ is spelled ‘relatively’.
14. The comma after ‘…humid climates’ should be a semi-colon instead ( ; )
15. If this is for a school essay, you should lengthen ‘carb watchers’ to ‘carbohydrate watchers’.
With regard to the structure, the thing that stands out the most is that you say at the start that the two potatoes could not be more different, and that they could not be farther apart in specific characteristics. But in your conclusion you say that they are very similar in many ways besides having big differences. Therefore, they *could* be more different.
So you need to reword your conclusion to reflect your initial premise, which you have proved in the text from your researched examples of their characteristics.
Hope this helped?
2:24 am on August 4th, 2010
Since this paragraph directly compares two things, consider a two-column table. It will be faster to read and to scan.
Anything that you don’t have information on both sides on, you can put in the following paragraph.
Example:
The sweet potato and idaho potato dominate the potato conversation and consumption among Americans. Here’s a comparison of these two potatoes:
Sweet Potato………………………|..Idaho Potato
=======================+=================
Orange-colored center…………..|…Opaque white
Light-brown color…………………|….Mostly light-brown color
Tastes sweet, almost sugary….|….Dull taste
Sweet potatoes are grown in hot, humid climates, and contain more carbohydrates. They also take longer to fry.
I’d also leave out the sentences about “they couldn’t be farther apart” or “there are several massive differences”. You don’t need an introduction or conclusion to every paragraph, in this case, the data tells the story.
3:22 am on August 4th, 2010
Orihime did an excellent job of helping you with your grammar and spelling. This should already help your structure and flow. Poor grammar is a major obstacle to both, and poor spelling can be, too, if it is distracting or makes it hard for your audience to tell what you’re saying.
Before I continue, let me just address your basic premise: your sentence flow and structure do NOT suck! In fact, I would go so far as to say that you have a quite well developed sense of structure and flow. (Your grammar and, particularly, your spelling, are really the critical areas to address.)
In particular, you make outstanding use of transitional and relational terms and phrases, like “even though”, “first of all”, “whereas”, “in comparison to”, and “overall”.
Moreover, your grammatical structure is actually generally well-constructed, even in several cases where many writers would be prone to mistakes. Sentences four and five are good examples. Although you do have some grammar and spelling mistakes in these sentences, it’s because of things like missing commas, the extra “and”, and some typos, not because of a poor sense of structure.
That said, I CAN still offer you a few suggestions to strengthen your work further. But first, let me get one more grammatical point out of the way. After the phrase “more humid climates,” you need to use “they also contain,” instead of “it also contains,” because your subject, “sweet potatoes,” is in the plural form.
Also, you should forget about putting a semicolon in that sentence; break it into two sentences. The two ideas in that sentence don’t have enough to do with each other to justify connecting them with a semicolon.
Okay, in terms of both readability and flow, the primary thing you need to look at is how you can break this piece of writing into three or four distinct paragraphs. It’s overwhelming to the eye, as is. I recommend that your first paragraph simply introduce the two basic kinds of potatoes and the idea that you are emphasizing, namely, that they are very different from each other.
When you continue on to actually get into the specifics of their differences, it’s time for a new paragraph. Your second paragraph might consist of your first two facts about the differences in potatoes. It is natural for these two facts to go together, because they are both about perceptual qualities: color and taste. You might even introduce this paragraph with a sentence indicating to your audience that you are going to talk about perceptual differences in the paragraph.
Your other three points don’t have as much in common with each other. You may just need to begin that paragraph (your THIRD paragraph) with a sentence that lets your audience know that there are a variety of other differences, as well, whether environmental, culinary, or nutritional.
Also, you speak directly about only SWEET potatoes in these three statements. All reference to IDAHO potatoes here is only indirect, implied by your comparison terms, like “hotter” and “higher”. This is a sharp change from your first couple of statements about differences, where you talked explicitly about each kind of potato. This is the main place where you need work on your actual content, to get more consistency.
One easy fix for this is to go ahead and explicitly mention Idaho potatoes in those claims. Here’s an example: “Sweet potatoes are grown in relatively hotter, more humid climates than are Idaho potatoes.” You really ARE giving us information about both kinds of potatoes in these statements. You just SEEM to be overly focused on only the sweet potatoes, because of your particular choices of sentence phrasings.
Another fix would be if you could add a little detail to any of these claims. Here’s a fabricated example: “Sweet potatoes average three grams of fiber per six-ounce potato, while Idaho potatoes only average one gram of fiber for the same six ounces.” (Remember, that was fabricated; it’s just an example!)
As for the closing portion of your passage, I agree with Orihime that your prior discussion hasn’t justified putting the similarity of these two kinds of potatoes virtually on the same level as their differences. At most, you might say, “While they share a name, . . . .” Don’t talk about them being “very similar in many ways.”
Here’s what I would do, instead. Get rid of that last sentence entirely, and replace it with your third sentence (from paragraph one), appropriately reworded to reflect its new location, something like this:
“As should be clear by now, even though one subtle word separates the sweet potato from the Idaho potato, they could not be further apart in specific characteristics.”
As a bonus, this will also help your first paragraph, because it is currently a bit redundant. You could strengthen what’s left of that first paragraph after this change by rewording just a bit to parallel the recommended closing: “Although they share a name, the sweet potato and the Idaho potato could not be more different.”
By the way, nice phrasing on “one subtle word separates the sweet potato from the Idaho potato . . . .”! Very strong, rhetorically!
Finally, since your closing claim needs to go into a fourth paragraph, you may feel the need to add at least another sentence to fill out a more robust paragraph. This is especially true if your teacher is rigid about insisting on at least two sentences per paragraph.
Hope this has helped!