Victoria Young -- no title

  (It would be OK to come up with an informative and specific title!)

  General comment to everyone:  Be sure you articulate why you are calling some things 
  *borders* or *boundaries* (i.e. things that divide some place from another place or 
  some people from others, or ... , while at the same time forming a connection between them).  
  Some of you seem to be using those words almost as synonyms for "differences," but there is 
  more to it than that because you aren't always working in the idea of simultaneous 
  *separation* and *connection*. 

  I think your paper makes a number of good points but you never say exactly how Herodotus is 
  using the idea of borders to structure his presentation of Egyptian culture in your passage. 
  As a result, your discussion is not as good as it could be because you haven't explained
  that basic idea.

  For your rewrite, you should start by rethinking your introduction. Your goal should be to 
  lay out the exact borders that you are going to consider.  I think the first thing to 
  concentrate on is the way Herodotus frames his description of Egyptian customs by introducing 
  the "entirely opposite" idea.  You could say something like "Herodotus is claiming that there 
  is a border between Egyptian customs and those of all other societies defined by the fact that 
  the Egyptians do almost everything in a way 'completely opposite' from everyone else."  
  Note that this is certainly a separation. But it is also a connection in a sense because, 
  in order to describe the Egyptian customs, Herodotus has to compare them to customs of 
  Greek and other cultures.  

  There are also some other issues you should look at carefully. Let's go through that first 
  paragraph sentence by sentence.  

   - First sentence is fine: introducing the quotation right at the start is good.

   - Second sentence "In this section, Herodotus outlines the many different Egyptian customs, 
     traditions and religious practices that deviate from the norm."  Isn't his rhetorical
     strategy to say that *everything* (at least in most respects) is different?  He's not
     just listing the ones that are different.  Also "deviate from the norm" seems imply
     some kind of judgment.  Do you think Herodotus is saying the Egyptians are wrong to
     do what they do?
 
   - "Some of the topics that he touches upon are day-to-day duties, public versus private
     practices, responsibilities of priests and their principal foods."  This is accurate, 
     of course, but it doesn't seem as though "principal foods" fits very well with the 
     other things.

   - "The way the Egyptians live in the eyes of Herodotus is very separate and incompatible 
     with everyone else, which sets up a cultural border."  As above, I think it is more
     to the point to say that Herodotus is framing this discussion by introducing the
     idea that there is a cultural border.  But then you need to explain *why* this is 
     a border in the sense described above (the "separation and connection" idea, not 
     just a difference).  Also, I'm not really sure that Herodotus is saying there is 
     an *incompatibility.*  That might come if Egyptians were trying to maintain their 
     own customs while living with other people who didn't do things the same way.  But 
     Herodotus is not saying anything like that.

   - "Egyptians not only have a boundary put up between themselves and the world, but 
     within the Egyptian society they also face a huge segregation between men and women."
     Awkward sentence.  Also, in terms of customs and manners at the time Herodotus was 
     alive, segregation in gender roles was probably the norm in almost every society!  
     That is certainly one area where the Egyptians were *like* other people.  It's not 
     the segregation that Herodotus is pointing out.  He's saying that the men in Egypt 
     do what the women do elsewhere and vice versa.  Getting this across probably 
     requires a separate sentence!

  Another point to concentrate on for your rewrite is the topic sentences of your 
  paragraphs.  These tend to be somewhat wordy and they don't lay out what the paragraph
  is going to say very effectively.  For instance, the topic sentence of your
  second paragraph, "Reading and writing is a key aspect to [better: of] every civilization and 
  each has unique features that differentiate one from another," is really too general.
  You want to get to the point more quickly with something like, "Herodotus describes
  several differences between the writing systems used by the Egyptians and those used
  by the Greeks.

  In terms of the attached writing rubric, I think most of this is at the Proficient 
  level.

  Content:  B

  Mechanics: B