What does "fact" mean? Since you're putting a value judgment upon it, by definition that's an OPINION, at least the "ignorant, illegitimate" part. It only has no place in the professional/corporate world because of broad consensus otherwise. And in the academic world, it DOES have a place: For some English assignments and stories, in some Afro-American studies classes, etc. Trust me, I've done assignments in and about Ebonics. Just like it's highly unlikely you'll be writing high-level corporate papers in an obscure tribal language only found in the Amazon, but that doesn't make it any less of a language...

In any respect, you are still incapable of replying to my ARGUMENT, which is that Ebonics is still clearly a FORM OF ENGLISH. You have conceded this. "Ignorant" and "illegitimate" are silly value judgments not made by actual linguists. As I've pointed out many times, Yiddish would have fallen under this rubric too, yet that would be offensive to say now. That's only because of time, legitimacy and the power of the communities in question. Your initial argument did NOT say what you're saying now, so you've essentially conceded my point. I think we can both agree we're done here.


Because your idea of "perfectly legitimate word" and a linguists' idea of "perfectly legitimate word" differs sharply, and the fact that you are unaware of this, apparently, seems to suggest to me that you have at least one major domain of academia that you are completely unaware of.

To a linguist (again, check out the Language Mavens, great introductory piece on this that makes this exact argument), "ain't" is a legitimate word because it is used with full clarity and understanding among an entire dialect. It is LINGUISTICALLY legitimate.

It is not SOCIALLY legitimate because of arbitrary reasons having almost entirely to do with keeping power and privilege among a tiny sect. You understand ain't. I understand it. So why can't it belong in an essay? Because some "people" think it's not "real English". That is a linguistic absurdity. There IS no "real English" or professional English or corporate English or whatever ASIDE FROM WHAT PEOPLE NATURALLY SPEAK. Limitations on the language are overwhelmingly designed to let the dominant group remain comfortable and control the racial, ethnic and class makeup of their little club.

So, in any essay, I wouldn't use the word "ain't" unless in quotes, ironically, or in a short story, because there is a consensus in academia that it's not a "real word". But that CONSENSUS is arbitrary.

This is Linguistics 1 here.


My point as stated, that in fact many scholars DON'T agree with you so your point as originally stated deserved a CORRECTION, a caveat. HONEST people (and no, I'm not saying you're dishonest, you might have been unaware, done some of your homework but not all of it, or - most likely - didn't mention the people who disagreed with you for polemical and brevity reasons) would, after dropping the bomb you did, note that there is some disagreement, cite that disagreement, then rebut it and move on. That's what I did. You continue to not be able to wrap your head around it, so I increasingly wonder if you are AWARE that there is an entire linguistic school that argues in the way I am. I can send you articles, if you'd like...

I don't manually delete the username from quotes. I Ctrl-C and manually type in quote /quote in brackets. The forum should do its job in terms of citing for me in that respect. This is pretty standard forum etiquette. I take it you don't frequent other forums often? (No disrespect, it just would explain the double posting, this, etc.)

Your capacity to simultaneously think that everyone else's behavior is rude and controlling, while calling people morons and idiots and threatening their business, is startling. Miss, please find some medication. Or have someone read a cross-section of posts back to you, name removed, from some time ago and see if you can't see why what you just said is the utmost of hypocrisy.


Yes. And in most forums, double posting is being a jerk. Apparently the etiquette here is different, but hey, apparently you have no problem with people imposing their arbitrary etiquette upon a community, right?

It is generally best for forum clutter concerns to simply post what you're going to post, then if you have something else to say, add it later.

This has gotten nasty and deeply unprofessional. I mean no disrespect to you or to your business. I have a difference of opinion. If you can't explain your disagreement respectfully, like I have, I recommend you simply don't voice such differences of opinion at all.


You are an idiot. I am sorry that I have to resort to that, but there is nothing else I can say in response to your failure to get this distinction. Please educate yourself.


Wonderful. I would respond about your preferred businesses, of course, but it's deeply unprofessional. I will simply reply to your review by noting that it is based wholly on your deeply unprofessional incapacity to distinguish differences from opinion from personal attack and let the record stand for itself. Any legitimate criticism, I'll have my site manager fix.

Oh, and by the way: I wouldn't bother trying to use my "ignorant assertions" in this thread as evidence AGAINST me. Since I've been explaining my points, using arguments and citations, while you've been beating up strawmen while behaving like a raving lunatic, I'm going to come off as professional. Another layer of irony.

How can anyone be so unstable? I disagree with you in a thread and you want to scuttle my business? I've certainly proven I'm not here for five posts to PM people. I've proven that I'm not ESL, am perfectly capable of expressing an argument, and have some degree of academic knowledge under my belt. Why in God's name would you want to direct traffic AWAY from me and, almost by definition, TOWARDS, say, essaywriters.net? You have no evidence that I have bad business practices, or rip off my customers, so your review would NOT be about Essay SCAMS but about your own personal vendetta. Please, seek professional help.

Yes. Like your original argument. You had made a claim that Ebonics had been abandoned, then continued to discuss it when I brought up a difference of opinion. I mentioned that it was irrelevant last post. Of course you shouldn't write in black English for an assignment that asks for conventional American English; the same is true, as I noted to no reply, of someone who writes a British English paper for an American English client. This does not mean that British English is an illegitimate dialect, clearly. Same thing for Ebonics. In any respect, I think I've made my point clear.


I agree. That was my point two posts ago.

Nice double post.


amon.katserv.net.

Oh, and for the sake of potential customers: I will never use the word "ain't" except in a relevant quotation.

Oh right, but that would be if this was relevant. Which it isn't. Apparently, you cannot construct an actual non-strawman argument to save your life.

VERY nice triple post, by the way.


You mean, AFTER I made a correction to a point, you rose to what I guess you thought as bait and made terrible arguments, and I undermined the arguments?

I did not use ad hominem arguments until you did. I still am avoiding discussing your merits as a person or as a writer and only discussing the argument. I have "s-i*" over no one, merely discussing arguments. And, of course, it is the height of hilarity to hear you of all people mention attacking people. I wonder if you are at all aware of that wonderful hypocrisy...

Oh, and by the way, I said your behavior was LIKE a general forum troll. Mine isn't, unless you think merely having few posts alone qualifies you for trolling. I dare you to find a definition that supports this silly definition, without which your implicit argument is moot, and all that's left is abusive insults. But, again, this is something you'd know if you quoted entire posts. Honestly.

Nice quadruple post, by the way.

I seriously recommend you take some kind of tranquilizer or calming agent...

Your argument is actually far more indicative for why the American educational system is ostensibly a joke. Racist, classist pablum lets politicians blame schools or teachers or teacher unions, as if those things, isolated from everything else, could possibly explain the problem. The American educational system sucks because we instead spend our money on a world-conquest military. It's especially silly to blame Ebonics for the problem facing black students in particular. Where do you think Ebonics CAME from? Read your Steinberg.

In any respect, that's not what I said. And you probably won't teach your kids much, no offense. I don't mean that you are unintelligent or are incapable, but rather that peer groups are far more connected to the way people learn language. My argument is that a language form, a dialect, that is perfectly coherent to the people who speak it, and is different from another language, is clearly a fully-formed dialect. This is the simple DEFINITION of a dialect. You may have your own value judgments about whether or not that language is GOOD, but then I have to wonder: How is that different from saying that Yiddish isn't okay, or Arabic, or whatever else? Yes, people should learn a "common" language, a shared way of communicating. The Chinese have done this for millennia by having "dialects" that are really different languages but a shared written script. We can do this here by having a shared language, which is a median of all the regional dialects (Brooklyn, Boston, Southern, black, Californian, etc.), and then letting people speak to each other as they want.

This is how languages evolve. Slang, borrowing from other languages... "Dude" and "yo" are part of the common lexicon now. That's just what happens.

You just say "WRONG" with all caps then make unsupported arguments then talk about mediocrity? Unbelievable.

In any case, it is still incontrovertibly true that your initital statement that Ebonic was abandoned "because" of X or Y is an ASSERTION and an argument, not an obvious fact, because there is substantial disagreement.

Most importantly, all of this is basically moot to the point of this forum...


None. Who cares? Exclamation points in African names emphasize a sound, not an exclamation point. "Ain't" or "aint", however you wish to spell it, is a perfectly legitimate word that is entirely sensible to those who say it. It's been established for about a century. Again, read the Language Mavens. The same thing goes for "I could care less". Pedants point out that it should be "I couldn't care less". But "I could care less" has sarcastic bite, and should be said with the emphasis on "could". (This is the type of argument you rely on? Nice).

I also find it hilarious that you think that disagreeing with you about something, whether it be Ebonics or something else, destroys credibility. It is really sad and abusive. I have been polite and you have been rude. THAT destroys credibility. Not honest disagreement.

(Not to mention that, in terms of citing ARGUMENT, you know, authorities and citations, etc., and quoting entire posts, I have been following the standard and you've been behaving like a forum troll).

Yes. Accusations of "abrasiveness" followed by the word "idiot", when the correction itself was very respectful and not personal. Perhaps a review of "ad hominem" is in order.

Tell me: If a kid grows up speaking Yiddish in his/her household, should they be told their ignorance should be replaced by German?

Yiddish is now accepted thanks only to the passage of time. Ebonics isn't. The difference is solely due to the social power and acceptance of those communities.

Nor am I saying, as you vigorously beat a strawman I did not argue (made easy by incomplete quotation), that Ebonics should be INSTEAD of English. If I'm asked to write an essay in American English, writing it in British English is inappropriate, even though British English is an absolutely legitimate dialect. The same thing is true of Ebonics, and in fact many Afro-American scholars have argued that it is MORE so. Black students should learn how to write in the dominant language of the culture, but even that is a demand that is based on the capacity of the dominant culture to DEMAND it. That doesn't make their language, the way they talk to each other, any less valid. As the famous "Language Mavens" article argued, it is arbitrary power that makes people insist that "ain't" isn't grammatical or "proper English", not linguistic necessity.

Documenting the language and syntax of a people who have been here for centuries is definitional historical and linguistic work, for people who haven't had their eyes blinded by bias.

So you're here to "hype" a company?

Isn't that against the TOU?

Why, yes it is.

Of course, the wonderful people of the Ukraine are not the concern here. Indeed, someone who ostensibly likes Ukrainians should care about the scammers and cheats representing their country as badly as Nigerian spammers do.

To be fair, I could shoeshorn 20 sources into 3 pages using block cites or using footnotes ;) . Yes, the customer was probably being silly, but it may have been a single vs. double-spaced confusion and it doesn't matter since they are the customer. You do your best...


Ummmmm, this is an abusive and inaccurate statement. American English from the perspective of the Brits is "dumb[ed]-down". There is healthy disagreement among educators and cultural anthropologists as to the value of Ebonics and "black English". Certainly, it is a discrete cultural form that has existed for centuries and impacted conventional language.

Scam Buster: No one asked. You seem to be treading awfully close to spam in terms of making non-relevant comments outside of your thread about AllAnswers.

Divonspear: The problem is that if you don't have arms, it's hard to catch fish. Some people find it so immensely difficult to write that they don't know how to bridge the gap between the prompt and the assignment. I've established good contacts with a few long-term customers, and I see them improve over time.

Yeah, this is silly. The whole point was that a) it's all about the consumer being informed and b) the fact that the Americanness/Britishness of companies is used as a metric of their quality. It's a guess.

This is stupid. The idea that a company can be sued, therefore they are untrustworthy, is so mind-bogglingly anti-logical it makes my eyes bleed.

Simple fact: If a company can be sued, that means they have registered corporate officers, an address, landlines, attorneys... They exist in some non-Internet way.

What if I'm a writer or customer and WANT to sue a foreign company? Cuts both ways, right?

Furthermore, essay writing is not illegal in the vast majority of jurisdictions, just not ethical to turn in for students. So who cares?

LBeezy: That is because this site is NOT designed to advertise. It makes it too easy for adbots to do their work. It is designed to steer writers and students AWAY from bad, dishonest sites. Basically, if you see a service listed here, good chance that's a bad sign. The more search results, the more likely the company is bad. Also make sure that you look at the date of the posts: More recent, the better.

essaychat.com is a place to discuss that I've been directed to. Check Craigslist too, plenty of small businesses and freelancers promote there.

I'd also add: YOU are the "public" before you are hired. If they respond to you with an automated e-mail riddled with errors, they didn't do their due diligence in producing good work to look professional to you, a potential employee.

No one should have to be "vigilant" with their employers.

"You think that $10 per page is "high"? (I don't know whether to laugh or cry.) The bare minimum from any of the American companies in the industry is $10 per page, even for an order that is not due for 3 months!

EssayWriters.net abuses writers and gets them to work for rates that border on SLAVE LABOR because you writers LET THEM GET AWAY WITH IT!"

To be fair, I have frequently done work, in America, for $5-$7.50. This is because I targeted people who were pretty poor, which is a market not often tapped. I've slowly raised that over time to $12.50-$20.00.

What is clear is that $5 is the LOWEST that one could possibly go in America and be reasonable.

I don't either, I tend to do everything in one go or maybe two and certainly don't have discrete drafting. But, as Isaac Asimov famously argued, everyone's different here. Shakespeare proclaimed that he never had to blot a word. Oscar Wilde, meanwhile, was satisfied with his day's work being adding, then removing, a semicolon.

Certainly, if the customer would like to see an initial draft before they commit to a particular thesis, interpretation or direction, that's not an unreasonable request, given ample time. But that needs to be disclosed at the time.

I personally adopt a policy of unlimited, free editing up until the due date. After that, well...


Yeah, it becomes very difficult when someone wants a paper that is not only a writing sample but also recent, within their field, etc. Where do they EXPECT one to get that? I personally have a few writing samples that were never turned into a plagiarism database and are kept private, but there's no way I can have every possible permutation of subject matter on hand. This is why I really prefer clients to talk to me at least three days before a project is due. It's also why, if a client is seeking out help a day or (Heaven forbid) an hour before a project is due, they have to follow the rule, "Caveat emptor". Sorry, but you just cannot reasonably expect a guarantee of fast, confidential, skillful work that matches your prompt and writing style precisely. Pick three or four of those objectives, not five.

It shouldn't be a problem in the first place, since if you are honest, the paper should be individually written.

That having been said, I have had problems with Turn-it-in thinking ACTUAL QUOTES were plagiarism. Quotes in quotation marks. With parentheses afterwards. With author name and date. Yeah...

I bet toptermpapers.com is connected to perfecttermpapers in some way. One thing I've found: These companies are incestuously intermarried.

For me, the big warning sign I see from my subcontractors and clients who report working with these companies is that the e-mail itself is filled with errors. How can a legitimate writing company hire public relations people who don't know how to write in the language of the client? What kind of professional company has e-mails that are formatted in an ugly way, misspelled, ungrammatical or employ bad syntax? Watch for that WAY before you agree to taking the paper.

Another piece of advice: Try calling their customer service line BEFORE you fill the paper. If they claim to have a 24 hour line yet they don't, that's a sign that, no matter what, they are dishonest at least in one location.

I'll say here what I will elsewhere: I typically either let the client pay me after work, have some kind of quality guarantee, help them after the fact if there is a problem with the grade, or have the client pay 50% up front. I've had mostly good results with this, except for one delinquent account.

What's worked for me and my subcontractors in a similar position (people trying to enter the industry) is to promote EVERYWHERE you can. Craigslist, BackPages... Just type in "free online classifieds", "free online advertising", etc. Start there. After that, if it's in budget start a promotion.

Just try to make sure you don't spam people. It's wrong and it's not effective.

As for working for other essay companies: This whole site is a testament to the dangers. What scares me is that many of my subcontractors report applying to other places that promise a 24 or 48 hour return time, then don't hear back from the companies after months.

FreelanceWriter: I do disagree somewhat.

If I have a paper due over time, I might give the customer a draft early on so they know I'm working on it.

But otherwise, it is true that it is bad etiquette to pester your writer.

If you are concerned about it, OP, TELL the writer AT THE TIME OF NEGOTIATION that you want a draft at X time or a check-up at Y point in the project.

Otherwise, you are breaking the implicit contract you have signed with them by contacting them.

As for samples we send out, Freelance: I send out samples of my own work, little stories and essays I've done for fun or other things. I NEVER send out another clients' work. I do agree, though, that prospective clients need to understand that we've done all we can. I write all I can in my website just so they know I can write.