A good paper would use a wide range of concepts from Goffman. It would
use more than a handful of these; define them, preferably with quotes from
Goffman (and page numbers); and use them appropriately and with
understanding. It would demonstrate that you understand Goffman. Direct
quotes without your own discussion of what a quote mean raise the
possibility that you are parroting Goffman without understanding him -
especially if your analysis seems to be based on an idiosyncratic
re-interpretation of Goffman. You would be precise in your use of
Goffman's terminology and concepts. Revising Goffman to better fit the
case is fine, but needs to be explicit.

The paper would apply Goffman to a reasonable case of computer-mediated
communication. Two common - and appropriate - cases used were Instant
Messaging and blogging. It would not limit itself to the simplest aspects
of these cases - for example, in many cases people meet BOTH in the "real
world" and the "virtual world." It would derive insights into both the
case and Goffman's model from the juxtaposition of the two. You would
have thought about both.

It would talk about how Goffman's concepts are translated to an electronic
medium, generally where people do not meet face-to-face and are not
interacting in physical space. It would look at the strategies by which
people - individually and/or teams - engage in impression management, and
seek to penetrate others' impression management.

It would be well-written - clearly written, well-structured, with minimal
structural, grammatical, mechanical (see below), and related problems.

Some Goffman-related problems:
Goffman is primarily about impression management on the parts of both
individuals and teams. While he is talking specifically about physically
co-present interaction, the question on this assignment was how his
discussion (and the behavior he describes) gets translated to an
electronic world. If you don't describe people's behavior as impression
management, much of the rest of G's framework does not make sense.

If you don't agree with Goffman or don't think his work applies, that's
fine, but you have to justify that - show your grasp of Goffman and how
his work does NOT translate to this other domain.


Some common writing problems:
An excellent source that addresses many of the problems I've seen is
http://www.andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/index.html

I particularly suggest you read his entries under the following:
Agreement
Antecedents
Citation
Dangling participle
Generalizations
Mechanics
Numbers
Obfuscation
Passive voice
Precision
Prepositions at the end
Punctuation and quotation marks; also double vs single quotation marks
Sentence fragments
That vs. which
Wasted words