Essays & writing
Your rubric decides the grade.
Named criteria you can read before grading, a score against each one, and feedback you can point at. Handwritten or typed.
Common Core built in
The CCSS writing standards ship as ready-made criteria, by grade band. Pick them and grade.
Or your own rubric
A national curriculum, a department rubric, your own wording — same machinery, your criteria and points.
Marked-up feedback
Comments tied to the criterion they're about, on the student's own page — the kind you'd write in the margin.
Two settings, everything else a default
Marking that matches what the question is testing.
One mark per distinct idea, never the same idea twice, a student's own valid example counts — those are always on. The two that genuinely divide teachers are yours.
"Provides jobs" for "creates employment" — full mark on comprehension, not on a terminology test.
"Photosynthisis" is a slip in biology and the whole point in a spelling test.