Here at TΦ101 we have been talking about an essay by William F. Rapaport on what he calls "triage grading."  The general idea is to give only four different grades: good; acceptable but not good; poor; not done at all. By attaching these grades to different parts of an assignment, we can also give in-between grades (so, for example, perhaps the writing is acceptable and the argumentation is good).  Interesting.