If your essay was written as terribly as this post, you deserve the grade you were given.

Well.. did you?

My issue is using apostrophes as air quotes and pronouns. things that should easily be fixable, but just aren't for me I understand where you're coming from.

Is English your TA's first language? That's a huge problem in my major. TAs or professors often think they know when something is improper/proper in English even when they don't, especially when English is not their first language. I had a professor that would mark things down that they couldn't understand even though everyone who grew up speaking English could agree that it was a common word or phrase. Everyone seems to be talking about flow errors, which is something that might warrant a bad grade, but you should be told that in the grading. With TAs that grade you down with little reasoning, they're often just dicks. I had a TA in a course that marked me down 40+% almost every time in a math course because "I obviously didn't attend class or I would do it how the professor teaches," even though my answers were right. I was failing the course and went to the professor to bitch about the TA and the grading and he regraded everything and it brought my grade up to a 92 from a 58.