Posts Tagged ‘punctuation’
We need to exercise the discipline as we advance into the rest of the paragraph. Our student, though, was not keeping to the rules, and so, as perhaps could be expected, the lack of control at the outset means that, by the third sentence, the writing begins more and more to fall apart as he wrestles with his ideas:
It was the first place of its kind, in America in this respect, also in the way he carefully detailed and drew up the system of government, to be implemented there, and proposal for future American colonies.
The student is trying to expand t... Read more...
Tags: american colonies, commas, correct manner, inclusion, main clause, paragraph, parenthetical phrase, phrases, proposal, punctuation, punctuation rules, sentences, subject verb
Posted in English Basics |
We want to talk about various conventions that relate to the presentation of written work, particularly the kind of work produced by university students. Several of these points are bound to come up in any essay you write; it is, therefore, well worth checking through the list to see if you are presenting your work in an appropriate way. It is just this kind of attention to detail that surreptitiously picks up more marks for you in an essay but also helps you to develop a polished and professional approach to written work.
1. Spacing work
A word-processed essay should always be double-spaced (set your word-processor to print on every other line). Generous spacing makes your essay easier to read, and leaves room for the marker to write in comments. The main secret of typing essays is always to allow plenty of space on the page: sensible margins, double-spacing, a reasonably large font or type-face (we suggest not smaller than 11 point text). Think of the needs of your reader; your reader wants to be presented with something that is easy on the eye, and as such easy to read.
Your aim in word-processing (or, more r... Read more...
Tags: attention to detail, paragraph, punctuation, Spelling, university students, word processing, word processor
Posted in Writing |
What we are trying to demonstrate is how to join sentences together for an interesting piece of work. Readers can absorb more than one idea at a time and can feel frustrated by endless stops and starts; they are looking for information, stimulation, thoughts and points as well as an argument that involves them and takes them along. We should, however, make it clear that we are not contradicting here something we said earlier. We appear to be recommending the fusing of sentences. What we have in Blind, of course, is not fusing but instead joining sentences in a manner that Complies with all the basic rules about sentence structure and punctuation. We will, in addition, be showing how little phrases, such as in addition, can establish continuity and flow in a paragraph. Really, what we want to achieve is a paragraph where every sentence is as impressive as the student’s first sentence here:
At the turn of the century, Russia, both economically and politically, lagged behind the advanced industrial nations of Europe.
That is a confident sentence. It consists of a subject-verb-complement sequence (Russia-, lagged beh... Read more...
Tags: adverbial phrase, introductory element, paragraph, phrases, punctuation, sentence structure, sentences, subject verb
Posted in Writing |
It is useful to think of the first sentence of a paragraph as the ‘topic’ sentence. In our revised version of the letter, the topic sentence is: David was not able to attend school yesterday. It is effective as an opening because it is such a controlled, almost declamatory, statement. Most essays can start in a similar way: you can create an initial dramatic and arresting effect by having a simple sentence that stands alone, not tangled up in subordinate clauses and details. Look, for example, at these opening sentences from students’ essays:
Modern poetry is disturbing and problematic.
Modem poetry, by which we mean poetry produced roughly between 1910 and 1930, falls into various categories, of which the most original is probably that referred to as ‘modernist’, in particular T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land.
There is nothing actually wrong with the second example here, but it does not create any great expectation that we are going to encounter an interesting essay. Rather, it is going to be an essay loaded with facts, crowded in at every comma. The first example, by contra... Read more...
Tags: great expectation, oxford english dictionary, paragraph, punctuation, sentences, simple sentence, students essays, subordinate clauses, topic sentence, Write Topic Sentences
Posted in Writing |
Our message, it should be apparent, is simple: the way to move forward is to go back to basics. If you want to excel as a writer, there are no fancy or elaborate tricks that have to be learnt. You merely have to become more proficient in exercising the basic skills of sentence construction. In order to drive home the points about how sentences are composed, and how important it is to be in charge of the mechanics of sentence construction and the mechanics of punctuation, we are going to examine a single essay by a Student about the founding of the city of Philadelphia. At this point, you might be tempted to say that such a subject has nothing in common with the essays you have to write, but try to see that what we are discussing the whole time is how to solve problems in writing, and how solving them rates the opportunity to say more in an essay.
Here is the opening paragraph of the essay exactly as the student wrote it:
The creation of the c... Read more...
Tags: american colonies, homework, mechanics of sentence construction, paragraph, punctuation, sentences
Posted in English Basics, Writing |
[caption id="attachment_13" align="alignleft" width="280" caption="Grammar - Omission of Letters or Contraction"]
[/caption]We use the apostrophe mark to indicate the omission in a standard contraction. We’d better explain the rule about this in some detail as this is where a good deal of the chaos over punctuation starts. If we had to identify one area that creates problems for students, it would be this idea of contractions – that is, where a word is shortened and an apostrophe is used to indicate this.
It’s
The first point to repeat is that the apostrophe has two different functions. One, as we have seen above at great length, is for the possessive case; It is Jane’s book. But then the apostrophe is also used in a different way with a different meaning when we use it to indicate a contraction. The most famous contraction, and the one that sinks a thousa... Read more...
Tags: different meaning, omission, possessive case, possessive pronoun, punctuation, single word, wags
Posted in Grammar |
