BASIC GRAMMAR RULES



BASIC GRAMMAR RULES

LESSON #1—Do not use contractions in a formal paper.

No contractions—e.g., don’t, could’ve, I’m, can’t—should appear in any of your assignments. Keep in mind that could’ve is a contraction of could and have. Therefore, it is incorrect to write, “Britain could of won the Revolutionary War.” It is correct to write, “Britain could have won the Revolutionary War.”

LESSON #2—Its is a possessive meaning belonging to it; it’s is a contraction meaning it is.

Since you are not to use contractions in your assignments, you will never use it’s in your writing for this class. Its’ is not a word.

LESSON #3—Use the past tense for historical action.

Correct constructions are “Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House in 1889”; “The Civil War was the most destructive war in American history” and “The 1918-1920 Spanish Influenza pandemic killed approximately half a million Americans.”

LESSON #4—An independent clause can stand on its own as a sentence.

This means that it includes at least a subject and a verb.

LESSON #5—Never have more than two independent clauses in a single sentence.

LESSON #6—A semicolon connects two independent clauses or replaces commas in a long series of items.

Correct usages of semicolons include “During the Depression, France guaranteed prices for wheat and wine; Denmark for butter; the Netherlands for fresh fruits, vegetables, butter and flowers; Australia for fruit, butter and sugar; Brazil for coffee; and Switzerland for milk, cheese and meat” and “In February 1937, the leaders of these national nutrition committees began meeting at the League of Nations to exchange ideas and experiences; later many of the same people came to Hot Springs, Virginia, and contributed to the creation of the Food and Agriculture Organization.”

LESSON #7—To combine two independent clauses in a single sentence, you may either connect them with a semicolon or with a comma and coordinating conjunction (most commonly and, but, or and because).

You may not combine two independent clauses with a comma; this is a comma splice. Therefore, it is incorrect to write, “Cherokee women commonly oversaw the fields, Cherokee men handled the hunting and warfare.” It would be correct, however, to write either “Cherokee women commonly oversaw the fields; Cherokee men handled the hunting and warfare” or “Cherokee women commonly oversaw the fields, and Cherokee men handled the hunting and warfare.”

To practice lessons 4-7, please refer to the worksheet handed out in class.

LESSON #8—Verbs must agree in number with their subjects.

Therefore, it is incorrect to write, “Women was given the right to vote.” The correct version is “Women were given the right to vote.” The same is true when the subject comes after the verb. “What they needed were amazing men giving their lives to advance to the next hill” is correct, while “What they needed was amazing men giving their lives is incorrect.”

LESSON #9—Pronouns must agree in number with their subjects.

Therefore, it is incorrect to say, “The U.S. government is a democracy. They hold elections every November.” Even though the government is composed of many people, government is a singular noun. The correct version would be “The U.S. government is a democracy. It holds elections every November.”

LESSON #10—Avoid the passive voice when possible.

There are two main forms of the passive voice. The first is evident in this sentence: “The invasion is now beginning to be analyzed more critically.” This sentence construction does not tell the reader what or who was analyzing the plan, even though this is important information. This sentence demonstrates the second form: “The cause of democracy was popularized by Paine’s Common Sense.” In this case, it is much more economical and clearer to write, “Paine’s Common Sense popularized the cause of democracy.”

To practice rephrasing passive voice into active voice, refer to the worksheet given in class.

LESSON #11—Be careful when using personal pronouns.

You may use I to refer to yourself as the author or we to refer to yourself and the reader. For example, you may say, “In my research, I found …” or “As we have seen …” but do not use we when you really mean Americans. You do not know who your reader is.

LESSON #12—Use gender-specific pronouns only where appropriate.

Although it used to be common practice to refer to ships and nations with feminine pronouns, it is no longer appropriate. Use the gender-neutral “it” instead. If referring to a singular noun that could be either male or female, you may use he/she or simply alternate the use of male or female pronouns. For example, “In reading a book, you should ascertain the author’s thesis. What is he/she arguing?” or “Does he have a specific motive in writing the book? Is she addressing a particular audience?” Since the author could be male or female, you should not use just one gendered pronoun.

LESSON #13—Generally, to form a plural add an s to the end of the word, and to form the possessive form of a singular word, add ’s or s’ to the end of the word.

There are exceptions, of course. Also, please note that in naming decades, you should use 1860s rather than 1860’s, because it is a plural and not a possessive.

LESSON #14—Use a pair of commas, parentheses or dashes to set parenthetical expressions off from the rest of the sentence with a pair of commas or parentheses.

In the sentence, “I drove my new car, which is green, to work today,” which is green is a parenthetical expression. Omitting it would not alter the basic meaning of the sentence; the parenthetical expression simply provides additional information. In the sentence above, it is set off from the rest of the sentence with a pair of commas; a pair of parentheses or dashes would do just as well.

LESSON #15—When a parenthetical expression comes at the beginning (introductory phrase) or at the end of the sentence (concluding phrase), you should generally set it off from the rest of the sentence with a comma.

Therefore, “Given the weatherman’s forecast, I decided to wear my raincoat today” and “I went home at 5:00 p.m., stopping at the store on the way” are correctly punctuated. And yes, that is passive voice.

LESSON #16—Use a pair of quotation marks to identify material quoted verbatim, unless it is a block quote. If you use a block quote (quotes of four lines or more), single-space it and indent it on both sides. Do not use quotation marks.

As a general rule, quote historical actors rather than historians, and quote interesting/compelling statements rather than information. If you use the exact words of others, you MUST indicate this by marking the words with quotation marks (as well as providing a citation to the source).

LESSON #17—You may alter quotations to make them flow within your prose as long as you do not alter wording of the quotation. There are specific rules for doing so.

(1) You may alter the capitalization at the beginning of the quotation; (2) if you insert or replace words, your words must be in brackets; and (3) if you delete part of a quotation you must insert ellipses to indicate the omission. Also, if the source you quote includes a quote, the interior quote should be set off with single quotation marks.

LESSON #18—When using more than two consecutive adjectives, a comma should generally be placed between them. When combining words to form a single adjective, they should be hyphenated.

Therefore, it would be the long, winding road; the big, red house; the exchange-rate stability and the war-devastated countries.

LESSON #19—Capitalize proper nouns.

You would capitalize the South, World War II and Chase Manhattan Bank as the specific names (which makes them proper nouns) of a region of the United States, a war and of a bank. But you would not capitalize south if you wrote, “We traveled south all day.” Similarly, you would not capitalize war or bank, even if you were referring to a specific war or bank. Therefore, you might write, “World War II was the bloodiest war. More than fifty million people died in the war.”

LESSON #20—Some abbreviations may be used in formal papers.

You may use Latin abbreviations (such as etc., i.e. and e.g.) as well as common abbreviations for countries (U.S., U.K., U.S.S.R.), but you should spell out road, avenue, etc. For most abbreviations or acronyms, first identify the full title and immediately follow it with the abbreviation in parentheses. After this initial identification, you may use the abbreviation. Therefore, you might write “Forty-four nations created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the Bretton Woods Conference. The IMF regulates currency exchange rates around the world.”

LESSON #21—Fully identify a person when first mentioned; in subsequent references, use the person’s last name.

“First Lieutenant Jimmy W. Montheith landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. When he landed, Montheith gathered as many men as he could from his platoon.”

LESSON #22—Generally spell out numbers 1-20 and to 100 by tens. Also, spell out numbers that begin a sentence.

Therefore, you might write, “Two thousand has been a year marked by 235 fires in thirty states over nine months.”

LESSON #23—Use a dash or dashes to separate a parenthetical phrase more forcefully than a comma. A dash is also used before the Latin abbreviations i.e. (which means that is) and e.g. (which means for example).

A dash consists of two –s. In other words, it is longer than a hyphen, which connects words. These are correct uses of the dash: “Not only did the school have too little classroom space and too few supplies, but also teachers—particularly male instructors—could earn as much as three times a teachers’ salary as soldiers or Oak Ridge employees” and “The British suggested that the colonists’ tax rate ought to be high enough to support the cost of their governance—i.e., although many needed British troops remained stationed in America to protect colonists from attacks from the French and the Amer-Indians, the colonists paid less tax than those who remained in England and thus did little to support the troops”.

LESSON #24—A colon comes only at the end of an independent clause, and it generally introduces a quotation or list.

For instance, “Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Hart Benson’s views on domestic agricultural policy were largely encapsulated in his first official statement: ‘It is doubtful if any man can be politically free who depends upon the state for sustenance.’”

Basic Grammar Rules adapted from Dr. Amy Sayward’s A Guide to Grammar.

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