Sheldon Lawrence, Ph.D. ©2014 - Brigham Young University ...

Sheldon Lawrence, Ph.D. ?2014 stillwaterspress@

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Table of Contents

Meet the Sentence01 Building a Sentence11 Fragments 16 Run-on Sentences23 Commas28 Confused Words45 Commonly Misspelled Words56 Shifts in Time62 Parallel Structure 66 Problems with Pronouns 76 Capitalization86 Apostrophes93 Subject ? Verb Agreement98 Other Punctuation104 Verb Power111 Sentence Variety117 Awkward Sentences120 Wordy Sentences126 Quotations131

Introduction: Effective and ineffective writing

Unfortunately, good writing is not a matter of learning a set of rules and then following those rules meticulously. Writing is art, and all of the great writers have occasionally broken the rules of grammar and punctuation in order to achieve a desired effect. The rules and tips in this book will only make sense as you develop an "ear" for good writing. When experienced writers sit down to write, they do not have a list of rules in their head, and then go about constructing sentences according to those rules. Instead, they know how good writing "sounds." Through a lifetime of reading, they have developed an intuitive sense of what sounds right and what doesn't sound right. The rules can help during revision to strengthen clarity and make easier reading, but knowing rules alone does not make a good writer.

Having said that, the rules of grammar, punctuation, style, and usage are often the things by which readers will judge you. You may have original and insightful things to say, but your meaning will be lost if your sentences are riddled with errors, awkward phrasing, misplaced punctuation, and incorrectly used words.

This book will help you strengthen the clarity of your ideas by helping you improve the grammar, punctuation, and style of your prose. Sometimes this is accomplished through choosing and arranging the right words. Sometimes it's accomplished by using punctuation to separate "chunks" of thought. And sometimes it's about digging deeper to find out what you really want to say. Most often, all three of these components work together as you write and revise your work.

There are a dizzying number of books about grammar, style, and editing. In my years of teaching writing, the concepts covered in this text represent those that most often plague student writing. This text does not go into great detail about the various exceptions and disagreements in the study of grammar. If you desire such detail, you have many good books to choose from. If you want just the basics, then this workbook will give you the tools you need to improve your grammar and style in the most straightforward way possible.

Meet the Sentence

Parts of speech

Sometimes grammar books throw around a lot of fancy terms, but in reality, sentences are pretty simple things. Think of a sentence as a cake. It only takes a few simple ingredients to make a cake--flour, sugar, eggs, water. But you can also add all sorts of things to the cake to make it more interesting and delicious. A sentence only needs two basic ingredients: a noun and a verb.

Dogs run. Dogs is a noun. Run is a verb. Everything else tacked onto the sentence just adds information and detail.

Dogs run around whenever they are let off of their leashes. In this section, we'll briefly review the ingredients of a sentence; these are referred to as the "parts of speech." Some parts of speech are essential to building sentences; these are the nouns (or pronouns) and verbs. Others are like frosting and decorations on a cake-- they aren't absolutely essential to create a sentence, but they add information, flavor, and character.

Verbs

The most basic ingredient in the sentence is a verb. Action verbs indicate what is happening or being done. There are hundreds of different action verbs.

Action verb: George eats candy. Another kind of verb, called a linking verb, functions like an equals sign.

Linking verb: George seems nice. (George = nice)

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