REVIEW OF GRAMMAR

• Wrighting good meens you got to follow all the ruls; like speling, good, propper, punctuashun and coreckt grammar.

WHY THE FUSS?

• CREDIBILITY: How can a person’s work be considered believable if that person is so ignorant as to be unable to write correctly?

WHY THE FUSS?

• ACCURACY: A misspelled word, a misplaced comma, or a missing verb can change, hide, or confuse the meaning of a sentence.

WHY THE FUSS?

• EFFICIENCY: A document that requires much effort to decipher simply will not be read. Likewise, the message of a speaker who is difficult to hear or follow will simply be ignored. In both cases, the effort is a waste.

WHAT ARE THE CRITERIA?

• Spelling– Use a spell checker or a dictionary– Use a proof reader

• Punctuation– Use a ___________

MORE CRITERIA

• Grammar and structure– Use a ___________

• Format– Use a ___________

PAGE FORMATTING

• Use a cover sheet and NO PLASTIC COVERS!

• Staple pages at upper left hand corner

• Use FLUSH LEFT justification (ragged right)

MORE PAGE FORMATTING

• Double CHARACTER space between sentences

• Double LINE space within paragraph

• TRIPLE line space between paragraphs

• Margins: L=1.5”; R, T, & B=1.0”

STILL MORE FORMATTING: Page Numbers

• “Front Matter” (title page, table of contents, abstract, acknowledgements, and preface) – the pages preceding the text- are numbered using lower case Roman numerals.

STILL MORE FORMATTING: Page Numbers

• The first page of text is page 1, but the page number is not printed.

• Others are printed, centered at the bottom of the page preceded by your name, a comma, a space, Page, and the page number.

SPELLING

• Poor spelling reveals the writer’s ignorance for all the world (or the person[s] the writer is trying to convince/impress/educate) to see.

• USE A SPELL CHECKER!

SPELL CHECKERS

• Can’t find properly spelled- but misused- words (homonyms).

For example, using the word “there” when you mean “their” is both a spelling error and an inappropriate word selection – a grammatical error!

PUNCTUATION

• PeriodEnds sentence and most abbreviationsDecimal pointURL & E-Mail delimiters

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)

• Question mark– Direct, but not indirect (rhetorical) questions– In parentheses to indicate uncertainty (?)

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)

• Exclamation point

• Comma

• Semicolon– As conjunctions with adverbs.– Separates independent clauses.– Separates items in a series that contain

internal commas.

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)

• Colon– Following the salutation in a letter.– Following the date, to, from, and subject

headers in a memorandum.– To separate a statement from its following

amplifier.

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)

• Quotation marks– Periods & commas stay within.– Colons & semicolons stay outside.– Exclamation and question marks may be

either in or out, depending whether it is a part of a quotation.

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)

• Quotation marks- cont.– Enclose titles of articles, book chapters,

poems, and unpublished reports.

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)

• Use quotation marks to enclose verbatim phrases of less than fifty words.– Verbatim phrases of fifty or more words

should be set off by indenting as an entire paragraph five spaces and using single line spacing.

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)

• Apostrophe

• Ellipses– 3 dots (…), each separated by a character

space.– Purpose?

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)

• Italics

• Parentheses

• Brackets

• Dashes

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)

• Hyphen

• Slash

• Capital v. lower-case letters

• Numbers

GRAMMATICAL ERRORS

• Sentence fragments

• Comma splice

• Fused sentence

• Choppy sentences

• Faulty coordination

MORE GRAMMATICAL ERRORS

• Faulty subordinationFaulty agreement—subject & verb

singular/plural

• Dangling modifiers

• Faulty parallelism

MORE GRAMMATICAL ERRORS

• Inappropriate word choices Words that sound similar (almost like

homonyms), but have quite different meanings.

Idea (a thought) vs. Ideal (a standard of perfection).

DOCUMENTING SOURCES (CITATIONS)

• The APA Manual is the standard for documentation formatting.

• Language Skills Handbook (2nd edition), covers most of the bases.

MORE YET ON SOURCE DOCUMENTATION

• The primary factor in formatting citations and referencing is to be consistent.

Nonetheless, the appropriate format should be used.

THE END