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 persons 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?SpellingUse a spell checker or a dictionaryUse a proof reader

PunctuationUse a ___________

MORE CRITERIAGrammar and structureUse a ___________

FormatUse a ___________

PAGE FORMATTINGUse a cover sheet and NO PLASTIC COVERS!Staple pages at upper left hand cornerUse FLUSH LEFT justification (ragged right)

MORE PAGE FORMATTING Double CHARACTER space between sentencesDouble LINE space within paragraphTRIPLE line space between paragraphsMargins: L=1.5; R, T, & B=1.0

STILL MORE FORMATTING: Page NumbersFront 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 NumbersThe 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.

SPELLINGPoor spelling reveals the writers ignorance for all the world (or the person[s] the writer is trying to convince/impress/educate) to see.USE A SPELL CHECKER!

SPELL CHECKERSCant 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!

PUNCTUATIONPeriod

Ends sentence and most abbreviationsDecimal pointURL & E-Mail delimiters

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)Question markDirect, but not indirect (rhetorical) questionsIn parentheses to indicate uncertainty (?)

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)Exclamation pointCommaSemicolonAs conjunctions with adverbs.Separates independent clauses.Separates items in a series that contain internal commas.

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)ColonFollowing 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 marksPeriods & 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.)ApostropheEllipses3 dots (), each separated by a character space.Purpose?

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)ItalicsParenthesesBracketsDashes

PUNCTUATION (CONT.)HyphenSlashCapital v. lower-case lettersNumbers

GRAMMATICAL ERRORSSentence fragmentsComma spliceFused sentenceChoppy sentencesFaulty coordination

MORE GRAMMATICAL ERRORSFaulty subordination

Faulty agreementsubject & verb singular/pluralDangling modifiersFaulty parallelism

MORE GRAMMATICAL ERRORSInappropriate 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 DOCUMENTATIONThe primary factor in formatting citations and referencing is to be consistent.

Nonetheless, the appropriate format should be used.

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