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 misusedwords (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
• Period
Ends sentence and most abbreviations
Decimal point
URL & 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 subordination
Faulty 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