Topics: Editing Tech Pubs for Style
23 June 2009
(472_090623_Grammar.doc)
Grammar notes
Review of research
General consensus of research conducted in 60s and 70s is that study of traditional or
transformational grammar does not improve writing ability.
British are currently revisiting the issue.
Grammar and writing
Andrews, R., C. Torgerson, S. Beverton, A. Freeman, T. Locke, G. Low, A. Robinson, and
D. Zhu. 2006. The effect of grammar teaching on writing development. British Education
Research Journal 32 (1): 39-55.
Davis, W. 17 October 2002. The effects of a review in grammar and mechanics on the quality
of college students’ technical/business writing. ERIC CS 511 570.
Provides study showing usefulness of grammar instruction; however, the study suffers from serious
problems with methodology.
English Review Group. 1 November 2007. The effect of grammar teaching (syntax) in English
on 5 to 16 year olds’ accuracy and quality in written composition. Available at
http://eppi.ioe.ac.uk/cms/Default.aspx?tabid=230.
Halasek, K. 2005. An enriching methodology: Bakhtin’s “Dialogic Origin and Dialogic
Pedagogy of Grammar” and the teaching of writing. Written Communication 22: 355-362.
Hudson, R. 2001. Grammar teaching and writing skills: The research evidence. Syntax in the
Schools 17: 1-6. Available at http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/writing.htm.
Wyse, D. 2001. Grammar. For writing? A critical review of empirical evidence. British Journal
of Educational Studies 49 (4): 411-427.
Further reading
Hillocks, G. Jr. 1986. Research on written composition: New directions for teaching. Urbana,
IL: ERIC Clearinghouse on Reading and Communication Skills.
Hillocks, G. Jr. and M. Smith. 1991. Grammar and usage. In J. Flood, J. Jensen, D. Lapp,
and J. Squire (eds) Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts (591603). New York: Macmillan.
Mellon, J. 1969. Transformational sentence combining. Research Report No. 10. Urbana, IL:
National Council of Teachers of English.
O’Hare, F. 1973. Sentence combining: Improving student writing without formal grammar
instruction. Research Report No.15. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Saddler, B. and S. Graham. 2005. The effects of peer-assisted sentence combining
instruction on the writing performance of more and less skilled young writers. Journal of
Educational Psychology 97 (1): 43-54.
Weaver, C. 1996. Teaching grammar in context. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Topics: Editing Tech Pubs for Style
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Page 2
Levels of Edit
Van Buren, Robert and Mary Fran Buehler. 1980. The levels of edit. Pasadena, CA: Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.
Van Buren and Buehler identify 9 types of edit, which fall into 5 levels of edit.
Although the Mechanical Style type of edit includes the word style, it clearly is not using the word
in the same sense that Jones is interested in style.
According to Van Buren and Buehler
The Mechanical Style Edit is performed to bring the mechanics of the text and figures
into consistent conformity with a specified style. Such mechanical aspects include, for
example, capitalization, abbreviations, use of numbers, use of bold face and italics
for symbols, and sequencing of reference, figure, and table citations. (25)
At the time that Levels of Edit was published, JPL followed the US Government Printing Office
Style Manual.
Indeed, style, as discussed by Jones, is primarily an issue within a language edit and possibly
within a substantive edit:
The Language Edit is an in-depth review with the way in which the ideas in a report
are expressed, regardless of the format (e.g., type font) or mechanical style (e.g.,
capitalization). (27)
During the language edit, the editors address the writer’s user of grammar and syntax, usage,
fluency, parallelism, and conciseness (27-28).
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Review of grammar
Sentences = subject (NP) + predicate (VP)
Verbs phrases may be

finite (agree in number with the subject)
I am playing the guitar.

non-finite
Playing the guitar is fun.
Regular verbs have 5 forms:

V-base – present tense
I call you. You drink tea. We put the box in the study.

V-s – 3rd person, present tense (V-base + s)
She calls me.

V-ed1 – past (V-base + ed)
She called me. He drank the concoction. Yesterday, we put the box in the study.

V-ing – present participle (be + V-base + ing)
She is calling me. He was drinking a second glass when he turned green.

V-ed2 (V-en) – past participle (have + V-base + ed)
She has called me. They have called me.
She had confessed to the crime but later recanted.
Seven sentence patterns:

SV

SVA

SVC
SVO

SVOO

SVOA

SVOC
Phrases consist of one or more words.

noun phrases

prepositional phrases

infinitive phrases (non-finite verb phrases)

participial phrases (non-finite verb phrases)
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Page 4
Clauses consist of a subject and finite verb.
She laughed. (S V)
He swam under the diving board. (S V A)
The tall, dark stranger is my mother. (S V C)
I love to bowl. (S V O)
Biff gave Buffy a present. (S V O O)
I placed my webcam above my monitor. (S V O A)
Buffy called Biff a scoundrel. (S V O C)
Clauses are categorized as

independent (main) clauses
I ate breakfast. I walked to school.

dependent (subordinate) clauses – joined to independent clauses with a
subordinating conjunction or relative pronoun
After I ate breakfast…
Because I ate breakfast…
Clauses and phrases act as parts of speech.
What you see is what you get. (S V O)
He quit his job because it didn’t pay well. (S V O A)
Sentences may be categorized by the number and type of clauses that they contain:

Simple sentences – one independent clause
Biff is my son.

Compound sentences – two (or more) independent clauses
Biff is my son, and Buffy is my daughter.

Complex sentences – one independent clause and one (or more) dependent clauses
Although Biff graduated with honors, he wasn’t able to find a job.

Compound-complex sentences – two (or more) independent clauses and one (or
more ) dependent clauses
Although Buffy did not graduate with honors, she majored in technical
communication, so she found a job immediately.
So what type of the sentence is the following sentence of Hemingway’s?
George was coming down in the telemark position, kneeling, one leg forward and
bent, the other trailing, his sticks hanging like some insect’s thin legs, kicking up puffs
of snow, and finally the whole kneeling, trailing figure coming around in a beautiful
right curve, crouching, the legs shot forward and back, the body leaning out against
the swing, the sticks accenting the curve like points of light, all in a wild cloud of
snow.
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Page 5
Sentence combining
Sentence combining provides a method for changing your writing style—for producing longer and
more varied sentence structures.
Consider the following sentences: Buffy laughed. Biff cried.
Coordination
Coordination involves joining phrases or clauses of equal grammatical rank by using a
coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) to express a relationship between the
elements.

Buffy laughed, and Biff cried.

Buffy laughed, but Biff cried.

Buffy laughed, so Biff cried.
Subordination, like coordination, works with complete sentences, but, rather than stressing
balance or equality, one sentence (the subordinate clause) is subordinated to the other (main
clause), typically according to one of the following patterns:

Subordinating conjunction + sentence, sentence.
(comma after the introductory subordinate clause)

Sentence + subordinating conjunction + sentence.
(no comma before the concluding subordinate clause)
Some of the more common subordinating conjunctions and the relationships they indicate are as
follows: time/sequence--before, after, since, when, while, once, as; cause/effect/reason-because, since, that, so that, provided that; contrast--although, even though; condition--if,
whenever; place--where, wherever; manner--as, as if, as though.
Note that adding a subordinating conjunction to a sentence turns that sentence into a fragment
that is now dependent upon another sentence (main clause) for its meaning. The idea expressed
in the main clause gains emphasis; the subordinate clause is de-emphasized.

Although Buffy laughed, Biff cried.
Buffy laughed, but Biff cried.

Buffy laughed because Biff cried.
Biff cried, so Buffy laughed.

After Buffy laughed, Biff cried.
We might join the same sentences using a conjunctive adverb, indicating similar relationships.
Conjunctive are adverbs—they can be moved around within the sentence—that join sentences.

Buffy laughed; Biff, on the other hand, cried.
Although Buffy laughed, Biff cried.
Buffy laughed, but Biff cried.

Buffy laughed; consequently, Biff cried.
Because Buffy laughed, Biff cried.
Buffy laughed, so Biff cried.

Buffy laughed; in addition, Biff cried.
Buffy laughed, and Biff cried.
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
Buffy laughed; Biff, subsequently, cried.
After Buffy laughed, Biff cried.
You choice to use simple, compound, or complex sentences is largely a matter of style.
I provide links to a number of sentence combining exercises, including

relative clauses

appositives

participial phrases and absolutes
Searching for articles using Memorial Library
When searching for articles published in periodicals, you have two options:

using research resources (simultaneously searching a group of databases)
appropriate to a particular field of study

using a single database appropriate to a particular field of study (for example, the
ACM Digital Library)

using an Internet search engine that targets academic sources (for example, Google
Scholar)