Commonly Confused English Words and Grammar Rules: A Comprehensive Guide, Lecture notes of English

Download Commonly Confused English Words and Grammar Rules: A Comprehensive Guide and more Lecture notes English in PDF only on Docsity! • Clarity of meaning • Readability • Credibility THE PURPOSE OF GRAMMAR TYPES OF WRONG-WORD ERRORS • Spelling and Typographic Mistakes • Don’t just rely on spell check! • Wrong Meaning • Use a dictionary. • Be careful using the thesaurus. • Watch out for words with the wrong shade of meaning or the wrong meaning altogether. • Commonly Confused Words • Spell check won’t catch these! COMMONLY CONFUSED WORDS • They're / Their / There • They’re going to store together. (contraction of “they are”) • The managers are in their weekly meeting. (possessive) • Place the flowers there. (adv. – indicates location/direction) • You're / Your • You're going to be a great writer! (contraction of “you are”) • Your hair looks nice today. (possessive) • Who's / Whose • Who's on first base? (contraction of “who is”) • Whose watch is this? (possession) COMMONLY CONFUSED WORDS • It's / Its / Its’ • It’s a beautiful day! (contraction of “it is”) • Download the program, along with its readme file. (possessive) • Its’ is not a word. • Affect / Effect • The outage shouldn't affect anyone during work hours. (verb – to act on, influence) • The outage shouldn't have any effect on users. (noun – result) COMMAS • Use a comma and a coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet) to join two independent clauses. • The game was over, but the crowd refused to leave. • Yesterday was her birthday, so they went out to dinner. • Use commas after introductory clauses, phrases, or words that come before the main clause. • While I was eating, the cat scratched at the door. • To get a seat, you'd better come early. • Well, perhaps he meant no harm. COMMAS • Use commas to separate three or more words, phrases, or clauses written in a series. • The Constitution establishes the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. • Use commas to set apart a parenthetical phrase in a sentence. • My friend Jessica, who lives in Connecticut, is a yoga teacher. SEMICOLONS • Use a semicolon between two related independent clauses that are not joined by a conjunction. • The participants in the first study were paid; those in the second were unpaid. • Use a semicolon to separate elements in a series that already contains commas. • The students in the class were from Lynchburg, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Raleigh, North Carolina. APOSTROPHES • Use an apostrophe to create a contraction (but don’t use contractions in your academic writing!). • I don’t like him very much. • Use an apostrophe to form a possessive noun. • My mother’s job is better than all my brothers’ jobs put together. • Dickens’s later works are much darker than his early novels. • Do NOT use an apostrophe to form a plural. • Remember that “it’s” = “it is,” but “its” is possessive. QUOTATION MARKS • If the sentence ends with the quotation (and if there is no parenthetical citation), put your final mark of punctuation INSIDE the quotation marks: • “That dog is as big as a horse.” • If the sentence continues after the quotation, you’ll usually need a comma AFTER your quotation but BEFORE your final quotation mark: • “I wish this workshop were over,” John said. • If the quotation ends in an exclamation point or question mark, omit the comma: • “I hate going to the dentist!” John bellowed. QUOTATION MARKS • If your sentence ends with a footnote, put the superscript number AFTER your final mark of punctuation: • According to Car and Driver, the Denali is “among the most agile of full- sized sport utility vehicles.”15 • If the sentence ends with a parenthetical citation, omit the punctuation at the end of the quotation (unless it is a ? or a !): • According to Car and Driver, the Denali is “among the most agile of full- sized sport utility vehicles” (Csere 20). FRAGMENT EXAMPLES • Went out of business after Starbucks Coffee opened. • One of my friends who won a contest by playing a variety of instruments. • Since I went fishing. RUN-ON SENTENCES • A run-on sentence is sentence comprised of two or more independent clauses not properly separated. • Lack of punctuation and/or conjunctions • Incorrect punctuation • A comma splice—two independent clauses joined by a comma— is a run-on sentence. • A run-on sentence is not simply a long sentence. RUN-ON SENTENCES • Long sentences can be grammatically correct. • During the 1960s, development thinking, encompassing both ideology and strategy, prioritized economic growth and the application of modern scientific and technical knowledge as the route to prosperity in the underdeveloped world and defined the "global development problem" as one in which less developed nations needed to "catch up" with the West and enter the modern age of capitalism and liberal democracy, in short, to engage in a form of modernization that was equated with westernization (and an associated faith in the rationality of science and technology). (86 words) DANGLING PARTICIPLE • After rotting in the cellar, my brother brought up some oranges. • Featuring plug-in circuit boards, we can strongly endorse this server’s flexibility and growth potential. • Having finished the assignment, the TV was turned on. VERB TENSE • Verb tenses should be consistent throughout your writing. • Reviews of literature should be in the present tense. • Historical events should be in the past tense. • Correcting tense shifts: • Be consistent throughout your sentences and paragraphs. • Be familiar with verb forms and tenses. TENSE SHIFT EXAMPLES • About noon the sky darkened, a breeze sprang up, and a low rumble announces the approaching storm. • We viewed A Caribbean Mystery and watch intently as Joan Hickson portrays Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple. • I climbed out of the car, walked through the door, and prepared to meet “the parents,” but instead a large, honey-colored dog runs to meet me at the door. SUBJECT/VERB AGREEMENT • Singular subjects must have singular verbs. • Plural subjects must have plural verbs. • Rule of thumb: • Subjects ending in “s” are plural • Verbs ending in “s” are singular • Correcting agreement errors: • Become familiar with irregular verb forms. • Focus on the subject, not any additional modifiers. S/V AGREEMENT ERROR EXAMPLES • The box of ornaments belong in the attic. • High levels of mercury occurs in some fish. • What we need are more pots and pans.