Elegant Solutions for Mythical Fussbudgetry

Close to a year ago I wrote at length about three instances of grammatical "rules" I describe as "mythical fussbudgetry":

• Myth 1: Don't Start Sentences with Ands or Buts
• Myth 2: Don't End Sentences with Prepositions
• Myth 3: Don't Use They as a Singular Pronoun

Today in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Anne Curzan addresses Myth 3 with her blog post "Singular 'They': A Footnote."

Curzan offers a solid solution for people who want to use they as a singular pronoun: "I tell students that they are welcome to use singular they  in writing for my class, but they should footnote it the first time they use it and in the footnote explain their rationale for using singular they. And students do, both in my class and in other classes (for other classes, I tell them they’re allowed to end the footnote with an invitation for the instructor to contact me with any questions). This footnote accomplishes at least three things: It shows readers that the author is consciously making a choice to use singular they; it informs readers about legitimate reasons for using singular they, even if they disagree with its use in this context; and most importantly, it asks students to be careful, self-conscious writers, reflecting on and explaining their choices in their writing."

Curzan's proposal reminds me of a recommendation from one of my mentors in graduate school, Dr. Ralph F. Voss. In class one day, he told us that if students want to create intentional fragments in their papers for whatever reason, to indicate they did this consciously, students can just put "fi" in parentheses after the intentional fragment (like in a citation system), which stands for "fragment intended."

If you're someone like me who wants to get rid of the silly "rules" above, you and your students can use footnotes to signal these word choices and constructions were conscious choices.

Elegant solutions from Voss and Curzan (fi). 

Mythical Fussbudgetry

I started reading a new book the other day that had been recommended to me by a friend. It's Mindset (2008) by Carol S. Dweck, a widely respected psychologist and researcher at Stanford University. Although the subtitle of the book, The New Psychology of Success, gave me pause because it sounds a little self-helpy for my taste, Dweck relates interesting scientific research in accessible prose -- a writing skill I highly esteem.

However, a paragraph in Dweck's introduction also made me pause and left me frustrated

Here's the passage:

• "A little note about grammar. I know it and I love it, but I haven't always followed it in this book. I start sentences with ands and buts. I end sentences with prepositions. I use the plural they in contexts that require the singular he or she. I've done this for informality and immediacy, and I hope the sticklers will forgive me" (x). 

Although I'm enjoying the book, I'm still trying to forgive her for writing that passage about "grammar."

Ironically enough, the first sentence of her paragraph begins with an intentional fragment or what could be considered an ellipsis. In her excellent book Rhetorical Grammar: Grammatical Choices, Rhetorical Effects (5th ed.), Martha Kolln describes the latter, which she calls a "stylistic variation" that "refers to a sentence in which a part is simply left out, or understood" (223). In Dweck's first sentence, we can assume "Here is" or "I have a" is phrase that has been left out of the fragment, "A little note about grammar."

The sticklers she's worrying about would fault her for writing a sentence fragment -- if they noticed it.

Besides that first sentence or intentional fragment or ellipsis or whatever (note the use of polysyndeton), let's take a closer look at the injunctions Dweck worries about because of the "sticklers" out there:

• Myth 1: Don't Start Sentences with Ands or But
• Myth 2: Don't End Sentences with Prepositions
• Myth 3: Don't Use They as a Singular Pronoun

Myth 1: Don't Start Sentences with Ands or Buts
I never understood this misguided "rule" until I volunteered in my daughter's elementary school classroom. Imagine 24 second graders writing stories for their teacher and starting many of those sentences with ands and buts.

This injunction reminds me of the same advice we hear in the writing center when writers tell us they were told never to start sentences with a because. That directive is probably an unintended result of teachers trying to ward off sentence fragments.

I've had this "rule" used against me in various contexts -- when I was writing papers in college and even when I've published research. For me, it doesn't make much sense because writers can use those conjunctions for rhetorical effects. For example, think of a writer who describes many of the positive attributes of a political candidate but then ends the paragraph with this terse statement: "But he's not the right candidate for our district" or "But he's a crook."

Catherine Soanes on the blog of Oxford Dictionaries addresses this grammar myth/diktat in detail.

Likewise, here's further support for beginning sentences with ands and buts:

• "Conjunctions" from Oxford Dictionaries relates, "You might have been taught that it’s not good English to start a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but. It’s not grammatically incorrect to do so, however, and many respected writers use conjunctions at the start of a sentence to create a dramatic or forceful effect," and "It’s best not to overdo it, but there is no reason for completely avoiding the use of conjunctions at the start of sentences." 
• "Starting Sentences with 'And,' 'But,' and 'So': The Definitive Answer" from Plain Text
• "Starting Sentences with And or But" by Dr. Mark Womack
• "Conjunctions to Start Sentences" from Grammarist

Myth 2: Don't End Sentences with Prepositions
Consider these sentences:

• "Ending sentences with prepositions has never been a rule about which I've been concerned."
• "Ending sentences with prepositions has never been a rule I've been concerned about."

The first sounds clunky, doesn't it?

Of course, one could argue the second sentence would sound much better with a front-loaded (subject-verb-object) active voice construction like "I've never been concerned about ending sentences with prepositions," but I'm not going to get into the often stated presumption that active voice is always better.

That might be for another post, one that focuses on how certain disciplinary discourses demand passive voice constructions. In addition, Doug has written about staying active before.
 
For myth-busting purposes, I first went to my faded copy (6th edition) of William Zinsser's On Writing Well for advice. He states, "The growing acceptance of the split infinitive, or of the preposition at the end of a sentence, proves that formal syntax can't hold the fort forever against a speaker's more comfortable way of getting the same thing said -- and shouldn't. I think a sentence is a fine thing to put a preposition at the end of" (42).

And here are some links to resources that support the practice of placing prepositions at the end of sentences:

• As "Ending Sentences with Prepositions" from Oxford Dictionaries states, "There’s no necessity to ban prepositions from the end of sentences. Ending a sentence with a preposition is a perfectly natural part of the structure of modern English."
• "Prepositions--Ending Sentences With" by Richard Nordquist, who provides a quotation from Garner's Modern American Usage. 
• "Ending a Sentence with a Preposition" from Grammar Girl, who also provides an interesting "Top Ten Grammar Myths" for your perusal.

I also highly recommend this video on the issue from one of the editors of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.


Myth 3: Don't Use They as a Singular Pronoun
This myth is one I'm having a hard time giving up because it's been instilled in me through years upon years of formal schooling. And giving up one's beliefs is difficult.

However, to provide a historical context for this one, I suggest reading "All-Purpose Pronoun" by Patricia T. O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman from the New York Times. The authors relate how the use of "he" as the default singular pronoun started with Anne Fisher's A New Grammar in 1745 and has been reinforced ever since.

At the close of their article, they offer this conclusion: "It’s a shame that grammarians ever took umbrage at the singular they. After all, they gave you a slide. It began life as a plural object pronoun and evolved into the whole enchilada: subject and object, singular and plural. But umbrage the grammarians took, and like it or not, the universal they isn’t universally accepted — yet. Its fate is now in the hands of the jury, the people who speak the language."

Likewise, in "Is 'They' Acceptable as a Singular Pronoun?", Mark Nichol works readers through the options writers have with pronouns and opines near the end of the article that "I am flummoxed by the controversy over it [the use of they as a singular pronoun] and by the resistance of many people to accept it. Singular 'they' has long been used in literature and in conversation, and though it still has an informal taint, it seems to me absurd to resist adopting it when it satisfies an aching need."

One of my favorite sites on grammatical matters, Grammar Girl, presents a solid and reasoned approach about how to contend with this myth. Her advice, which I'll quote at length, is this: "everyone who hires writers or assigns writing needs to have a style guide entry on this topic. Writers can waste a lot of time trying to decide what to do (especially in organizations where people collaborate on documents), and it is better to have one single style that some people don't agree with than to have different writers doing different things so that company documents are all willy-nilly."

And she also provides her "bottom line": "Rewrite your sentences to avoid the problem. If that's not possible, check to see if the people you are writing for have a style guide. If not, use "he or she" if you want to play it safe, or use 'they' if you feel bold and are prepared to defend yourself."

Like Grammar Girl, I also think they will eventually become acceptable as a singular pronoun because language can and does change. But I wonder how long it's going to take.

Will I be alive to see it become acceptable?

Will you?

Why not follow Mahatma Gandhi's advice about being "the change you want to see in the world" and make that change now?


The Upshot
Of course, audience awareness is the huge factor here. Grammar Girl addresses this concern in her advice about ending sentences with prepositions, "because of the prevalent myth that it’s wrong to end sentences with prepositions, there are times when you should avoid doing it even though it isn’t wrong. For example, when you’re writing a cover letter to a potential employer, don’t end a sentence with a preposition. The person reading the letter could see it as an error. I always recommend following the most conservative grammar rules in job applications. I’d rather be hired than lose out on an opportunity because my grammar was correct--but perceived as wrong."

The same can be said for using they as a singular pronoun.

If I were to advocate anything here, I would propose we eradicate the so-called rules about conjunctions not being able to start sentences (Myth 1) and prepositions not being able to end sentences (Myth 2) as long as people use such constructions within reason and for rhetorical effects (there might be the rub).

To me, the distressing aspect of the first two myths is that people in power -- whether high school teachers, college professors, human resource directors, employers, et al. -- are applying these diktats arbitrarily. They are passing on and reinforcing beliefs that are at best silly or at worst just pedagogically wrongheaded and aggravating.

Also, I'd like a formal ruling on using they as a singular pronoun, and I would prefer it be a positive ruling since wallowing through using he, she, s/he, his or her is just darn clunky.

Imagine if a decision were to made by an entity -- say a coalition of Oxford Dictionaries, the American Heritage Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, NCTE, CCCC, WPA, MLA, APA, IEEE, Chicago Style, ASA, and others -- and the judgment was that they can serve as a first person singular pronoun?

On your local college's quadrangle, there would be students with bullhorns announcing, "Yes, we can now use they as a singular pronoun!" And crowds of students would cheer with hearty "Huzzahs!" Well, probably not. That's just a fantasy, but it's an overdue one.

But Grammar Girl's advice about audience/readers pulls me back to another passage in Dweck's book where she says, "You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They're powerful beliefs, but they're just something in your mind, and you can change your mind" (16).

These beliefs about conjunctions and prepositions lurch toward the picayune when you think about the big picture of what writing should do. Writing should make interesting/important points, marshal strong support, exemplify clarity, and be stylistically elegant, among other goals. Good writing should get the job done.

How often do those of us who are instructors not listen to students' ideas with an open mind because we're so focused on sentence-level concerns? Are we noticing errors because they disrupt our reading, or are we reading papers in an error-hunt mode?

Sure, sentence-level concerns are important, but they aren't the only concern. And getting angered by powerful myths about picayune matters might cloud your mind when reading students' papers. You can be seduced by mythical fussbudgetry.

When reading papers and responding to student writing, instructors have to make decisions about what's most important. Often we let established writers break some of the "rules" out there, such as split infinitives, fragments, and others.  Joseph Williams' fine article, "The Phenomenology of Error," demonstrates that much and more.

For advice about changing one's mindset and ideas for productive methods for responding to student writing, I offer these links:

• "13 Ways of Looking at Responding to Student Writing" by Doug Hesse
• "Responding to Writing" by Laura Brady
• "Responding to Student Writing" by Nancy Sommers
• "How Can I Handle Responding to Drafts?" main page from the WAC Clearinghouse
• "Think of Yourself First as a Reader" from the WAC Clearinghouse
• "Do I Have to be an Expert in Grammar to Assign Writing?" from the WAC Clearinghouse
•  "Writing Matters #2: Responding to Student Writing" from the University of Hawaii at Manoa Writing Program 

I hope you find the post and the links helpful, and I hope you can stave off mythical fussbudgetry. 

Embracing the Semicolon, Sort of

Back in February Ms. Kelly Franklin provided a fine post titled "Semicolons--Which Side Are You On?"

To follow up on her post about this misunderstood and often abused punctuation mark, I thought I'd pass along yesterday's Opinionator column in the New York Times by Ben Dolnick. Thanks to EIU Professor Emerita Linda Coleman for passing along this column.

In "Semicolons: A Love Story," Dolnick recounts his intellectual journey of finally embracing the semicolon. Because of his esteem for both Vonnegut (who Kelly references in her post) and Hemingway, for a long time he didn't use the punctuation mark.

But as he relates in the piece, "once I’d seen him [William James] using semicolons this way, their pleasing possibilities became irresistible. I’d been finding myself increasingly flummoxed by the difficulty of capturing even a rough approximation of thought on the page, and it seemed absurd to leave such a handy tool unused out of obscure loyalty."

I agree with Kelly's opinion that "one should use semicolons sparingly." However, Dolnick makes a good case for why and how a writer should use them. While Dolnick seems to dismiss the textbook definition of a semicolon functioning to create "a more distinct break than a comma can signal, but that are too closely connected to be made into separate sentences," the diction I'm focusing on is "too closely connected."

As a writing teacher, I'm fine with semicolons as long as writers use them purposefully; too often I see semicolons connecting sentences that have no reason to be so closely connected.

I'm a fan of using semicolons to connect two interrelated sentences that have relatively balanced clauses, such as the following quotations taken from one of my commonplace books:

• "In Iraq, the luck get Kevlar; the rest get prayer beads." ~Naomi Klein, "Disaster Capitalism: The New Economy of Catastrophe"
• "No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately." ~Michel de Montaigne
• We need to rediscover and celebrate our place here; there is nowhere else for us to live." ~David Suzuki and Amanda McConnell, The Sacred Balance
• "At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45 they are caves in which we hide." ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
• "When I call to my my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living." ~Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
• "To live by the internal-combustion engine is to live on top of fire; a cyclone of explosions carries us along." ~Ian Frazier, "Route 3"
• "Individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at length absorbed into selfishness." ~Alexis de Tocqueville

For me, Ms. Franklin's advice about using semicolons sparingly is warranted, and writers need to keep in mind why they're using them -- not just inserting them into their sentences willy nilly.

Citation Spotlight: KnAPSAck

Forgive the title. It was the closest I could come to a pun working with "APSA."

You might be wondering what I mean by "APSA." I too am wondering that same thing. Let's explore, shall we?

APSA is the American Political Science Association, presumably not unlike MLA for the language peeps and APA for the psychology folk. Like every discipline, APSA seems to have their own Style Manual, which according to the University of Wisconsin hasn't been updated since 1993. And perhaps for good reason?

APSA citation style might sound a little familiar to some of you fans of APA citation style, whoever you may be. For example, APSA doesn't use a "Works Cited" like MLA but rather a "Reference List." You'll notice that APSA begins to stray away from the APA method in this example of a referenced journal article:

Aldrich, John H. 1980. "A Dynamic Model of Presidential Nomination Campaigns." American Political Science Review 74:651-69.

Wait a second. There are first names listed! You can't do that in APA! How are we supposed to remain gender-neutral if we know what the writers' first names are? How dare the APSA have the audacity to do something like that! Why, you'd think they were doing MLA style or something like that...

Ahem. Sorry about that. I lost my cool there for a second. Anyhoo, in the actual list, it might appear that it takes after MLA rather than APA, at least in terms of punctuation and formatting. Aside from the audacious use of full first names, APSA still capitalizes titles properly and puts quotation marks around the titles of those short works that require it.

But the year is a bit off, making it not quite MLA still. Let's see the same article cited in MLA style:

Aldrich, John H. "A Dynamic Model of Presidential Nomination Campaigns." American Political Science Review 74.1 (1980): 651-69. Print.

Looks slightly different, no? Now truthfully, I don't know if it actually was Issue 1 of the 74th volume of the American Political Science Review, but I added the one just for the sake of showing what MLA does slightly differently. You'll notice also that the year jumped towards the end as well as shielding itself with parentheses. It is said that those who use MLA tend to privilege the timelessness of a text over the modernity that same text might have. You'll also notice that MLA takes care to list that it's a "print" source. I'm not sure how sold I am on that idea, but it's clear that APSA treats it just as APA does by keeping it towards the front unlike MLA. Aside from that, however, the APSA style is remarkably similar to MLA's.

I question the popularity of this system. According to this handy manual, the APSA revised the their style manual in August 2006. As far as I can tell, they've adopted the Chicago Manual of Style (8). Does that mean the APSA found their style to be out of date? Perhaps. But not everyone seems to think so.

Emphasizing Emphasis

When it comes to editorial suggestions / corrections, the issue of sentence combination is often the most frustrating. Why do you want me to split this one? Why should I merge these two? And when we look at the fact that compound sentences and two-sentence splits are equally correct as far as grammar is concerned, it can become near-infuriating.

So what the heck is the difference? Emphasis. Sure, you can opt to do what I did and fake it with italics, boldface, and underline, but understanding how emphasis works within a sentence will give them the most punch. We're talking Evander Holyfield, here. (Not Tyson ... I couldn't think of a literary ear-biting joke)

The great thing about figuring out emphasis is that it will not only allow you to decide how to deal with compound sentences (or the splitting thereof), but it will also allow you to manipulate how the reader feels about your sentences. Neat, huh? Here are some rules of thumb that will ensure your sentences are nice and sharp:

Longer is not better. (Which could also be worded like this: "Deciding to add lots of additional words and phrases simply to enhance the length and academic clout of any given segment of writing really doesn't end up providing the kind of benefits that you might initially hope for nine times out of ten." Eww ... isn't that obnoxious? No bueno.)  

Let's be honest; sometimes we write to fill pages. When you're barely scratching the bottom of page four and that blasted tyrant of a teacher is demanding six, what else is there to do? Resist the temptation to add words for the sake of words. Stronger emphasis and sharper sentences will net you a stronger paper. Most professors are more than willing to help with idea generation if you need more to tackle.

Important points deserve emphasis. Sometimes "and" ends up as a placeholder, a word we use while we're thinking and writing simultaneously. "Ooh," your clever collegiate brain tells you, "don't forget about this! And doesn't it remind you of that?" Not wanting to miss out on the opportunity, we throw these thoughts together.

The problem arises when these ideas don't play nice with one another. If you put two equally important ideas into a compound sentence, one might overpower the other. In a worst case scenario, an exceptionally long sentence feels muddled, killing the emphasis on both would-be stellar ideas.

Check it:

Sarah cried about the accident all night before getting up the next day and drowning her tears with the bottle of Scotch she was going to share with Jim.

There's quite a bit going on here that crowds itself out, squishing and bumping shoulders like a literary mosh pit ... minus the nightmare-inducing B.O. Sure, the reader gets the basic gist of what's happening, but it moves by so quickly that much of the emphasis is lost.  

This is one of those moments where you, as a writer, have to determine exactly what it is that you want to get across to your reader. If, in fact, you want us to feel the time flying by for Sarah now that Jim has suffered whatever horrible fate befell him (I imagine it involved faulty protective measures around the local zoo's lion exhibit), then the above sentence might work. However, in most instances, you don't want this kind of blurry, rushed feeling. An alternate way to re-write the mini-scene from above might be as follows:

Sarah cried about the accident all night. The next morning, she drowned her tears with a fifth of Scotch. She had planned on sharing it with Jim.

I can hear the echoing cries and see the shaking fists: "But Stephen, I'm not a creative writer! I'm working on a research paper / proposal / persuasive essay / job application / et cetera. How do Jim and his foolish shenanigans help me?"

Have no fear, oh-so-cynical reader friend. The basic premise applies to nearly any kind of writing:

- Mike Tyson was a great boxer until he bit someone's ear off and then became a joke and had to retire.

- I would be a wonderful choice for your program since I have many qualifications and have taken many relevant classes.

Regardless of what kind of writing you're doing, it's easy to let information get crammed together if you're not paying close attention. Also, you don't want to assume that all your long sentences are bad. Sometimes a longer sentence can add a nice change in pacing, giving the overall piece a rhythmic feel (And as silly as that sounds, it greatly influences readability). Make sure to keep that main point in your mind -- how many important pieces of information am I trying to convey? If you have a handle on that, it's hard to go wrong.

3. End, Beginning, Middle. Every sentence has three points of emphasis. The strongest of these three is the ending. If you want a particular part of your sentence to carry extra weight, stick it on the end. Do you want that "however" to carry a little extra weight without overwhelming your main point? Break the sentence, start a new one with "however," and back-load the most hard-hitting point.

(i.e. Everyone says Bob is a great man. However, I have seen him kick kittens.)

That period (also known as full syntactic closure) forces the reader to stop, and this stop provides emphasis. This can be another great trick to use when you're splitting things up. Have two points that you want to really jump out? Make two sentences. Stick 'em at the end.

Keep emphasis in mind. I won't promise an end to all your multi-sentence woes, but knowing where you want the big "hits" to fall will definitely make things easier in the long run.

Heavyweight Boxing

You've probably done an outline at some point in your life. You probably did it before you wrote your paper. And hey, that's swell. But did you ever consider doing an outline after the paper?

"No," you say, shaking your head emphatically. "The paper was done. Why outline the finished product?"

"Ah-HA!" I holler. "Is it really done?"

Keep staring at me with that ridiculous look on your face. I'll explain myself. In truth, your paper isn't done until you get the grade, and even then I don't think it's 100% done. But indeed, why do an outline after the paper's been drafted? Believe it or not, an outline might help to better organize your thoughts. Take, for instance, a box outline. Even if you haven't done a box outline, you've probably done something similar. The box outline is merely an aesthetic method that makes your outline look a little neater than simply letters or numbers or even using bubbles. Applying a box outline to a "finished" product is simple: you simply create a series of boxes for each paragraph. In each box, you then describe what you basically are trying to do in said paragraph. If you find it easy to do, congratulations! Your paragraph is likely cohesive. If you find difficulty in it, so sorry--try again! If you find your paragraph description is getting overly complicated, it could be a matter of just breaking it apart into smaller, bite-size chunks of paragraph that'll be easier for your readers to get down. By applying this box outline method post-draft, you can double-check yourself to make sure you're not creating some unwieldy paragraph that looks both unattractive and uninviting to readers. As writers, we want to make our writing as accessible to readers as possible, unless, of course, we want to be unlikable pretentious jerks. As they write, some people have the tendency to go into a huge paragraph without breaking it up, bogging down their readers with no breaks of white space...

...oh dear.

BrbAfkLolBbq - A Modest Proposal

For the majority of readers with cell phones and texting plans or voracious instant messaging habits, those letters look familiar to you. All too familiar. They're all shorthand--quick and to the point. Going to be away for a bit? "Be right back"--"brb." Away for longer? "Away from keyboard." Want to eat barbecue? "Bbq."

In the last few years, text messaging has risen from small trend to full-blown epidemic. The language has become such a central part to what we write that it's usurped our formal written language. In some papers, people type "2" instead of "to." The worst part is, even if they proofread carefully, they may not find the error for the simple fact that they don't see it an error. They use it in their everyday language, so what's the problem?

Unfortunately, instructors haven't gotten the memo that textspeak is okay, nor have some of us who were late to the texting game. Though I shudder to think of a world in which textspeak is like a macabre form of newspeak, we can fight the possibility of this. Now here's what I propose:

Stop using textspeak.

I'm not saying don't text any more. Text to your heart's desire! But try it just once--a text message in which you eliminate the numbers for letters and grossly-used shorthand. While it is just a bit more time consuming, newer phones are designed with auto-correct and similar technologies that do not allow you to use shorthand unless it's programmed in. And honestly, it may be difficult to do at first. So try it little by little. Drop your shorthand. Try a full sentence just once! Maybe, just maybe, you'll find you like using full words.

Ttyl.

A User-Friendly Grammar Lesson

As a tutor in the EIU Writing Center, I’ve seen quite a few grammatical concerns that repeatedly show themselves. Perhaps the single most common I’ve seen, the one that crops up not only in the writing of students who visit the Center, but in my own writing (and even my professors’), is what we call the Comma After an Introductory Element.

The Writing Center Resources for Writers page has a link to a marvelous comma handout, the entire first section of which deals with this issue. What I’m going to attempt to do here is break down the issue into something that is easily understandable. Think of this as the CliffsNotes version.

An Introductory Element is basically a word or phrase at the beginning of a sentence that sets up one of the following questions: where, why, when, how, or in what manner. There are certain key words that indicate one of these phrases is about to appear; common ones include “in,” “when,” “because,” “if,” “although,” “since,” or words ending in –ing. Let’s look at an example sentence, without proper punctuation:

On the day following her exorcism Reagan felt immensely relieved.

Let’s start at the beginning of this sentence. We have the word “on,” which immediately sets up a “where/when” scenario. In this case, it’s “when.” So we know immediately that we’re going to have a comma coming our way.

But where does it go? Let’s look for our subject. Who is doing something in this sentence, or having something done to them? The answer is Reagan—this sentence is about Reagan feeling relieved.

So now we know that the word “on” is referring to when Reagan felt relieved. And when was this? “The day following her exorcism,” of course! So now that we have an answer to our question, we put in our comma:

On the day following her exorcism, Reagan felt immensely relieved.

A shorthand way to think of this is: 9 times out of 10, the comma will go immediately before the subject of the sentence. Thus, since Reagan is our subject, the comma goes before her.

I recommend checking out the linked handout for further examples, or even picking up a copy from the Writing Center. This is a tricky issue that even the most experienced writers face, so there’s no shame in asking for some help with it.

Let's Get Technical

Hello, everybody. I hope everyone has had a nice, relaxing spring break. Oh, and I hope everyone has had a productive spring break as well, because we all know that this is a week to not just catch up on rest but is also a week to catch up on work. That being said, let’s get down to business.

My last post discussed how to take or handle comments you receive from your professor. In case you missed it, here’s the link. I wanted to do a follow up to that post and look more at the editorial/technical side of comments. If you handed in a paper before the break, there is a good chance you will be getting that paper back this week. Brace yourself. There is a chance that you will get your paper back and see some editorial marks and comments, and that means your paper wasn’t perfect, but that is okay. Perfection is an impossible standard, and those marks and comments are fantastic opportunities for you to learn. That’s right! I said LEARN!

Now, I’ve included a list of some common comments you might see and what those comments mean. So here it is:

Frag = Fragment

Awk = Awkward sentence/phrasing

CS = Comma Splice

RO = Run-on Sentence

SV Agr = Subject-Verb Agreement

MM or DM = Modifier Error – Misplaced or Dangling

// = Parallelism

I bet I can guess what you are thinking. “Chris, what does modifier error/parallelism/subject-verb agreement/awkward sentence mean?” Well, I’m not going to tell you. You will have to figure it out on your own. That is your side of the work. But hold on, there’s more! I’ll give you some tips if you don’t know what these mean. You have some options on how to find out.

1) Go ask your professor.

2) Go to the Writing Center.

3) Check the Purdue OWL.

There are 3 solid options. Go learn what these mean. I promise it will help. But, I wasn’t able to add all of the common marks you might see. I was limited by Word, so I’m going to give you a link to a table provided by Merriam Webster. This table shows proofreading symbols and is very helpful. So here it is: http://www.merriam-webster.com/mw/table/proofrea.htm

Now for the disclaimer. Not all professors will use the same symbols. As you can see from the link, there are tons out there. Your professor might also write out comments that A) You don’t understand or B) You can’t read because it is illegible. For these instances or other comments/marks you just have no clue about, go ask your professor. Let me repeat that. GO. ASK. YOUR. PROFESSOR. Your professor is there to help you. Your professor will be able to explain what those marks mean and the reasoning behind them, and if the writing is illegible, your professor will probably be the first to admit it.

So there you are. I’ve started you off on learning what these marks and comments mean. Now it’s your turn to finish the educational journey. That’s corny I know, but so worth it. Cheers.

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

What is the first thing you look at when you are given a writing assignment? I bet I can guess what it is. Length. The first thing you want to know is how much you have to write. Well, I’m going to tell you something that might sound a little crazy. When you are sitting down to start a paper, you need to forget the length requirements. That’s right. Forget it. Nothing is more daunting than seeing the start of the paper and counting how far you are from the finish line. This is what can lead to procrastination. It’s the fight or flight response. Some will see it as a challenge and start writing. Others (and this includes me) will take flight and avoid this problem. Ignoring the length requirements will free up your mind, and you will be able to better focus on what you are actually putting down on the page. It isn’t until you have all of your ideas out and on the page that you should think about length. Are you short? Did you go over? These are questions for the revisions stage.

But the length requirement isn’t the only thing you shouldn’t focus on when you are starting a paper. Brace yourself for this. Don’t worry about grammar. That’s right. Don’t worry about it. Now, I’m not saying you should completely ignore it. Obviously put in the grammar you are sure of, but if you start questioning yourself (Should there be a comma here? Do I use a colon or a semi-colon to introduce a list?) just move on. If you are still in the process of writing your paper, there is no point spending 10, 20, or even 30 minutes fixing the grammar of a certain section. When it comes to revision, there is no telling what you will keep and what you will get rid of. There is no worse feeling than cutting a sentence that you spent 20 minutes perfecting. Just like the questions about length, grammar is something that is best left towards the end of your writing process.

When you are sitting down to start a paper, you need to worry about these questions: Am I following the assignment? What is my thesis? Do I need research? Am I staying on task? These are the questions you need to be able to focus on. Once you get past these, you can start worrying about the more technical aspects of writing.