Take a Breath!

My friend Grrly Grl recently read a blog post which contained the entire post in a single “paragraph”. She told me it was hard to read, that it was hard to focus on what the writer meant, and that it was hard to keep her place on the page. She asked me to do a post on paragraphs; what they are and how to write them properly.

I had a few ideas on what was right and wrong in the writing of paragraphs, but before publishing them, I decided to do some fact-checking. Good thing, too, as I discovered that some of my thoughts were incorrect.

Grammarly Handbook says that the general rule is to break a paragraph when it has completely developed the topic sentence. However, some topics being more complicated than others, if you need more than five or six sentences, find a logical place for a break.

About.com had some interesting things to say on what most people incorrectly believe are the rules of paragraph writing, especially as it concerns essay writing. (Essay writing is a totally different art form than research papers, nonfiction, poetry, and fiction writing, which are also distinct from each other.) One of the debunked rules is that a paragraph must contain between three and five sentences, and another is to never begin a sentence with a conjunction such as and or but. Go read the article for some eye-opening information.

I think the best advice I’ve heard on paragraph structure came from my daughter’s 7th grade teacher. “A sentence contains a thought; a paragraph contains an idea, but never write a paragraph longer than you can read aloud in a single breath.”

King vs. king

Nouns come in two basic varieties. Proper nouns are the names of people or places. All the rest of the nouns are called common nouns. Proper nouns are always capitalized. Common nouns are not capitalized.

The rule is easy enough with words that are always one way or the other. No one would forget to capitalize a person's name, such as John Smith, Sarah, or Jane. Likewise, no one would forget place names, such as Canada, Kentucky, or Topeka, Kansas.

It's also easy to know not to capitalize common nouns like dog, train, or camel.

The complications arise when there is a word that is sometimes capitalized and sometimes not, like river, king, or princess. Here's how to remember when a sometimes word gets the royal treatment. It all depends on usage.

If you are referring to that river over there, or any river, a river is a pretty common thing. It's a common noun and it gets no capital. If you are talking about a particular river, and the word river is part of the name of the river, then you use the capital letter. For example, you would write the river flowed past the campground, when it could be any river and any campground. In referencing a specific river, you would write In places, the Mississippi River is more than a mile wide. In this context, the word river is part of the name of the Mississippi River, and it gets its proper capital letter, because it is a proper noun.

The same rule-of-thumb applies to royalty and other titled personages. The princess crept quietly through the woods. However, Princess Tanella stopped for lunch. Likewise, a king can sit on his throne, but only King Fergasse can pass judgment on the people of Jurat.

~Marie

Possession is nine tenths of the letter...

Today’s grammar lesson is courtesy of my friend Dzrt Bxr, who asked me to elaborate on the possessive forms of words which already end in an “s”.

Before I get to the possessive forms, I’d like to quickly review the rules on plurals. Today’s source material comes from Meredith College’s grammar page, found http://www.meredith.edu/grammar/plural.htm here.

The plural form is used when there is more than one of whatever it is that you’re talking about. To make most nouns plural, simply add an “s” to the end. If the singular word ends in s, z, ch, sh, or x, add “es” to the end. If the singular ends in y, drop the y and add “ies”. Irregular plural forms such as man/men, person/people, and species/species don’t conform to any rule and simply must be memorized. Never add an apostrophe when making a word plural.

The possessive form is used when whatever it is that you’re talking about owns or possesses something else. If the noun is singular, add an apostrophe and the letter “s” to the end. If the noun is singular and ends in an s, x, or z, add the apostrophe all by itself. Plural nouns that already end in “s” get only an apostrophe; plural nouns not ending in “s” get an apostrophe and “s”.

Sometimes you’ll have a sentence with a compound noun (more than one noun) as the subject of the sentence. This most commonly happens with people. If the people share joint ownership, then you only add the possessive to the second person, as in Jenna and Marie’s vacation reservations to Hawaii. If they each have individual ownership of similar items, add the possessive to both names, as in Marie’s and Jenna’s grades were similar over the course of their college careers. Marie’s grades are Marie’s, and Jenna’s are Jenna’s, and they are not necessarily the same grades, however, they share a single set of reservations for a trip to Hawaii.

Remember when to use an apostrophe this way: if something owns something else, then the sentence owns an apostrophe. If there’s no ownership involved, there should be no apostrophe involved.

~Marie

Shall I take out the trash, or will you?

The two verbs, shall and will, are both used to express future conditions.

Will is normally used after pronouns such as I, we, and you. Will indicates your intention to do something, such as I will take out the trash, or a firm fact of a consequence of something; you will get into trouble if you do that.

The word shall is mostly used in a question. Although it can be used as an aid to a refusal, such as “You Shall Not Pass!” it’s mostly used as the beginning of a question, such as Shall I take out the trash? or Shall we go?

An easy way to decide which to use is by determining how formal you want to be. Will sounds more demanding, but shall is the more formal manner of speaking.

Thanks to Grrly Girl for suggesting this post!

~Jenna

We and Us and Me and I are all going to the store

I've had a request from my friend grrly girl to discuss when to use I in a sentence and when to use me, and also the plurals us and we.

I and me are both pronouns referring to the speaker. No one seems to have any problems deciding which one to use in a sentence when the speaker is the only subject present. From listening to our parents speak, we have learned to say, "I am going to the store", and "Give that to me".

We tend to get into trouble though, when there are two or more subjects present in the sentence. We're not sure whether to use I or me when we are going to the store with someone else, or when we are asking for something.

The easy way to figure out which one is correct is to remove the other person from the sentence. While you might dither over whether it is "Susan and I" or "Susan and me" going to the store, if you temporarily drop Susan from the sentence you will know which pronoun to use. It then becomes easy to say "Susan and I are going to the store" and "Give that to Susan and me."

We and us are the plural pronouns of I and me. If you are in a group of unnamed persons, and you need to know whether to use we or us, drop the rest of the people from the sentence temporarily. If you would use I as the singular pronoun, use we as the plural. If you would use me for the singular, then us is the proper plural. Therefore, you should say, "We are going to the store", and "Give that to us."

~Marie

Who fused my comma splice?

A run-on sentence is actually two or more sentences shoved into the same space. The two most common varieties of run-on sentences are the fused sentence, and the comma splice.

A fused sentence is easy to spot, as it doesn't make much sense the way it is written. A good example of a fused sentence is, "We love the beach we go every summer." This is made of two independent clauses strung together without benefit of punctuation. (A clause is an idea. An independent clause is an idea which is complete and can stand alone.) The clause "we love the beach", and the clause "we go every summer" are actually two separate ideas. The way to correct a fused sentence is to separate them with a period and capitalize the second sentence. Our fused sentence should read, "We love the beach. We go every summer."

A comma splice is similar to a fused sentence, except it has a comma placed in the middle of it. "The milk had gone sour, I threw it out." is an example of a comma splice. Independent clauses ought to be separated by a period rather than a comma. This sort of run-on sentence is a lot harder to recognize, since the comma between the clauses simulates a natural speaking pause. Most comma-spliced sentences are quite long; this can make them difficult to read.

 

As a general rule of thumb, sentences in works of fiction should average thirteen words. This does not mean you should make every sentence thirteen words long. If all your sentences are exactly the same length, the prose becomes stilted and awkward. You need sentences of all lengths, both longer and shorter, but over the course of your manuscript, they should average near thirteen words each. If your average is a lot higher than thirteen words, start looking for fuses and comma splices that can be broken in half before you go rewriting some of your more elegant prose.

~Marie

Con-GRAD-Ulations!

Thirty years ago when I graduated from high school, I got a lot of well-wishing cards from family and friends. All of them conveyed the same wish, to congratulate me on my graduation. Most of the cards said “Congratulations Graduate” on the front. One of them had a cute kitten wearing a cap and gown, and the caption, “conGRADulations”. I thought it was pretty cute, how the “card people” had combined the words “congratulations” and “graduate”. Obviously a lot of other people thought it was cute too, and the card sold well. Now, you almost can’t find a graduation card that spells “congratulations” properly. I even see people writing the misspelled version as they “congradulate” their friends who are getting engaged, married, having a significant anniversary, and giving birth.

“Congratulations” is a word that conveys the intent to pass well-wishes on as a person celebrates an achievement. “Congradulations” is a hybrid word made up by a greeting card company. It is barely appropriate as a bad pun for people graduation from high school or college. It is never appropriate on any other occasion. Please, congratulate responsibly!

~Marie

How Many Are There, Anyway?

My English Teacher’s pet peeve is mismatched items. She hates it when a writer uses past and present tense when referring to the same event, or when they mix up plural and singular forms.

Mismatched plural and singular is done so often, most readers don’t even notice it. Did you notice when I used the plural pronoun “they” to refer to the singular “a writer” in the first paragraph? I bet you didn’t. Properly, I should have used “writers” instead of “a writer”.

The pronoun “they” is often used incorrectly with a singular noun simply because the writer doesn’t want to offend the readers by implying gender. “They” is not gender specific; therefore it can refer to anyone who is reading the paper. However, many writers forget that “they” is also plural, and should only be used when referring to a plural noun.

If you have specified that there is only one person in your example, then you must either assign them a gender so that “he” or “she” can be used, or you must write out “he or she” or use the awkward slash “he/she”. This also applies to his/her/them and other variations. Commonly in English, the singular comes with a gender while the plural is not gender specific.

One way I’ve seen writers work around this problem is to use a male pronoun in one paragraph and a female pronoun in the next; however, personally, I find that more difficult to read than if the author simply picked a gender and stuck with it.

Antecedents and Their Pronouns

Ooooh, big, scary words. Sometimes I just like using the five-dollar words, and other times, those are the only names for the things you want to talk about. Today it’s antecedents and pronouns.

Those of you who, like me, are mature enough to remember Schoolhouse Rock will recall that a pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun, because “saying all those nouns over and over can really wear you down”. I tried once to go an entire day without using pronouns, and found that I couldn’t make it ten minutes unless I counted the time I wasn’t speaking.

Antecedent is probably based on some Latin thing, and I’m not going to bother to look up the actual origins, but it means the word the pronoun is replacing. For the record, I had several books published before I even heard the word “antecedent” or learned its meaning.

The antecedent doesn’t even have to be in the same sentence, for example, “Sally went to the store. She bought bread, milk, and eggs.” “She” is the pronoun; it replaces the noun “Sally” in the second sentence. In this pair of sentences, there is no doubt that “she” means “Sally”. It would be redundant to say “Sally went to the store. Sally bought bread, milk, and eggs.”

The problems begin to arise when the antecedents are too far from their pronouns, or there are other ambiguities. For example, “Sally went to the store with Martha. She bought bread, milk, and eggs.” We can see that Sally is at the store. Martha is also at the store. However, Sally and Martha are both female names, so it is unclear which one of them bought the groceries. Sally is the subject of the first sentence, so the pronoun in the second sentence should refer back to her, but Martha’s name is closer to the pronoun, so there’s really no way to tell which one of them did the purchasing.

If the sentence becomes, “Sally went to the store with Thomas. She bought bread, milk, and eggs,” it is clear that Sally is doing the buying, because Thomas is male, therefore the pronoun belongs with the female name. However, if Sally goes to the store with Drew, we have a problem because there’s no way to tell if Drew is male or female.

When writing, be careful that your pronouns are near enough to your antecedents for your meaning to be clear. If the meaning is not clear, by all means, restate the antecedent rather than use the pronoun. It’s far better to be redundant and understood than have someone throw your writing down in exasperation because they don’t know who you are talking about.

~Marie

Misplaced Modifiers

I’ve been aware of this phenomenon since I was in junior high, or possibly even longer, but it was only in the last five years that I learned the name of it. A modifier is a word that modifies, or changes the meaning of another word. Adverbs modify verbs. Adjectives modify nouns. For example, you could use the sentence, “I ran.” That isn’t a very specific sentence, though, so you can add modifiers to make the meaning more clear. “I ran away quickly,” adds the information of where I ran (away) and how fast I was moving (quickly).

Misplaced modifiers are exactly what they sound like, a modifier in the wrong place. Most of the time, a modifier is placed directly before the word it modifies. In the sentence “I ate meat,” the word “only” can be added in three places, and give the sentence three entirely different meanings.

“Only I ate meat” would indicate that of all the persons present, I was the only one eating meat.

“I only ate meat” says that I did not prepare it, I just ate it.

“I ate only meat” says that I indulged in a meal without vegetables, fruits, or grains.

The modifier getting misplaced can sometimes be funny as well as confusing. Consider these:

“Hiking up the mountain, the thunderstorm was an unwelcome surprise to James.” Why was the thunderstorm hiking up the mountain? I can imagine it would be an unwelcome surprise to see a thunderstorm hiking up the mountain.

“Tumbling down the mountain, Susan feared the rocks would flatten her tent.” Was Susan tumbling down the mountain, or were the rocks? If Susan is falling down the side of the mountain, why is she worried about rocks smashing into her tent? I’d be more worried about me hitting the rocks on my way down the hill.

In both sentences, the problem can be solved by moving the modifying phrase closer to the word it is supposed to be modifying.

“Hiking up the mountain, James was surprised by an unwelcome thunderstorm.”

“Susan feared the rocks tumbling down the mountain would flatten her tent.”

When proofreading something you’ve written, if a sentence is awkward or doesn’t seem to make sense, try moving the modifiers around a bit, and see if the problem is a misplaced modifier.

~Marie