Essay #2 Due 10-9-17
Choice A
In an essay of appropriate length, defend, refute, or complicate Cal Newport’s argument from his book excerpt (available online) So Good They Can't Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset.
Use 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Suggested Essay Structure:
Paragraph 1: Summarize Newport's argument in 250 words.
Paragraph 2: Explain how you've been pursuing your career goals before reading Newport's book. Then explain how his book affects the way you might re-think your strategy and approach to your career plans. 250 words.
Paragraph 3: Your thesis: Example: "Cal Newport's argument that we should shun the Passion Hypothesis and replace it with a craftsman's mindset is convincing (is not convincing) because ______________, ______________, _________________, and ______________________. 150 words (subtotal 650 words)
Paragraphs 4-7 are your supporting paragraphs (150 each for 600; subtotal is 1,250)
Paragraph 8: Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraph in which you anticipate how your opponents will oppose your thesis and your rebuttal to their counterargument. (150 words for subtotal of 1,400 words)
Paragraph 9: Conclusion: Dramatic reiteration of your thesis. (100 words for grand total of 1,500 words).
Example of a dissenting voice:
"What about George Carlin and Neil deGrasse Tyson? They followed their passion at an early age. Look how successful they turned out. What do you say to that, huh?"
Choice B
Sherry Turkle’s “The Flight from Conversation” and Curtis Silver’s “The Quagmire of Social Media Friendships” (444) allege certain pathologies result from social media. These pathologies include an empathy deficit, depression, narcissism, shortened attention span, online shaming, lost conversation skills, and even altered brain development. In an argumentative essay, support, refute or complicate the assertion from Sherry Turkle’s “The Flight from Conversation” (online essay) that social media is harmful to our social, cultural and intellectual development.
Sample Outline
Paragraph 1 Summarize the pathologies explained in Turkle's and Silver's essays.
Paragraph 2: Write a profile of a person you know who is squandering his or life on social media while becoming afflicted with a myriad of social pathologies.
Paragraph 3: Write an argumentative thesis that either attributes these pathologies to social media, as is claimed in Turkle's essay or argue that social media is not the culprit.
Paragraphs 4-7: Support your thesis with these body paragraphs.
Paragraph 8: Anticipate how your opponents would disagree with you (counterargument) and show why your opponents are wrong (rebuttal).
Typical counterargument goes like this: "My opponents claim that I am wrong because of _________; however, their claim fails to address ___________." Or, "My opponents will take issue with __________; however, their opposition is clearly misguided when we consider _______________."
Paragraph 9: Conclusion, a restatement of your thesis with powerful emotion (pathos).
Your Thesis Must be Parallel
Example Thesis Structures
Turkle's argument that social media has diminished our humanity is convincing when we consider ______________, ___________, _____________, ______________, and ________________.
Turkle's argument that social media presents dangers to our humanity is both exaggerated and erroneous evidenced by ___________, ___________, ________________, ____________, and _______________.
While Turkle does a good job of showing the narcissism and disconnection from the misuse of social media, her vision of a future techno-dystopia is misguided because _______________, ____________, _______________, and _________________.
Objections to Sherry Turkle's Argument (for counter-argument-rebuttal section)
One. She is too one-sided with only negative anecdotes and examples of the way technology disconnects us and makes us narcissistic.
Two. She exaggerates the pitfalls and dangers of social media.
Three. She offers no solutions to social media addiction and dehumanization.
Four. She resists the inevitability of change brought on by technology.
Argument Against Turkle: Sturgeon's Law
Sturgeon's law states that over 90% of everything is crap. By that logic, over 90% of people using social media are using it in a way that's not in their best interests. But do we throw away social media? Here's another example: According to Sturgeon's Law, over 90% of teachers are woefully bad, but does that mean we abolish teaching?
Life is about accepting the good with the bad, and Sturgeon's Law tells us that most things are bad--very, very bad.
Sample Thesis in Support of Turkle
We ignore Turkle's warning about the way technology is degrading our humanity at our own peril. The evidence supports Turkle's contention that technology, especially social media, is bringing us down "dark places we don't want to go," evidenced by our inability to be alone, our addiction to false connection, and our acclimation to anti-social behavior.
Sample Thesis That Refutes Turkle
While Turkle makes some cogent points about the dangers of social media, her technology diatribe collapses under the weight of evidence that shows other forces, not social media, are dehumanizing us and making us lonely. These forces include Sturgeon's Law, economic collapse, and suburban sprawl.
Sample Thesis That Defends Turkle
While I concede that Sturgeon's Law, economic collapse, and suburban sprawl contribute to the loneliness and social pathology evident in our digital age, these factors do not diminish in any way Turkle's examination of the manner in which technology and social media interact to degrade our humanity in many ways including _____________, ______________, __________________, and _____________________.
Thesis That Defends Turkle
While there are many forces that are resulting in loneliness, Turkle has her finger on the pulse of one of the most virulent causes of self-imposed isolation: social media, which attacks our humanity by making us prefer control over intimacy, making us fear being alone, and making us lose our empathy, and making us atrophy our conversation skills.
Poorly Written Thesis Statements Resulting from Faulty Parallelism or Parallel Structure
Faulty
Turkle's argument that social media has diminished our humanity is convincing when we consider that we eventually prefer controlling our curated life over real life, the narcissism that ensues, the gap between our fake life and our real life, and losing the ability to have real intimacy.
Corrected
Turkle's argument that social media has diminished our humanity is convincing when we consider that we prefer controlling our curated life over real life, we develop narcissistic traits we never had before, we find a widening gap between our curated life and the depressed life underneath, and we lose the ability to have real intimacy.
Faulty
Cal Newport makes a convincing case that the Passion Hypothesis is a dangerous myth evidenced by the fact that it blinds us from the reality that real success combined is a result of a convoluted, importance of understanding a craftsman mindset, grasping that passion is often short-lived and subject to our whims and caprices, and that for most young people it is both natural and normal to not have arrived at one's passion.
Corrected
Cal Newport makes a convincing case that the Passion Hypothesis is a dangerous myth evidenced by the fact that it blinds us from the reality that real success combined is a result of a convoluted, arduous, complicated path, that real success is a result of a craftsman mindset, that passion is often short-lived and subject to our whims and caprices, and that for most young people it is both natural and normal to not have arrived at one's passion.
Observe the correct parallelism and excellent writing in Ross Douthat's essay, "Speaking Ill of Hugh Hefner."
Correct the faulty parallelism by rewriting the sentences below.
One. Parenting toddlers is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that toddlers contradict everything you ask them to do; they have giant mood swings and all-night tantrums.
Parenting toddlers is difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is that toddlers contradict everything you ask them to do, they have giant mood swings, and they have all-night tantrums.
Two. You should avoid all-you-can-eat buffets: They encourage gluttony; they feature fatty, over-salted foods and high sugar content.
You should avoid all-you-can-eat buffets: They encourage gluttony, they feature fatty, over-salted foods, and they lard everything with sugar.
Three. I prefer kettlebell training at home than the gym because of the increased privacy, the absence of loud “gym” music, and I’m able to concentrate more.
I prefer kettlebell training at home than the gym because of the increased privacy, the absent gym music, and the improved concentration.
Four. To write a successful research paper you must adhere to the exact MLA format, employ a variety of paragraph transitions, and writing an intellectually rigorous thesis.
To write a successful research paper you must adhere to the exact MLA format, employ a variety of paragraph transitions, and write an intellectually rigorous thesis.
Five. The difficulty of adhering to the MLA format is that the rules are frequently being updated, the sheer abundance of rules you have to follow, and to integrate your research into your essay.
The difficulty of adhering to the MLA format is that the rules are frequently being updated, the rules are hard to follow, and the MLA in-text citations are difficult to master.
Six. You should avoid watching “reality shows” on TV because they encourage a depraved form of voyeurism; they distract you from your own problems and their brain-dumbing effects.
You should avoid watching "reality shows" because they encourage a depraved form of voyeurism, they distract you from your own problems, and they dumb you down.
Seven. I’m still fat even though I’ve tried the low-carb diet, the Paleo diet, the Rock-in-the-Mouth diet, and fasting every other day.
I'm still fat even though I've tried the low-carb diet, the Paleo diet, the Rock-in-the-Mouth diet, and the fasting diet.
Eight. To write a successful thesis, you must have a compelling topic, a sophisticated take on that topic, and developing a thesis that elevates the reader’s consciousness to a higher level.
To write a successful thesis, you must have a compelling topic, a sophisticated take on that topic, and a thesis that elevates the reader's consciousness to a higher level.
Nine. Getting enough sleep, exercising daily, and the importance of a positive attitude are essential for academic success.
Getting enough sleep, exercising daily, and maintaining a positive attitude are essential for academic success.
Ten. My children never react to my calm commands or when I beg them to do things.
My children never react to my calm commands or my lugubrious supplications.
"How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy"
Critical Reading Continued
How Can You Improve Your Critical Reading?
One. Identify the main idea, claim, or thesis in a piece of writing.
Two. Identify the form and structure. Essays use a variety of expository modes: contrast, comparison, argumentation, description, narrative, cause and effect analysis, extended definition, to name several.
Three. What problem is the writer trying to define?
Four. What bias, if any, does the writer bring to the topic?
Five. Notice the shifts from specificity to generality (induction) or generality to specificity (deduction).
Six. Notice the transitions used to establish a number of reasons (additionally), contrast (however, on the other hand, to the contrary), and comparison (similarly).
Seven. Use annotations, writing key ideas in the margins and underlining key words and phrases. Annotating increases your memory and reading comprehension. Using a pen is better than a highlighter because you can write your own specific response to what you’re reading whereas a highlighter is too fat to make comments. Another advantage of using a pen is that you might come up with ideas for your essay response, even a thesis, and you don’t want to forget that material.
Eight. Look up unfamiliar words to build your vocabulary and increase your understanding of the piece.
Nine. Identify the writer’s style and tone (voice). The voice could be conversational, supercilious (arrogant), morally outraged, friendly, condescending, ironic, etc.
Ten. Notice if the writer is being implicit, using implication or suggestion, rather than being direct and explicit in the expression of the main idea.
Eleven. Ask if the writer considered opposing views fairly before coming to his or her conclusion.
Twelve. What political point of view, if any, informs the piece?
Thirteen. How strong is the evidence in the piece that is used to support the writer’s claim?
Fourteen. What is the intended readership? Educated adults? Experts? Children?
Your first job in analyzing a text is to determine the author’s thesis or purpose.
Was the purpose to persuade you to think about something differently or take action, analyze causes and effects, take you through the process of changing your car battery (process analysis), expose the corruption of a bureaucracy?
Once you determine the thesis, examine the author’s methods:
Does the writer quote authorities? Are these authorities competent and credible in the field?
Does the writer also address competent authorities that take a different, perhaps contrarian point of view?
Does the writer use credible statistics? Are the statistics current? Have the statistics been interpreted fairly and accurately?
Does the writer build the argument by using solid examples and analogies? Are they compelling? Why? Why not?
Are the writer’s assumptions acceptable?
Does the writer consider all relevant factors? Has she omitted some points that you think should be discussed? For instance, should the author recognize certain opposing positions and perhaps concede something to them?
Does the writer seek to persuade by means of ridicule and mockery? If so, is the ridicule fair and appropriate? Is the ridicule further supported by rational argument?
Is the argument aimed at a particular audience?
What tone, voice or persona is evident in the essay? Does the voice or persona give the essay credibility? Why or why not?
Some voices to consider:
Confident and straightforward
Arrogant and pompous
Mocking and self-aggrandizing
Bullheaded incuriosity for opposing views
So sanctimonious and pious as to be cloying and saccharine
So sanctimonious as to be unctuous
Persnickety
Whimsical, playful, capricious
Deadpan ironical
Gleeful self-righteousness
Curmudgeonly misanthropic
Bitter and pessimistic
Effulgently optimistic
When you evaluate an author’s text (essay or book), your argument about whether or not the author’s thesis was effectively supported or not is your thesis.
"How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy" by Maria Konnikova
No one joins Facebook to be sad and lonely. But a new study from the University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross argues that that’s exactly how it makes us feel. Over two weeks, Kross and his colleagues sent text messages to eighty-two Ann Arbor residents five times per day. The researchers wanted to know a few things: how their subjects felt overall, how worried and lonely they were, how much they had used Facebook, and how often they had had direct interaction with others since the previous text message. Kross found that the more people used Facebook in the time between the two texts, the less happy they felt—and the more their overall satisfaction declined from the beginning of the study until its end. The data, he argues, shows that Facebook was making them unhappy.
Research into the alienating nature of the Internet—and Facebook in particular—supports Kross’s conclusion. In 1998, Robert Kraut, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, found that the more people used the Web, the lonelier and more depressed they felt. After people went online for the first time, their sense of happiness and social connectedness dropped, over one to two years, as a function of how often they used the Internet.
Lonelier people weren’t inherently more likely to go online, either; a recent review of some seventy-five studies concluded that “users of Facebook do not differ in most personality traits from nonusers of Facebook.” (Nathan Heller wrote about loneliness in the magazine last year.) But, somehow, the Internet seemed to make them feel more alienated. A 2010 analysis of forty studies also confirmed the trend: Internet use had a small, significant detrimental effect on overall well-being. One experiment concluded that Facebook could even cause problems in relationships, by increasing feelings of jealousy.
Another group of researchers has suggested that envy, too, increases with Facebook use: the more time people spent browsing the site, as opposed to actively creating content and engaging with it, the more envious they felt. The effect, suggested Hanna Krasnova and her colleagues, was a result of the well-known social-psychology phenomenon of social comparison. It was further exacerbated by a general similarity of people’s social networks to themselves: because the point of comparison is like-minded peers, learning about the achievements of others hits even harder. The psychologist Beth Anderson and her colleagues argue, in a recent review of Facebook’s effects, that using the network can quickly become addictive, which comes with a nagging sense of negativity that can lead to resentment of the network for some of the same reasons we joined it to begin with. We want to learn about other people and have others learn about us—but through that very learning process we may start to resent both others’ lives and the image of ourselves that we feel we need to continuously maintain. “It may be that the same thing people find attractive is what they ultimately find repelling,” said the psychologist Samuel Gosling, whose research focusses on social-media use and the motivations behind social networking and sharing.
But, as with most findings on Facebook, the opposite argument is equally prominent. In 2009, Sebastián Valenzuela and his colleagues came to the opposite conclusion of Kross: that using Facebook makes us happier. They also found that it increases social trust and engagement—and even encourages political participation. Valenzuela’s findings fit neatly with what social psychologists have long known about sociality: as Matthew Lieberman argues in his book “Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect,” social networks are a way to share, and the experience of successful sharing comes with a psychological and physiological rush that is often self-reinforcing. The prevalence of social media has, as a result, fundamentally changed the way we read and watch: we think about how we’ll share something, and whom we’ll share it with, as we consume it. The mere thought of successful sharing activates our reward-processing centers, even before we’ve actually shared a single thing.
Virtual social connection can even provide a buffer against stress and pain: in a 2009 study, Lieberman and his colleagues demonstrated that a painful stimulus hurt less when a woman either held her boyfriend’s hand or looked at his picture; the pain-dulling effects of the picture were, in fact, twice as powerful as physical contact. Somehow, the element of distance and forced imagination—a mental representation in lieu of the real thing, something that the psychologists Wendi Gardner and Cindy Pickett call “social snacking”—had an anesthetic effectâ one we might expect to carry through to an entire network of pictures of friends.
The key to understanding why reputable studies are so starkly divided on the question of what Facebook does to our emotional state may be in simply looking at what people actually do when they’re on Facebook. “What makes it complicated is that Facebook is for lots of different things—and different people use it for different subsets of those things. Not only that, but they are also changing things, because of people themselves changing,” said Gosling. A 2010 study from Carnegie Mellon found that, when people engaged in direct interaction with others—that is, posting on walls, messaging, or “liking” something—their feelings of bonding and general social capital increased, while their sense of loneliness decreased. But when participants simply consumed a lot of content passively, Facebook had the opposite effect, lowering their feelings of connection and increasing their sense of loneliness.
In an unrelated experiment from the University of Missouri, a group of psychologists found a physical manifestation of these same effects. As study participants interacted with the site, four electrodes attached to the areas just above their eyebrows and just below their eyes recorded their facial expressions in a procedure known as facial electromyography. When the subjects were actively engaged with Facebook, their physiological response measured a significant uptick in happiness. When they were passively browsing, however, the positive effect disappeared.
This aligns with research conducted earlier this year by John Eastwood and his colleagues at York University in a meta-analysis of boredom. What causes us to feel bored and, as a result, unhappy? Attention. When our attention is actively engaged, we aren’t bored; when we fail to engage, boredom sets in. As Eastwood’s work, along with recent research on media multitasking, have illustrated, the greater the number of things we have pulling at our attention, the less we are able to meaningfully engage, and the more discontented we become.
In other words, the world of constant connectivity and media, as embodied by Facebook, is the social network’s worst enemy: in every study that distinguished the two types of Facebook experiences—active versus passive—people spent, on average, far more time passively scrolling through newsfeeds than they did actively engaging with content. This may be why general studies of overall Facebook use, like Kross’s of Ann Arbor residents, so often show deleterious effects on our emotional state. Demands on our attention lead us to use Facebook more passively than actively, and passive experiences, no matter the medium, translate to feelings of disconnection and boredom.
In ongoing research, the psychologist Timothy Wilson has learned, as he put it to me, that college students start going “crazy” after just a few minutes in a room without their phones or a computer. “One would think we could spend the time mentally entertaining ourselves,” he said. “But we can’t. We’ve forgotten how.” Whenever we have downtime, the Internet is an enticing, quick solution that immediately fills the gap. We get bored, look at Facebook or Twitter, and become more bored. Getting rid of Facebook wouldn’t change the fact that our attention is, more and more frequently, forgetting the path to proper, fulfilling engagement. And in that sense, Facebook isn’t the problem. It’s the symptom.
"I, Narcissist" by Carmen Fishwick
The numbers alone tell a powerful story of self-obsessions. More than 80m photographs uploaded to Instagram every day, more than 3.5bn ‘likes’ every day, and some 1.4bn people - 20% of the world’s population - publishing details of their lives on Facebook.
Is social media turning a relatively modest species into a pack of publicity-hungry narcissists? Or were we already inherently self-absorbed?
In the US, diagnoses of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) have risen sharply over the past 10 years: the rate of increase is comparable to the rise in the rate of obesity.
Numerous studies claim to have made direct links between the increase in NPD and the ubiquity of social media. Behaviours such as attempting to attract more followers, wanting to tell followers about your life, and the need to project a positive image at all times have been described by researchers as examples of exhibiting narcissistic personality traits on social media. A direct link has also been found between the number of Facebook friends a person has and the prevalence of socially disruptive traits commonly associated with narcissism.
But psychologist Ciarán Mc Mahon, director at the Institute of Cyber Security, believes the link between narcissism and social media use is not so clear-cut.
“Academics argue over the data and how it’s measured. On balance, there is an increase in narcissism, and there has been an increase in social media use. But it’s not completely clear if there is a correlation,” says Mc Mahon.
“It could be that there’s a wider cultural increase in narcissism in the west that’s then reflected back in social media. For social media to have become so popular there has to have been pre-existing narcissism.”
Lucy Clyde, a counsellor and psychotherapist, believes that everyone has narcissistic tendencies and that we’re simply more aware of these traits because of the prevalence of social media.
“In terms of personality disorder, I wouldn’t imagine social media is the cause but an expression. If you’re a narcissist, you’re looking for a positive reflection of yourself, the world is your mirror and you’re constantly looking for affirmation. For this reason, you’re probably curating your own life very heavily on social media,” says Clyde.
Jack Price, 34, has amassed more than 60,000 followers from around the world on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter over the past 10 years. He checks his social media accounts tens of times a day and says he is obsessed with maintaining his online profile. He does not describe himself as a narcissist but as someone using available technology to further his career and keep up with expectations.
“I sometimes spend hours thinking about what to post, thinking about what my followers want, but also what I want them to think about me. But I see it as time well invested: it’s made me successful, well known, and it’s made me money,” says Price, whose name has been changed.
NPD gained prominence in the 1960s and official criteria for diagnosis were created in 1980. Characteristics of NPD include a deep need for admiration, an inflated sense of one’s own importance, and a lack of empathy for others. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, other diagnostic criteria of narcissistic personality disorder include dreaming of unlimited success; craving attention from other people, but showing few warm feelings in return; and choosing friends based on their prestige and status rather than personal qualities. As an observer, it’s easy to draw parallels between the way people behave on social media and narcissistic traits.
Millennials are particularly vulnerable to the potentially negative effects of social media. Young people aged 17-21 go through a necessary narcissistic stage as they seek to find their place in society and move away from their caregivers. Their experiences of this developmental phase can be unhealthily magnified by social media.
“This age group is heavily influenced by their peers. What is crucially important is how other people see you and a huge focus of your life is geared to creating a positive impression of yourself,” says Clyde. “Like taking huge care to get the perfect selfie as this stuff stays online forever. That’s a pretty unique pressure and it has to create a painfully pressured state of mind. This has the potential to amplify pre-existing narcism. And to some extent we all have narcissistic traits.”
There is a body of research that suggests social media is good for our self-esteem. Mc Mahon believes that it allows people to test different identities and find a comfortable place in society, but he agrees that social media adds a layer of pressure to an already complicated time and can encourage people to overshare.
“If you have a boring profile, you will get no likes. But if you post something revealing about yourself, or something provocative, then you get more likes. People with 5,000 followers are constantly thinking about what they’re going to post next to get a reaction,” he says.
William Roberts, from Buckinghamshire, is a frequent social media user and acutely aware of its narrow view of reality. The 19-year-old sees social media as a place for people to show off and he actively manages his use to protect himself from negative influences.
“The only purpose of Instagram is to promote the highlights of your life, and often people will focus on parties, holidays, times with friends. My own posts rarely reflect my feelings when I am sad, depressed or lonely and entirely reflect the positive side of my life,” says Roberts.
According to Clyde, it’s virtually impossible to showcase all aspects of your personality on social media, which is an issue.
“We are trying to sanitise the messiness of human experience. Modern life is hard. If we deny our own messiness, we can’t really connect with other people and their own messiness. And that is really lonely and isolating,” she says.
“We’ve broken ourselves into bite-sized chunks. We are infinitely more complex than a selfie or 140 characters. If we believe that’s who we are, it becomes impossible to tolerate the complexity of ourselves and other people. It’s a huge struggle to be authentic warts and all, and social media isn’t helping,” says Clyde.
It may be difficult to say concretely that narcissism among millennials is directly linked to social media. But it does seem that social media encourages and panders to pre-existing narcissism.
“It’s not our outward behaviour that we need to concentrate on, we need to look inward” says McMahon, “people are using external validation on social media for a reason. We need to examine what is missing at the heart of people.”
Integrating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
Summarizing Sources
“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms” (314).
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using Signal Phrases or Identifying Tag to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
Common identifying tags (put link here)
Subordination and Coordination (Complex and Compound Sentences)
Complex Sentence
A complex sentence has two clauses. One clause is dependent or subordinate; the other clause is independent, that is to say, the independent clause is the complete sentence.
Examples:
While I was tanning in Hermosa Beach, I noticed the clouds were playing hide and seek.
Because I have a tendency to eat entire pizzas, inhaling them within seconds, I must avoid that fattening food.
Whenever I’m driving my car and I see people texting while driving, I stop my car on the side of the road.
I have to workout every day because I am addicted to exercise-induced dopamine.
I feel overcome with a combination of romantic melancholy and giddy excitement whenever there is a thunderstorm.
We use subordination to show cause and effect. To create subordinate clauses, we must use a subordinate conjunction:
The essential ingredient in a complex sentence is the subordinate conjunction:
|
after |
once |
until |
I workout too much. I have tenderness in my elbow.
Because I workout too much, I suffer tenderness in my elbow.
My elbow hurts. I’m working out.
Even though my elbow hurts, I’m working out.
We use coordination to show equal rank of ideas. To combine sentences with coordination we use FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
The calculus class has been cancelled. We will have to do something else.
The calculus class has been cancelled, so we will have to do something else.
I want more pecan pie. They only have apple pie.
I want more pecan pie, but they only have apple pie.
Using FANBOYS creates compound sentences
Angelo loves to buy a new radio every week, but his wife doesn’t like it.
You have high cholesterol, so you have to take statins.
I am tempted to eat all the rocky road ice cream, yet I will force myself to nibble on carrots and celery.
I want to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant today, and I want to see a movie afterwards.
I really like the comfort of elastic-waist pants, but wearing them makes me feel like an old man.
Both subordination and coordination combine sentences into smoother, clearer sentences.
The following four sentences are made smoother and clearer with the help of subordination:
McMahon felt gluttonous. He inhaled five pizzas. He felt his waist press against his denim waistband in a cruel, unforgiving fashion. He felt an acute ache in his stomach.
Because McMahon felt gluttonous, he inhaled five pizzas upon which he felt his waist press against his denim waistband resulting in an acute stomachache.
Another Example
Joe ate too much heavily salted popcorn. The saltiness made him thirsty. He consumed several gallons of water before bedtime. He was up going to the bathroom all night. He got a bad night’s sleep. He performed terribly during his job interview.
Due to his foolish consumption of salted popcorn, Joe was so thirsty he drank several gallons of water before bedtime, which caused him to go to the bathroom all night, interfering with his night’s sleep and causing him to do terribly on his job interview.
Another Example
Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure. He leaned over the fence to reach for his sandwich. He fell over the fence. A tiger approached Bob. The zookeeper ran between the stupid zoo customer and the wild beast. The zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger, forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and wild beast. During the struggle, the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff.
Don’t Do Subordination Overkill
After Bob dropped his peanut butter sandwich in the tiger’s enclosure, he leaned over the fence to recover his sandwich and fell into the enclosure during which time he was approached by a hungry tiger forcing the nearby zookeeper to run between Bob and the wild beast in such a manner that the zookeeper tore his rotator cuff, which resulted in a prolonged disability leave and the loss of his job, a crisis that compelled the zookeeper to file a lawsuit against Bob for financial damages.
McMahon Grammar Lesson: Comma Rules (based in part by Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers)
Commas are designed to help writers avoid confusing sentences and to clarify the logic of their sentences.
If you cook Jeff will clean the dishes. (Will you cook Jeff?)
While we were eating a rattlesnake approached us. (Were we eating a rattlesnake?)
Comma Rule 1: Use a comma before a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS) joining two independent clauses.
Rattlesnakes are high in protein, but I’d rather eat a peanut butter sandwich.
Rattlesnakes are dangerous, and the desert species are even more so.
We are a proud people, for our ancestors passed down these famous delicacies over a period of five thousand years.
The exception to rule 1 is when the two independent clauses are short:
The plane took off and we were on our way.
Comma Rule 2: Use a comma after an introductory clause or phrase.
When Jeff Henderson was in prison, he developed an appetite for reading.
In the nearby room, the TV is blaring full blast.
Tanning in the hot Hermosa Beach sun for over two hours, I realized I had better call it a day.
The exception is when the short adverb clause or phrase is short and doesn’t create the possibility of a misreading:
In no time we were at 2,800 feet.
Comma Rule 3: Use a comma between all items in a series.
Jeff Henderson found redemption through hard work, self-reinvention, and social altruism.
Finding his passion, mastering his craft, and giving back to the community were all part of Jeff Henderson’s self-reinvention.
Comma Rule 4: Use a comma between coordinate adjectives not joined with “and.” Do not use a comma between cumulative adjectives.
The adjectives below are called coordinate because they modify the noun separately:
Jeff Henderson is a passionate, articulate, wise speaker.
The adjectives above are coordinate because they can be joined with “and.” Jeff Henderson is passionate and articulate and wise.
Adjectives that do not modify the noun separately are cumulative.
Three large gray shapes moved slowly toward us.
Chocolate fudge peanut butter swirl coconut cake is divine.
Comma Rule 5: Use commas to set off nonrestrictive (nonessential) elements.
Restrictive or essential information doesn’t have a comma:
For school the students need notebooks that are college-ruled.
Jeff’s cat that just had kittens became very aggressive.
Nonrestrictive:
For school the students need college-ruled notebooks, which are on sale at the bookstore.
Jeff Henderson’s mansion, which is located in Las Vegas, has a state-of-the-art kitchen.
My youngest sister, who plays left wing on the soccer team, now lives at The Sands, a beach house near Los Angeles.
Comma Rule 6: Use commas to set off interrupters or interjections between sentences.
Keith Manderlin, a close friend of mine, went on the buttermilk fried chicken diet and lost 45 pounds.
I looked down at my thumb, a flat grape in the aftermath of me hitting it with a hammer, and realized I had better have my wife drive me to the emergency room.
Green tea, which is believed to be rich in anti-oxidants, varies in quality depending on your supplier.
I sat down and wrote a song on the piano, a lugubrious homage to my angst-ridden adolescent years, which became my all-time selling hit single.
Peanut butter, known to contain significant amounts of rat and cockroach parts, continues to be a brisk seller in spite of its reputation for containing impurities.
Commas and Other Punctuation for MLA Citations
The following needs commas:
When Zombies Became a Worldwide Pestilence, Circa 2012
I’ve been teaching college composition and critical thinking for thirty years. If I had to pick a year that defined a radical change in my students I’d have to point to 2012. That was the year things started to go downhill. It was the year when smartphone users in the United States topped 100 million. It was the year a growing number of Americans and people worldwide began to see the smartphone as a necessity more important than having a toothbrush or wearing underwear. The smartphone became an external organ an external amygdala with Wi-Fi.
More than a human appendage, the smartphone became an opium-drip machine that you carried around with you 24/7. You could enjoy validation and dopamine all day long, until your brain dulled and short-circuited rendering you a mindless zombie falling down a rabbit hole of anxiety and depression.
Depression made people turn to their little opium gadgets with even greater intensity as if the very source of their mental disease might save them and put them into states of euphoria the gadget had once provided them.
I talk about the smartphone-induced zombie state with my students all the time. I talk about how this zombie state will make them “bottom feeders” in the new economy. Their time and energy wasted on their opium machine will make them lose their competitive edge to those who have the strength of mind to keep their smartphones in their proper place.
Having a competitive edge has never been more urgent in this age of merciless economic stratification where everything is tiered including our educational caste system. I remind the class that 8000 students walk through the Humanities Building every week and of those students only 3% will pass our college’s Critical Thinking courses which puts my students in the 97 percentile. A staggering 90% of the remedial students won’t even make it to freshman composition.
It’s one thing to struggle at the bottom of the educational ladder with the odds set against you. But it’s a far worse thing to voluntarily keep a smartphone attached to you constantly because now you’re aiding and abetting in your own demise by allowing this insidious contraption to turn you into a dysfunctional zombie.
I tell my students that this zombie state was prophesied in the 1999 film The Matrix in which we see we have a choice to take the Red Pill of knowledge or the Blue Pill of ignorance. Most people in the film’s future dystopia choose ignorance. The Blue Pill prophecy was fulfilled I tell my students in 2012 when everyone in the world believed erroneously they not only did they need a smartphone; they needed to constantly address the smartphone’s voracious appetites.
All of my students have horror stories of friends and family members whose lives have been ruined by smartphone addiction. They’ve traded ambition and caring for being numbed and depressed by their little dopamine device. They talk of older brothers and sisters unemployed college dropouts who malnourished and corpse-like languish in dank, dimly-lit basements where they are shackled to their smartphones day and night.
My students speak of their own battles with social media-induced anxiety and depression. Listening to my vitriolic rants against social media many of them have deleted their Facebook accounts. They all feel better for it. I’ve had students announce to the class that they deleted their Facebook account and it was followed by applause as if they were announcing their many days of sobriety at an A.A. meeting.
I confess to my students that while I rarely use my five-year-old smartphone a dinosaur by today’s standards I have wasted tens of thousands of hours mindlessly relaxing in front of the Internet since the late 1990s when I was deluded like millions of others into believing surfing the Net gave me infinite possibilities and a giddy sense of omnipotence. But thousands of hours wasted on skimming news articles, consuming entertainment, and conducting product research was time I could have spent practicing writing and playing piano. Rather than honing those skills I’ve remained a dilettante.
I too am in need of an intervention I confess to my students. I too am a casualty of the false utopian promises of technology. Looking at twenty years and tens of thousands of hours wasted wallowing in the malaise of the Internet's mind-numbing seductions I must now redeem myself before it's too late.
I make an announcement to my class. I am going to write a book about critical thinking as the antidote to the zombie state, which became a worldwide pestilence in 2012. The process must be reversed. The Red Pill must replace the Blue Pill. I will call my book Critical Thinking for the Zombie Apocalypse.
This sound like futility.
This sounds like a fool’s errand.
This sounds like the desperate play of a washed-up nonentity straining for relevance.
But my quest to save the students in my critical thinking class is like religion when you think about it. Religion tells you the world is a place of darkness and that to surrender to the world results in death—you navigate the Earth like a mindless zombie unaware that you slog across the planet in darkness.
I can shrug my shoulders and say the hell with it. Why fight the current? Why fight this tsunami of social media and smartphone addiction that is eviscerating our brains? Because complete surrender is nihilism the belief that nothing matters.
I cannot be a Priest of Despair and Hedonism.
I cannot tell my twin daughters now in the first grade that life is a meaningless joke.
If George Carlin is right that when you’re born you’re given a free front-row ticket to the freak show then you should know why it’s a freak show. And you should learn to tell the difference between a freak show and a non-freak show.
Knowing the difference means a lot to me.
But George Carlin was only half right.
The world is a freak show to be sure but only part of the world is. A freak show by definition means something deformed, grotesque, askew, out of whack. But these conditions are degraded versions of something better.
An informed opinion is a rare thing and it is a good thing to have.
An uninformed opinion one that is held out of habit and reflex more than anything else is a degraded version of the informed opinion. Mobs of people with uniformed opinions wreak hell and havoc on the world.
If they win then let the freak show begin.
"Why Female Athletes Shouldn't Have to Beat Men"
The mixed martial artist Ronda Rousey has defeated 11 opponents, the most recent one in only 14 seconds. Perhaps predictably, this has led to questions about whether she will fight men.
In an interview with Marlow Stern of The Daily Beast, Ms. Rousey answered in the negative: “I don’t think it’s a great idea to have a man hitting a woman on television,” she said. “I’ll never say that I’ll lose, but you could have a girl getting totally beat up on TV by a guy—which is a bad image to put across.” She also alluded to the recent string of domestic-violence arrests among N.F.L. players.
Her reluctance to risk subjecting viewers to such an image is understandable. But even laying aside the issue of domestic violence, it’s worth asking another question: Why do we assume that a successful female athlete should move on to competing with male ones?
Ms. Rousey is undefeated in her weight class. Is her achievement somehow less legitimate because her opponents have been women? Is the only mark of true athleticism the ability to beat a man?
Those who would like to see Ms. Rousey in a mixed-gender bout might argue it would simply be an opportunity for her to fight the best of the best. But the presence of weight classes in mixed martial arts is an acknowledgment that it doesn’t always make sense to compare athletes with different bodies. If Ms. Rousey wouldn’t typically fight someone twice her size, does it make sense for her to fight someone who may have different bone density, different body fat percentage, a different center of gravity? Isn’t she already, by the accepted standards of her sport, the best of the best?
Gender segregation in sports has a complicated history, and it’s possible that more sports will one day be mixed-gender. It’s also possible that sports will one day adopt groupings that have nothing to do with gender — that are based on muscle mass, for instance, or skeletal structure. And if female athletes want to compete against men, they shouldn’t be barred from doing so.
But in the system we have now, expecting a woman to face a male opponent when she’s expressed no interest in doing so implies that excelling at women’s sports is a secondary achievement. It suggests that women’s sports are like the minor leagues — get good enough, and maybe you can play with the men.
And indeed, female athletes are too often treated as secondary. Last year, Lindsey Adler of BuzzFeed estimated that Kobe Bryant made almost three times as much for the 2013-2014 season as all the players in the W.N.B.A. combined. And a recent analysis of seven British newspapers found that just 4 percent of sports articles during a particular week in 2013 focused on women’s sports.
Female athletes deserve better than this — they deserve the same respect their male counterparts get. And that means treating Ronda Rousey as a champion in her own right, not just good for a girl.
Comments
Alexander Hamilton: Is there a sane person in America who believes Ronda Rousey needs to fight any man? Good, that's settled. Now here's the question I'd like to see answered: 2,000 years after the Coliseum was closed for business, why are people still watching one person beat up another? Is this as far as society has come? And what kind of person takes pleasure in intentionally hurting another? The difference between this barbarism and what Michael Vick did is one of degree, not of kind.
RobW: Female athletes are not "treated as secondary." They generally ARE secondary. Anna North complains that Kobe Bryant made three times as much as the rest of the WNBA combined. That is not because sports fans are sexists: it's because Kobe Bryant is approximately three times more interesting to watch that the rest of the WNBA combined. Fans pay to see the best, and there is not a single woman in the WNBA that could even sit the bench on any NBA team.
As an under-six-foot male, I was always a little bitter growing up that I didn't have any realistic chance of success basketball (Spud Webb notwithstanding). There are some under-six-foot leagues, however; is the fact that there is zero coverage of these in the sports pages evidence of rampant heightism? Ms. North believes that female athletes "deserve the same respect their male counterparts get." I assume that she would also believe, then, that under-six-foot players should get the same respect as their taller counterparts. No, of course she wouldn't. That would be silly--as silly as saying vastly inferior female athletes deserved exactly the same respect, box office, and press that the best male athletes get.
Sorry, but until Rousey demonstrates that she can routinely beat men in her weight class, she will remain merely "good for a girl." And, frankly, I don't think the sight of a woman fighter getting bloodily brutalized by a man would be negative--it might make plain to men the potentially devastating power they wield.
Jim Waddell: We need to recognize that men and women are different, in many ways. There are very few sports where the top female athletes could beat the top male athletes.
But there are areas where women excel more than men, beginning with education (and in staying out of jail.) Just because one sex does better than another in any given area is not prima facie evidence of discrimination.
Analyzing the Text
What is the author Anna North's purpose?
She wants to answer this question: "Why do we assume that a successful female athlete should move on to competing with male ones?"
North goes on to ask these two question:
"Is her achievement somehow less legitimate because her opponents have been women? Is the only mark of true athleticism the ability to beat a man?"
In other words, does Rousey have to beat a man in a fight to be legit?
These questions lead us to the author's thesis, which can be formulated this way:
"Rousey and female athletes in general don't have to compete against men to prove their greatness because we already have weight classes that compare to the different bone and muscle density between men and women."
Any weaknesses with the thesis? Yes, it has only one mapping component and it doesn't address the fact that the best fighter in Rousey's weight class can't compete against the best male fighter in the same weight class.
Does the author have a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph?
Those who would like to see Ms. Rousey in a mixed-gender bout might argue it would simply be an opportunity for her to fight the best of the best. But the presence of weight classes in mixed martial arts is an acknowledgment that it doesn’t always make sense to compare athletes with different bodies. If Ms. Rousey wouldn’t typically fight someone twice her size, does it make sense for her to fight someone who may have different bone density, different body fat percentage, a different center of gravity? Isn’t she already, by the accepted standards of her sport, the best of the best?
Do you notice any weaknesses in the author's argument?
But in the system we have now, expecting a woman to face a male opponent when she’s expressed no interest in doing so implies that excelling at women’s sports is a secondary achievement. It suggests that women’s sports are like the minor leagues — get good enough, and maybe you can play with the men.
How would you formulate a thesis in response to the author's column?
While North makes a good point that Rousey is a great woman fighter, her larger claim that Rousey is a first-rate champion equal to male fighters is muddled by the fact that Rousey's greatness is a combination of her fighting dominance in the female category combined with her celebrity that transcends MMA competition.
Signal Phrases
Here is a helpful link for signal phrase templates.
Integrating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
Summarizing Sources
“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms” (314).
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using Signal Phrases or Identifying Tag to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
According to Andrea A. Lunsford in The St. Martin’s Handbook, Eight Edition, there are 20 writing errors that merit “The Top 20.”
One. Wrong word: Confusing one word for another.
Here's a list of wrong word usage.
A full-bodied red wine compliments the Pasta Pomodoro.
Compliment is a to say something nice about someone. "You look nice in that pumpkin polo shirt. Very nice pumpkin accents."
Complement is to complete or match well with something. "This full-bodied red wine complements the spaghetti."
The BMW salesman excepted my counteroffer of 55K for the sports sedan.
The word should be accepted.
Kryptonite effects Superman in such a way that he loses his powers.
Effect is a noun. Affect is a verb, so it should be the following:
Kryptonite affects Superman in a such a way that he loses his powers.
Confusing their and there
There superpowers were compromised by the Gamma rays.
We need to use the possessive plural pronoun their.
Two. Missing comma after an introductory phrase or clause
Terrified of slimy foods Robert hid behind the restaurant’s dumpster.
In spite of my aversion to rollercoasters I attended the carnival with my family.
Three. Incomplete documentation
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that “Dieting is a mental illness.”
It should read:
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that “Dieting is a mental illness” (277).
Four. Vague Pronoun Reference
Focusing on the pecs during your Monday-Wednesday-Friday workouts is a way of giving you more time to work on your quads and glutes and specializing on the way they’re used in different exercises.
Before Jennifer screamed at Brittany, she came to the conclusion that she was justified in stealing her boyfriend.
Five. Spelling (including homonyms, words that have same spelling but different meanings or same sound but different meanings)
No one came forward to bare witness to the crime.
No one came forward to bear witness to the crime.
Love is a disease. It’s sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Its sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Six. Mechanical error with a quotation
Incorrect
In his best-selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure”.
Correct
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure.”
Incorrect
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure.” (18)
Correct
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure” (18).
Incorrect
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love”, Michael Manderlin writes (22).
Correct
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love,” Michael Manderlin writes (22).
Seven. Unnecessary comma
I need to workout when at home, and while taking vacations.
You do however use a comma if the comma is between two independent clauses:
I need to workout at home, and when I go on vacations, I bring my yoga mat to hotels.
I need to workout every day, because I’m addicted to the exercise-induced dopamine.
You do however use a comma after a dependent clause beginning with because:
Because I’m addicted to exercise-induced dopamine, I need to workout everyday.
Peaches, that are green, taste hideous.
The above is an example of an independent clause with a essential information or restrictive information. Not all peaches taste hideous, only green ones. The meaning of the entire sentence needs the dependent clause so there are no commas.
However, if the clause is additional information, the clause is called nonessential or nonrestrictive, and we do use commas:
Peaches, which are on sale at Whole Foods, are my favorite fruit.
Mr. Manderlin, who is fond of shopping at the farmer's market on the weekends, had to stay in bed all day nursing a virulent abscess.
Eight. Unnecessary or missing capitalization
Some Traditional Chinese Medicines containing Ephedraremain are legal.
We only use capital letters for proper nouns, proper adjectives, first words of sentences, important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships.
Nine. Missing word
Incorrect
The site foreman discriminated women and promoted men with less experience.
Correct
The site foreman discriminated against women and promoted men with less experience.
Incorrect
Chris’ behavior becomes bizarre that his family asks for help.
Correct
Chris’ behavior becomes so bizarre that his family asks for help.
Ten. Faulty sentence structure
The information which high school athletes are presented with mainly includes information on what credits needed to graduate and thinking about the college which athletes are trying to play for, and apply.
A sentence that starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind can confuse readers. Make sure that each sentence contains a subject and a verb, that subjects and predicates make sense together, and that comparisons have clear meanings. When you join elements (such as subjects or verb phrases) with a coordinating conjunction, make sure that the elements have parallel structures.
Incorrect
The reason I prefer yoga at home to the gym is because I prefer privacy.
Correct
I prefer yoga at home to the gym because I enjoy more privacy at home than in a studio.
Incorrect
In conclusion, it is essential that drug laws be strictly enforced in today’s society to stop criminals in their tracks and put them behind bars not just criminals but every day people who suffer from really bad addictions and who break the law in order to do their bad behavior so that we can live in a safer better society to protect the children and for all people who need to walk the streets without these kind of worries because without these kinds of strict laws our country would be in chaos and our country’s children will be the innocent victims.
The above is impossible to correct because even edited nothing is being said. Faulty sentence structure can only be edited if there is substance or real content. The above is saying nothing.
11. Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element
Marina who was the president of the club was the first to speak.
The clause who was the president of the club does not affect the basic meaning of the sentence: Marina was the first to speak.
A nonrestrictive element gives information not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence. Use commas to set off a nonrestrictive element.
12. Unnecessary Shift in Verb Tense
Priya was watching the great blue heron. Then she slips and falls into the swamp.
Verbs that shift from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers.
13. Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence
Incorrect
Meredith waited for Samir and her sister grew impatient.
Correct
Meredith waited for Samir, and her sister grew impatient.
Without the comma, a reader may think at first that Meredith waited for both Samir and her sister.
A compound sentence consists of two or more parts that could each stand alone as a sentence. When the parts are joined by a coordinating conjunction, use a comma before the conjunction to indicate a pause between the two thoughts.
14. Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it's)
Overambitious parents can be very harmful to a childs well-being.
The car is lying on it's side in the ditch. Its a white 2004 Passat.
To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed's book) or an apostrophe alone (the boys' gym). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and hers. Useits to mean belong to it; use it's only when you mean it is or it has.
15. Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
16. Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
17. Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
18. Poorly Integrated Quotation
A 1970s study of what makes food appetizing "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
Corrected
In a 1970s study about what makes food appetizing, we read, "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
Incorrect
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life" (Eighner 383). Finding edible food is especially tricky.
Corrected
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life," we read in Eighner's book (383). One of the drawbacks is that finding food can be especially difficult.
Quotations should fit smoothly into the surrounding sentence structure. They should be linked clearly to the writing around them (usually with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing.
19. Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen
This paper looks at fictional and real life examples.
A compound adjective modifying a noun that follows it requires a hyphen.
Corrected
This paper looks at fictional and real-life examples.
Incorrect (using hyphen for a verb)
The buyers want to fix-up the house and resell it.
A two-word verb should not be hyphenated. A compound adjective that appears before a noun needs a hyphen. However, be careful not to hyphenate two-word verbs or word groups that serve as subject complements.
Corrected
The buyers want to fix up the house and resell it.
20. Sentence Fragment
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
Comments