Tutorama: Week Eight: Addressing Grammar

Introduction: Clarity
Clarity at the sentence-level is essential for a strong paper. If your sentences are filled with typos, misspellings, and grammar mistakes, your reader will be continually distracted from your fine ideas. Below are some common problems that your instructor may identify in your writing. Use the suggested strategies to make your paper clear and easy to read.

Common grammar problems
Many students have difficulty with grammar or sentence structure issues. Your instructor may have identified particular problems for you. After you've read through your paper once for general errors, you should read your paper again for the specific problems your teacher has identified. Below are three common grammar problems that can prevent you from passing your papers and suggestions for identifying and correcting them. See your grammar handbook for more detailed instructions on how to deal with these and other grammar issues.

Subject-verb agreement
Subjects and verbs come in 2 forms: singular and plural. Subjects and verbs are singular when they refer to one object or person. Subjects and verbs are plural when they refer to two or more objects or people. Some simple examples:

Don’t be confused. Most plural subjects have an “-s” on the end of the word. And most singular verbs have an “-s” on the end of the word. This is one of the complicated aspects of English!

When you’re dealing with one subject and one verb, it’s fairly easy to spot subject-verb agreement problems. The difficulty is when you are writing complex sentences. In these cases, it can be difficult to match up the subject of the sentence with its corresponding verb because of the words that intervene between the subject and the verb. For example:

Animals, especially those mentioned in Michael Pollan’s essay, often eat poorly because they don’t have the luxury of living on a family farm.

Where’s the subject? That’s easy because it’s the first word of the sentence: “Animals.” Now, where’s the verb? It’s after the clause “especially those mentioned in Michael Pollan’s essay.” The verb is “eat.” This sentence is correct, but you can see how it might be easy to have subject-verb agreement problems when the subject and verb are so far apart.

If your instructor identifies subject-verb problems in your papers,
circle all of the subjects and underline all of the verbs in a paragraph. Look at each subject and decide if it refers to one or more persons or objects (whether it is singular or plural). Then make sure that the verb form matches the subject. Read your sentences aloud and make sure that you are not dropping your “s” at the ends of verbs or subjects. This is a common problem that you can correct simply by taking note of what you’ve actually written.

Fused sentences
A fused sentence is basically two complete sentences stuck together as if they were one sentence. Usually the problem is caused by a punctuation error, most commonly a comma splice. Look at this simple example:

Dr. Rosen believes in giving a person wings, Slater is more ambivalent.

1. Add an appropriate conjunction following the comma:

Dr. Rosen believes in giving a person wings, while Slater is more ambivalent.

That word “while” makes the second part of this sentence “sub-ordinate” (literally, secondary) or “dependent,” meaning it cannot stand alone as a complete sentence. In fact, it’s a kind of word called a subordinate conjunction. Others are because, that, however, when, since, if. Making half of this fused sentence subordinate is a good thing because it means there is only one independent subject and verb pair: “Rosen believes.” That makes this a correct compound sentence.

2. Use a semi-colon instead of a comma:

Dr. Rosen believes in giving a person wings; Slater is more ambivalent.

Semi-colons are more ‘powerful’ than commas in stopping a sentence. If a comma is a brief pause, a semi-colon is a brief stop, halfway between a comma and period. Use semi-colons sparingly, only when you have two complete thoughts that really belong together in one sentence.

3. Use a period instead of a comma:

Dr. Rosen believes in giving a person wings. Slater is more ambivalent.

Dr. Rosen believes in giving a person wings. Slater is more ambivalent.

This is the least attractive solution because these sentences are so short. But for fused sentences that are more complicated, sometimes using a period—a full stop—to create two independent sentences is the best option.

Sentence fragments
A sentence fragment is an incomplete sentence, it cannot stand alone. In this way, it is the opposite of a fused sentence. A sentence fragments lacks either an independent subject and verb. Often sentence fragments are dependent clauses beginning with a subordinate conjunction (like the one in the Dr. Rosen example above) or a relative pronoun (who or which). It is called a dependent clause because it depends on another part of the sentence to give it meaning. Let’s continue with the Rosen/Slater example. This time I’ve written a fragment:

Dr. Rosen believes in giving a person wings. While Slater is more ambivalent.

Again, the word “while” makes the second part of this example “sub-ordinate” (literally, secondary) or “dependent,” meaning it cannot stand alone as a complete sentence. But in this case, the period separating the two parts, followed by a subordinate conjunction (“while”) makes the second part a fragment.

There are multiple solutions to fragments, just as there are for every grammar error:

1. Insert a comma where the period is. You’ll recognize this as the same solution we came to above:

Dr. Rosen believes in giving a person wings, while Slater is more ambivalent.

2. Remove the subordinate conjunction, and create two independent sentences:

Dr. Rosen believes in giving a person wings. Slater is more ambivalent.

You see, grammar is about separating the sentences out more clearly by using correct punctuation. It actually makes it easier to read!

If your instructor has identified fragments as a problem for you, look for sentences that begin with one of the following words: which, because, for, since, if, when, who, that, or being that. Consider these signal words for dependent clauses. And if you find a fragment as a result of one of these words, look at the sentences that come immediately before and after it. Try to join the fragment to one of the sentences.

Identify and Correct: Your Best Strategy
If your instructor has identified multiple fused sentences, sentence fragments, or subject-verb agreement problems in your drafts, your best strategy at eliminating them is to practice correcting the sentences on the drafts themselves. Your final drafts are especially useful for this because you don’t need to think about revising the ideas or paragraphs towards another draft. You can use your final draft of every paper for your grammar practice.

Proofreading
Finally, students often overlook this last, crucial step of the writing process. Once you've written your final draft, you need to review it for typing errors and misspellings. These may seem minor, but often typos and misspellings can change the meaning of a sentence. Such errors often occur even if you've spell-checked the document. For example, you may type "a new from of democracy" instead of "a new form of democracy." Obviously, the first phrase makes no sense, but it would not be picked up by a computer spell-check program. You should always print out a final copy of your work and proofread it yourself. Here are some strategies:

1) Read the paper out loud – EVERY WORD – not as you know it should sound, but what you actually wrote. Reading out loud will slow down your reading and make you look at each word and sentence individually. When we read silently to ourselves, we tend to read quickly and skip over obvious mistakes.

Conclusion
Make sentence-level clarity a goal in your writing. You may not get all your errors under control in one semester, but you’ve got to start early enough to practice on each paper your write. The errors identified in this Tutorama are serious enough to prevent you from passing Basic Composition or Basic Composition with Reading. Make it a priority for yourself to understand your patterns of error, and correct them on your own. An error-free paper allows your reader to concentrate on your ideas, not on your mistakes.

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