in-GLISH
GRAMMAR TOOLS FOR AWESOME WRITING
COMMAS
-
To distinguish a beginning phrase of a sentence
-
Indicate change of subject
-
Precede conjunctions
-
Separate items in series
-
When an independent clauses comes first
Example 1:
Original: At four and a half years old I remember blinking, and suddenly there being tears. I blinked, and then Papi’s voice became real. “No no muñeca. No, tienes que llorar ahora. Ya estás conmigo. You don’t have to cry now, you are with me now." Twenty-one months. Almost half of my short life spent a part, away, and alone. After Papi left, Mami followed short after.
Revision: At four and a half years old I remember blinking, and suddenly there being tears. I blinked, and then Papi’s voice became real. “No no, muñeca. No tienes que llorar ahora. Ya estás conmigo. You don’t have to cry now, you are with me now.” Twenty-one months. Almost half of my short life spent a part, away, alone. After Papi left, Mami followed short after. (Excerpt from The Marked Narrative by Marcela Rodriguez).
Example 2:
He sees the side of the glossy black taxi in front of him, the driver already winding down his window and at the edge of his field of vision something he can’t quite make out, something coming toward him at an impossible speed. He turns toward it, and in that split-second he realizes that he is in its path, that there is no way he is going to be able to get out of its way. His hand opens in surprise, letting the Blackberry fall to the ground. (Excerpt from Me Before You by Jojo Moyes).
Example 3:
Original: Black English and the unique ways that it is used for expression foster empathy and allow the experiences of a people to be meaningful to its listeners.
Revision: Black English, and the unique ways that it is used for expression, foster empathy and allow the experiences of a people to be meaningful to its listeners.
SEMI-COLONS
-
Link two related independent clauses
-
Separate list containing commas
Example 1:
Original: By rejecting a student’s language we are inherently rejecting a part of them and their identity. In turn we are rejecting their view of the world and how they have come to make sense of it. We invalidate their experiences and deny the value that those experiences can have in the classroom.
Revision: By rejecting a student’s language we are inherently rejecting a part of them and their identity. In turn we are rejecting their view of the world and how they have come to make sense of it; we invalidate their experiences and deny the value that those experiences can have in the classroom. (Excerpt from A Footnote in History by Marcela Rodriguez).
Example 2:
Original: What was my secret to obtaining a caramel complexion? I am not tan. The sun did not leave a permanent kiss on my skin. My skin is the genetic remains of my indigenous roots.
Revision: What was my secret to obtaining a caramel complexion? I am not tan. The sun did not leave a permanent kiss on my skin; my skin is the genetic remains of my indigenous roots.
(Excerpt from The Marked Narrative by Marcela Rodriguez).
Example 3:
Nearness blurs the stereotypes; it tends to replace them with reality and man discovers that the next man is very much like himself” (Excerpt from Why Men Hate by Samuel Tenenbaum 92)
COLONS
-
Indicate a list
-
Indicate that an explanation follows
-
Long quotations
Example 1:
Original: The Dalai Lama, golden-cloaked and pensive,bent over to face the little boy in blue-- his eyes peering into his heart-- and tenderly gave him an iris, a gesture of peace.
Revision: The Dalai Lama, golden-cloaked and pensive,bent over to face the little boy in blue-- his eyes peering into his heart-- and tenderly gave him an iris: a gesture of peace.
Example 2:
I’d been shut up in my hotel for more than a week, afraid to telephone anybody or go out; and my heart scrambled and floundered at even the most innocent noises: elevator bell, rattle of the mini-bar cart, even church clocks tolling the hour, de Westertoren, Krijtberg, a dark edge to the clangor, an inwrought fairy-tale sense of doom. (Excerpt from The Gold Finch by Donna Tartt 1)
Example 3:
She was beautiful, too. That’s almost secondary; but still, she was. When she came to New York fresh from Kansas, she worked part-time as a model though she was too uneasy in front of the camera to be very good at it; whatever she had, it didn’t translate to film. And yet she was wholly herself: a rarity. (Excerpt from The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt).
EM DASHES
-
Interruption
-
Parenthetical
-
Added explanation
Example 1:
Original: It had been deemed as “brilliant advertisement” by my professor. A dancing banana shimmied towards the center stage adorned with a head-dress filled with fruits, a flamenco skirt, and a slight accent singing about the preservation of the exotic fruit. It’s “brilliance” was unfortunately dulled by the inherent propagandization of the neocolonization of an exotic land, my land. My people had been conquered by who I had been taught to believe in history class were also my people.
Revision: It had been deemed a “brilliant advertisement” by my professor. A dancing banana shimmied toward the center stage adorned with a headdress filled with fruits, a flamenco skirt, and a slight Spanish accent, singing about the preservation of the exotic fruit. Its “brilliance” was unfortunately dulled by the inherent propagandization of the neocolonization of an exotic land— my land, mi Colombia. My motherland—conquered—by my new homeland, who I had been taught to believe in American history class was the Promise land. (Excerpt from The Marked Narrative by Marcela Rodriguez).
Example 2:
Original: I am a mosaic of the conquered and the conqueror. I am part Spanish, Native, and Slave. A precise genealogy is nearly impossible, but that’s the burden of the conquered. Your history is muddled, your identity unknown, your heritage kidnapped, and so the ethnic guessing game continues.
Revision: I am a mosaic of the conquered and the conqueror— part Spanish, Native, and Slave. A precise genealogy is nearly impossible, but that’s the burden of the conquered. Your history is muddled, your identity unknown, your heritage kidnapped— and so the ethnic guessing game continues. (Excerpt from The Racial Autobiography by Marcela Rodriguez).
Example 3:
Leaving, then, the world of the white man, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,--the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls” (Excerpt from The Souls of Black Folks by W.E.B. Du Bois 3).
PARENTHESES
-
Aside or interruption
-
To add omitted info
-
Citations
Example 1:
Original: From this early image of Mexicans as the “mongrel race” stems the unfair treatment and exploitation of Central and Southern American people. Throughout the nineteenth century white employers reinforced this racial system by refusing to pay Mexican workers equal wages and giving them less than half of what white laborers received. Unequal wages eventually furthered the imbalanced power relations between whites and Latinos which we still see much of today.
Revision: From this early image of Mexicans as the “mongrel race” (which Euroamericans used in reference to all Latinos) stems the unfair treatment and exploitation of Central and Southern American people. Throughout the nineteenth century white employers reinforced this racial system by refusing to pay Mexican workers equal wages and giving them less than half of what white laborers received. Unequal wages eventually furthered the imbalanced power relations between whites and Latinos which we still see much of today. (Excerpt from The Marked Narrative by Marcela Rodriguez).
Example 2:
Black English finds its roots in Gullah and Pidgin (a contact language) which were created by black slaves in order to communicate with one another. A fusion of these two dialects still exists in today’s contemporary American Black English or “street talk”. (Excerpt from A Footnote in History by Marcela Rodriguez).
Example 3:
Educators could develop a deeper understanding of their students of color by understanding this generations struggle through their music which “transforms the ugly terrain of ghetto existence into a searing portrait of life as it is lived by millions of voiceless people” (Dyson qtd in Adjaye and Andrews 170).
APOSTROPHES
-
Contractions
-
To demonstrate omitted letters
-
Possesion
Example 1:
It's time for us as a people to start makin' some changes. Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live and let's change the way we treat each other. You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do what we gotta do, to survive. (Verses from Changes by Tupac)
Example 2:
You will always be Esperanza. You will always be Mango Street. You can't erase what you know. You can't forget who you are...Then I didn't know what to say. (The House On Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros).
Example 3:
Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. (To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee).
Colons (as well as alternative forms of punctuation) indicate complexity. The colon indicates an explanation follows and places emphasis on it. (2/16/2014)
The Em Dash at the end of a sentence places emphasison the phrase that follows. A parenthetical Em Dash set the word contained within the two dashes apart from the rest of the sentence and focuses the reader. (3/28/2014)
The parentheses helps add important information within the sentence to explain or clarify the information contained within the rest of the sentence.(3/16/2014)
Moyes uses commas in her writing to create a faster tempo in her scene. The commas unite a series of brief moments that narrate the eminent doom of her characters accident.
A semi-colon used to connect two related independent sentences. It is important that the two clauses are similar and can stand on their own. (2/24/2014)
A semi-colon can be used to connect to similar complete sentences that are related to one another. By using a semi-colon in this sentence the writer is able to mirror their previous sentence. (4/7/2014)
The way that Tennebaum uses a semi-colon in this sentence indicates that "it" is referring back to "stereotypes". When using a semi-colon you are usually referencing back to something specific in the sentence before the semi-colon. (4/28/2014)
The em dash allows writers to insert clarifying interruptions (such as clauses, phrases, words, or complete sentences) in their sentence that would otherwise be left out or be an additional complete sentence like in the original version of this text. (10/25/2013)
Du Bois uses an em dash in order to add a clarification or explanation of his previous statement. In this case, a description of the Veil. In this case, a colon could have also been used to indicate that a definition or explanation followed. (4/28/2014)
In this sentence the parentheses is used to insert a short definition following jargon so that readers may fully understand the meaning of their reference. (3/21/2014)
Donna Tartt uses the colon repeatedly in her writing, but manages to use them in verying ways. In example 2, she uses the colon to indicate a list will precede and separates the list with serial commas. In example 3, she uses it to indicate that an explanation of her previous statement follows. Aside from the grammatical complexity of the colon, it also has a rhetorical affect by creating a thoughtful pause before the explanation which deepens the meaning of it. (4/28/2014)
The comma can be used to set a part a parenthetical statement or aside that adds to or clarifies the information within the sentence.(4/14/2014)
Parentheses are most commonly used in academic writing for in-text citations which give the readers the source of the quotation or information and usually the year/ page. This citation uses "qtd in", meaning that the author of this text is using a quote that was used in another text by a different author. (3/31/2014)
Apostrophes are used here to create contractions, show possesion, and to demonstrate excluded letters such as in the word in "makin'" which commonly used for slang.
They are also used to combine words into contractions, such as "cannot" to "can't". While contractions are not use in academic writing, they are often used in dialogue in non-academic writing like fiction.
Often times people will use an apostrophe where it is not needed(which shows possession) when they really intended to use the plural form of a word. In example 3, Lee uses the plural form "Mockingbirds" without the apostrophe and the possessive form of "people's" with the apostrophe which shows possession.
(4/30/2014)
PUNCTUATION
Comma preceding the coordinating conjunction and to indicate pauses within dialogue. Commas can also be used to list without the final and for rhetorical effect. (2/20/2014)