Humanities 1: Writing Well, Advanced Grammar
The advanced grammar section will focus on nuances of sentence structure such as clauses, advanced uses of punctuation, absolute modifiers, and parallel sentence structure. These are topics that often appear in one form or another on college placement exams such as the SATs or the ACTs.
1. Absolute modifiers
Absolute modifiers are adjectives or adverbs which do not take an adverb. They are not used comparatively or superlatively either. They are either true or not. In informal writing or fiction we tend to bend this rule quite a bit for the sake of emphasis. For example, several INCORRECT uses follow: Excalibur is a truly unique, magical sword. Michelangelo created the most perfect art. Her answer was more final than his answer. These sentences should read: Excalibur is a unique, magical sword. Michelangelo created perfect art. Her answer was final.
2. Clauses
Clauses function as a grammatical unit consisting of a subject and a predicate. They may be dependent or independent. Independent clauses are sentences when separated from the sentence with which they are conjoined; dependents clauses are not. While stealing may be wrong, many people still engage in this practice. The pink highlighted section is a dependent clause. "Stealing" is the subject, and "may be wrong" is the predicate. "While stealing may be wrong" is not a sentence though. "Many people still engage in this practice." is a complete sentence and therefore an independent clause.
3. Punctuation
The colon : is generally used to either indicate a list or for emphasis. Terry Riley had one love in music: the note C. Terry Riley's music consists of many different notes: C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, and C7. The semicolon ; can be used to join related, but independent ideas together into once sentence. Elizabeth saw the flying saucer. It abducted her. Elizabeth saw the flying saucer; it abducted her. Some authors such as John Irving use the semicolon and hyphen interchangeably. It has a secondary use for separating lists of list. Elizabeth liked the colors: red, blue and yellow; the flavors: strawberry, lemon, and boisonberry; and the movies: the Titanic, Godzilla, and the Brain that Wouldn't Die. The hyphen - has become a sort of catchall punctuation. It can stand in for the semicolon in joining two independent clauses together. It may also join related, but dependent clauses together as well. Typically, it is used in the formation of compound words: small-businessmen are owners of small businesses small businessmen are businessmen that are petite Some people recognize a difference between what is called an em dash and a hyphen. I think this is pedantic and not terribly important. Generally, wherever you might use a semicolon, an em dash is acceptable, though it tends to have different connotations. For instance, Where were my- what was I looking for? is considered better writing style than replacing the hyphen with a semicolon. Hyphens can be used to indicate a sudden change of thought or direction in the space of a single thought or piece of dialogue as above. They connote a certain amount of surprise from the character narrating or experiencing the event.
4. Improper Modifiers
Improper or misplaced modifiers are phrases that are misplaced within a sentence. They serve to alter the underlying meaning of a written sentence. In spoken English, context can be clear because there are so many additional cues that a listener is provided with. Let’s observe an example.
He nearly drove the car for six hours today. (He almost drove the car today, but did not.)
He drove the car for nearly six hours today. (He drove the car for approximately 6 hours today.)
The sentences will have logically different meanings based on where the modifier is placed. Another quintessential example with participial phrases is as follows.
Eagerly awaiting her birthday, Mary’s presents were picked up and admired by Mary.
Eagerly awaiting her birthday, Mary picked up and admired her presents.
Here, the purple phrasing is almost certainly incorrect. It would imply that the presents were eagerly awaiting Mary’s birthday, not Mary.
Errol serves sandwiches to his children on paper plates.
Errol serves sandwiches on paper plates to his children.
Again, we notice that it is unlikely that Errol’s children are on paper plates. Instead the sentence should read as the blue text does with the sandwiches on paper plates instead of the children.
5. Formal Writing
Formal writing has different and more stringent requirements. If you are asked to write a piece of nonfiction for someone with a timeline that is longer than an hour then you should consider it a piece of formal writing. Earlier sections covered some of the differences:
- Formal writing should be grammatical.
- It should be well-edited with few or no mistakes.
- It should not contain contractions or colloquialisms.
- It is preferred that it be clear and concise.
- Formal writing usually does not use personal pronounces except in the case of editorials.
- It will likely call for evidence and that evidence should be properly cited.
We have not talked much about the last one up until now. Citations usually contain an author, a work, and a page number. The exact format of a citation is highly dependent on your audience. Bibliographies are also extremely important in formal writing because the list of works used to write a paper may be equally or even more important than the content of the paper. In an excerpt from the Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences we see: "The spatial nature of each data value was evaluated by creating a spatial weight matrix based on data value locations. Since several methods for creating spatial weights exist (Anselin and Rey, 2014), the Queen’s Contiguity method was implemented in this analysis. Based on spatial weight matrix, hypothesis of spatial randomness in burrow parameter values was tested using global and local Moran’s I statistical tests. Global Moran’s I (Moran, 1950) is widely used to examine the existence of spatial autocorrelation. As suggested by Moran (1948), the model will describe the statistics between a variable and its spatial lag, assuming that random and independent variations exist. Its values vary between 1 and 1. The meaning ‘‘1>” signifies perfect positive spatial autocorrelation, while ‘‘1<” indicates perfect negative spatial autocorrelation, and ‘‘0” implies perfect spatial randomness (Tu and Xia, 2008). Local spatial autocorrelation was quantified using Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA), which calculates the degree of spatial autocorrelation at each particular position by utilizing local Moran’s I (Anselin, 2010). LISA may also be used to determine the effect of specific locations on global statistical significance and classify ”outliers‘‘ (see Levine, 2013)." Here, the authors and the date are sufficient, because in the original text, they are linked to the relevant article and if the link was broken for whatever reason, the included bibliography would be sufficient to find the work.