Mr.

Johnsons Writing & Grammar Post Date: May 22, 2017

Most writing is judged by CONTENT (What you say)

STYLE (How well or poorly you express yourselves)

GRAMMAR

Style has a number of aspects.

Good Style: Poor Style:

- Interesting and varied sentences - poor or unvaried sentences

- Varied and appropriate use of language - uninteresting or inappropriate

language (word choice)

- wordiness (lack of economy)

Tips on Improving your style:

1. Be conscious as you write that you are expressing yourself clearly and vividly.

2. Be aware that making appropriate word choices (words that express your
meaning) is more important than writing to impress by using unusual
vocabulary.

3. Use your knowledge of sentence joining and sentence structure to provide

variety to your writing.

4. Devote separate proofreading to making sure that you express yourself well.

One of the easiest and best ways to check for sentence variety is to check your
sentence openers. If your sentences generally begin with a subject, as in this
example (Robert did .etc. etc. He said etc. He thought ) This pattern is the
most basic of all sentence structures: Subject Verb. This is an important sentence
structure since it expresses ideas clearly:

Subject Verb Verb Part (Complement)

Robert studied his surroundings.

Who or What did he More information

What? do?
 Subject Verb Verb Part

The chair sits in the corner of the room.

Who or Does what? More information

What?

* TO FIND THE SUBJECT OF YOUR SENTENCE, FIRST FIND THE THE VERB
(THE WORD CAPABLE OF SHOWING TENSE OR TIME), GO TO THE LEFT OF
THE VERB, AND ASK WHO OR WHAT? IN RELATION TO THE VERB. FOR
EXAMPLE: The babysitter scolded the children.

The verb is scolded. Go to the left of the verb and ask who or what scolded? The
answer is babysitter and this is the subject of the sentence.

Despite the fact that simple sentences beginning with a subject and verb are easy
to write and easy to understand, they quickly become boring.

Introducing variety into your sentence openers varies the order of information.
Instead of writing who or what at the beginnings of sentences, you (the writer)
could begin your sentence with where?
when?
why?
how?
By making your reader wait for the vital information who does what you
create a kind of grammatical suspense because you vary the order of
information.

Because of the extreme storm conditions, Jason will remain at home.

(Why first - then who)

On October 31st, in a crumbling mansion, some zombies partied all night.

(When first, followed by where, finally followed by who zombies)

Slowly and secretly, the prisoner attempted to build his tunnel.

(How first, then who, then action.)

To impress his neighbours, the rock star threw a glamorous party.

(Why first, followed by who did what?)

The sentence openers above use a variety of information through a variety of

phrases. For this reason, it is important to understand the use of phrases as
sentence openers and to be able to distinguish a phrase from a clause.
Please read on.
 What is a clause? Answer: a group of words containing a subject and a verb.

The following are clauses:

Because he feared the police, the criminal fled the scene.

Pronoun subj. + verb Noun + verb

We could say that a subject - verb unit forms the nucleus of all types of clauses.

Then:

What is a phrase? Answer: a group of words that does not contain a subj. - verb unit.
A phrase may contain nouns but not all nouns function as subjects.
A phrase may also contain words that resemble verbs but are not!

The following are types of phrases:

Prepositional phrases: (words beginning with prepositions such as at, on, in, under,
before, behind, in front of, beside, behind, to, towards . etc.)

at midnight
at Marys house PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES frequently tell when or where
on the beach
in the park

There are also these types of phrases:

-ING phrases ADJECTIVE phrases

-ED phrases INFINITIVE phrases

But arent -ING words verbs you might ask? And arent -ED words verbs, too?
(The answer: that depends!!!)

In English grammar the pattern or placement of words determines their function

(whether the word acts as a noun, verb, adjective or adverb.) For example:

The movie bored her so she turned it off. (Bored as past tense verb)
The bored audience fell asleep. (Bored as adjective describing the noun audience)

If an -ING word is not preceded by a helping verb it is NOT at verb!!

Swimming is her favourite summer activity. (Here swimming is acting as the subj.)

Her favourite summer activity is swimming. (Is swimming is the verb: the -ING
word is preceded by the helping verb is)
 Her favourite swimming place is her aunts swimming pool (Both of these ING
words are adjectives - describing place and describing pool)

ING PHRASES (They begin with an -ING word):

Running down the hill, he hurt his knee.

(ING phrase) (Subj. Verb in Clause)

Making up her mind, Amanda entered the office.

(ING phrase) (Subj. Verb in Clause)

Knocking over the vase, the little boy cried.

(ING phrase) (Subj. Verb in Clause)

You can introduce your sentence with an ING phrase (ING Sentence Opener) but the
noun in the subject position MUST be the one doing the ING action.

Ex. Running down the hill, his knee was hurt.

(Wrong! You would never write his knee was running down the hill so the noun in the
subject position is incorrect. This fault is known as a dangling modifier.)
To avoid having a dangling modifier, the subject must immediately follow the comma.

Leaving the party early, he tripped over a chair. (Correct: the subject he is doing the
verb tripped and he is leaving.)

ED PHRASES:

Tired of the fighting, Roy left the room.

Bored with the lecture, the students whispered to one another.
Amazed at the monument, the tourists took many photos.
Injured in the knee, he dropped out of the race.

ADJECTIVE PHRASES:

Sad and lonely, she sat in her room.

Angry with the whole world, he slammed the door.
Happy and excited, she danced around the room.*

*(Notice that you can mix ED adjectives and other adjectives.)

INFINITIVE PHRASES (tend to show reason or purpose):

To go to university, he studied hard.

To make a kite, you need the right materials.
To win the game, the team needed more practise.