Expository Writing

Lesson Five

Editing for grammar

Dr. M. Connor

Process paper

This week I’m assigning you a process paper.

What does that mean?

Very simple

A) It means how to do something – instructions

• this is the type I’ve selfishly assigned!

B) It means how one did something– a progress report

• teachers and work supervisors will often ask for this type of writing

Now more on grammar

Don’t be afraid to seize whatever you have written and cut it to ribbons. It can always be restored to its original condition in the morning.– E.B. White

Especially if you have the right software.– Jan Venolia

Today’s lesson

Much of today’s lesson will be taken from Jan Venolia’s excellent book Rewrite Right! Your Guide to Perfectly Polished Prose, 2/e, Berkeley: Ten Speed P, 2000.

Available through Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1580082394/qid=1099687518/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-9428137-3451236?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Valuable tools

Your word processing program contains two powerful tools to help your writing:– Spell check– Grammar check

Just be aware of their limitations

Spell check A spell checker is a valuable tool for

catching misspelled or unintentionally doubled words. BUT…

Documents may still include incorrect words. A spell checker assumes a correctly spelled

word is the right word.– If you write t-h-i-e-r house, it will catch it– If you write there house, it won’t!

Grammar check

Remember, this program is written by computer programmers, not English teachers!

They sometimes incorrectly flag text They sometimes miss obvious errors. They have trouble with things like

who/whom, that/which, and the proper use of apostrophes.

Tracking revisions

I’ve shown you how to use this in peer editing, but it’s a good thing to use in your own editing as well.

You can delete your golden prose, but you don’t have to worry about it being permanently gone if you decide that you do like it after all.

This removes some of the pain of editing.

Getting started

No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft.– H.G. Wells

• Ah-ha, this is probably why I teach writing!

Unless it’s the resistance to sitting down and editing your own.– Jan Venolia

• Amen, says Dr. Connor!

Two level editing

Earlier in the course, I talked about the six step process.

Rewriting can also be called “first level editing”

Editing can also be called “second level editing”.– Today we’re looking at this level.

“Read” more than once

When editing a paper, your own or someone else’s, it’s always a good idea to read it through once to see what it’s about, but then skim it over several times, each time looking for something different.

You can catch the different types of error more easily if you’re specifically looking for them.

Second-level editing: a checklist

Punctuation– Do punctuation marks help readers grasp the

meaning?– Is there any surplus punctuation?

Grammar– Do subjects and verbs agree?– Do pronouns and antecedents agree?– Are pronouns in their correct case?

• who/whom, I/me/myself, etc

Checklist, continued Grammar

– Do pronouns refer clearly to their antecedents?– Did you remove dangling and misplaced

modifiers?– Are the tense and the mood of the verbs

consistent?– Are related parts of sentences parallel in form?– Are there fragments or run-ons?

More checklist Mechanics

– Are abbreviations kept to a minimum? Are they used correctly?

– Is capitalization correct and consistent?– Are numbers below 10 spelled out? Are

numbers above 10 written as figures?– Are words correctly spelled?– If your writing includes quoted materials, have

the quotations been presented correctly?

Why worry about grammar?

Grammar, rhetoric, and logic enrich enormously the phenomenon of being alive.– George Santayana

Grammar helps the reader Good grammar is transparent. Instead of

getting in the way, it helps readers understand what is written.

Most native speakers use grammatical rules without being aware of it, but even we need to use a good grammar sometimes.

Non-native speakers also need to know how to use a grammar! If you don’t have one, get one soon!

Agreement

Every part of a sentence should agree with every related part.

In every day English, that means:– Use singular verbs with singular subjects

and plural verbs with plural subjects.– Make a pronoun singular if its antecedent

is singular and plural if the antecedent is plural.

Make the subject and verb agree in number The wastepaper basket is a writers best

friend.– Isaac Bashevis Singer

Basket is singular, is is singular.

And again...

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.– Pogo (an American cartoon)

We is plural, are confronted is plural

A word about numbers

I’ve mentioned that we use words for one through 10, then switch to numerals.

There are some exceptions.– Of course!

Exceptions

Use words when a number starts a sentence:– Fifty million Frenchmen can’t be wrong.

And if a related number appears in the sentence, write it as a word, too:– Twenty members voted yes; fifteen voted no.– One dollar out of every ten earned goes to

health care.

And..

Express large numbers in figures or in mixed figure-word form, but be consistent.– $10,000,000 or $10 million– 5.7 billion– 3 1/2 billion

Dates

Use figures for dates:– July 4, 1776 or 4 July, 1776– 7/4/76 or 7/4/1776 (in the first we might assume

you meant 1976) Because Europe and America write dates

differently (in US month is written first, in Europe, day), it is preferable that you use the word for the month.– July 4, 1776