GRAMMAR SQUAD

P E R S O N A L N A R R AT I V E E D I T I N G

CAPTAIN CAPITALThe letter “I”

My mother and I went to the Tulip Festival.

Beginning of a sentence How old are you?

Names of people, places, and holidays

My friend, Nancy wants to go to Thanksgiving Point and get a Mother’s Day gift.

Months & days of the week The last day of school is on Friday

May 29th!

Titles of Books, games, programs, or people

I watched “The Imitation Game” and loved it.

The President of the United States is a leader.

SENTENCE ENDING TEAM!

• Super Powers: Can stop any sentence of any size. Lets the reader know that the sentence has come to a full stop.

• Can end very short, medium, and long sentences.

– I’ll stop him.

– I’ll stop him from breaking the law, and I’ll bring him to justice.

– I’ll stop him from breaking the law, and I’ll bring to him to justice because, it’s my sworn duty to boldly stand against him.

• Super Powers: Can turn any sentence into a question.

• Constantly seeks answers to all of life’s questions, big and small.

• Wants to know: – who, – when, – where, – why, – which one, – how many, – for how long, – would we, – could we, – should we, – have we

• All possible because of The Question Mark• Rhetorical Questions:

– Means that you’re using words and/or phrases in an artistic, flashy, skillful, and sometimes tricky ways.

• Power to ask a question he already knows the answer to. Uses this power to emphasis a point, be clever, or just plain be a super smarty-pants.

– Is it any wonder he’s our hero? (emphasizing a point)

– How many lumps would you like, one or two? (being clever)

– Do you still think capes are a good idea? (being a super smarty-pants)

• Super Powers: Power to give a sentence a strong emotion and strong ending emphasis.

• Use for:– Emphasis– Urgency– Emotion– Commands

• Means you’ve turned up the volume on a sentence

• Often used to show when someone is yelling, shouting, or screaming.

• Great to use when you need something to stand out and be noticed.

• For Example:– I am master of this planet!– I need my power pack, now!

• WARNING!– Overuse means none of the

sentences stands out as being important or special.

– Using too many can make it seem like you’re constantly shouting for no good reason.

– Only use ONE to emphasis the point.

• Super Powers: The abilities to separate words or groups of words that occur in a series (like when you're making a list of three or more items. Stronger powers include being able to join phrases and dependent clauses to the main clause of a sentence. 

• SUPER TEAMWORK: Known for teaming up with her ally, The Conjunction.  They join forces to correctly join two or more independent clauses into one solid sentence.  Neither of them is strong enough to do this task on their own, but together, they get the job done with ease.  

• The Comma is always ready to assist The Interjection and The Adjective whenever they’re in need of her help.

• USE THE COMMA:– To separate words in a series (A.K.A. the

serial comma)– With a coordinating conjunction– After an interjection– To separate multiple adjectives– When directly addressing a person

• Examples:– I need a mask, a cape, some gloves, and

stretchy pants!– Give me the money, or things will get ugly.– Wow, that’s super sticky.– Captain Capital, you saved my life.

• Super Powers: can join two or more independent clauses together. This means that if you have two or more complete sentences that are closely related, you can use a semicolon to properly join them together into one sentence. 

• For example, here are two complete sentences:

– Never give up!

– Never surrender!

• The best and easiest way to join them together is by using a semicolon, like this:

– Never give up; never surrender!

• Super Powers: signals that what comes next is directly related to the previous sentence.

• The most important thing to remember about colons is that you only use them after statements that are complete sentences.

• For Example:– “Captain Capitals has two favorite

hobbies: watching clouds and seeing how long she can stand on one foot.

• "But what about when you're introducing a list, like a bulleted list or numbered list?“

• It would be wrong to say, – “Captain Capitals's favorite hobbies are:

skiing and reading" – “Captain Capital’s favorite hobbies are" is

not a complete sentence by itself. – You can often fix those kind of sentences

by adding the words the following after your sentence fragment.

• For example, – “Captain Capitals favorite hobbies are the

following: skiing and reading" – Because you've made the thing before the

colon a grammatically complete sentence by adding the words the following.

• Super Powers: Sneak secret messages into your sentences

• Used to:– Add clarification

– Add useful information

– Add commentary

• For example:– Clarification: He’s robbed every

bank in the country (US).

– Useful information: I have traveled one light-year (about 6 trillion miles) to be here.

– Commentary: That missile must be stopped (no matter the cost).

– Personal Commentary: You’re an evil tyrant! (And you smell bad, too.)

• Super Powers: Takes the place of (more subtle) punctuation symbols whenever a sentence calls for extra emphasis.

• Use the Em Dash:– In place of commas– In place of semicolons– In place of colons– In place of parentheses

• For Example:– Comma: Surrender your

weapons – now! – Comma: His weakness – fire –

is my strength.– Semicolons: I will strike – you

will fall.– Colons: I only want what’s

mine – money, power, and obedience.

– Parentheses: The aliens – no big surprise – had the technological advantage.

• Weaknesses:– Use sparingly so the emphasis

doesn’t become weak. – The more you use it the

weaker and less effective it becomes.

• Super Powers: Can join words together to create new words or expressions with powerful, combined meanings.• Use for:

– Two or more words that form a new word or expression

– Adding prefixes– Compound numbers– Two show a connection

between the two parts of a word at a line-break

• For Example:– Combining: Her powers

are mind-numbing!– Combining: We’ll have to

fight them back-to-back.– Prefixes: My anti-gravity

boots are working just fine.

– Numbers: I’ve broken out of prison twenty-six times.

• Super Powers: Power of Contraction, Power of Omission, Power of Possession

• Contraction:– Contract (squeeze together) two

separate words into one single, shorter, efficient word.

– I’m, you’re, they’d, we’ll, don’t

• Omission:– Omit (remove or leave out) part of a

word to help make it shorter and quicker to say.

– Considered very casual form of writing (slang)

• For example:– Where’s my grappling hook?

– He’s levitating the building.

– I’m goin’ after him!

– That ‘gator is gigantic.

• Super Powers: Power of Contraction, Power of Omission, Power of Possession

• Possession:– Allow single nouns and plural

nouns to show ownership• Possession for Single Nouns

– Show that a single noun is in possession, add an ‘s

– For single nouns already ending in s do the same thing, add an ‘s

• For example:– The creature’s breathe is

horrible. – The Mantis’s fighting style is

tough to beat. • Possession for Plural Nouns:

– Many plural nouns already end with the letter s, add the apostrophe after letter s.

– For plural nouns that do not end in s, add ‘s

• For example:– His fists’ knuckles are like iron.– He is the people’s hero.

• Super Powers: Proves to be handy when you're quoting material and you want to omit some words. • Represent a trailing off of thought.• Indicate hesitation, though in this

case the punctuation is more accurately described as suspension points. • Like the exclamation point, the

dash, and the parentheses the ellipsis is at risk of overuse.• For Example:

– If only she had . . . Oh, it doesn’t matter now.

– I wasn’t really…well, what I mean . . . see, the thing is . . . I didn’t mean it.

• Super Powers: Ironic quotes twist words into the opposite of what they truly mean (sarcasm in print)

• Ironic quotes are often used when kidding, joking, or poking fun at something.

• For example:– Of course I’ll “surrender” my

weapon to you Run-on Sentence.

• Ironic quotes are a sneaky power, but when used correctly, can really add some “serious” fun.

SHIELDING YOU AGAINST BAD

WRITINGTHE REVISION CHECKLIST

“Deep cleaning” your writing for content and ideas.

Read each draft and check off each item on the Checklist to make sure you’ve shielded yourself against a “boring” story.

THE EDITING CHECKLIST

“Spot cleaning” your writing for style and punctuation.

Read each draft and check off each item on the Checklist to make sure you’ve shielded yourself against the Sabotage Squad of bad writing.

EDIT ING YOUR ROUGH DRAFTS

1. Read through your rough draft out-loud.

2. Use the Revision Checklist to “clean up” the ideas in your draft.– Use the following Notes to help

you:• Lead Notes• Character Descriptions in

Narrative Notes• Sensory & Concrete Details

Notes• Reflections & Narrative

Conclusions Notes• Dialogue Notes• Pacing & Sentence

Structure Notes3. Use the Editing Checklist to

“spot check” the punctuation in your drafts. – Use the Grammar Squad notes

to help you4. Repeat the steps above with

each draft.

Homework:

• Revise and Edit your 3 rough drafts using your Checklists.

• Conduct a Peer Review for each rough draft.

• Evil Power: Fools you into thinking she can join together two complete sentences

• For Example:

– They need help, I must fly to the rescue.

• A fake comma incorrectly splicing (patching) together two complete sentences.

• Complete sentences cannot be correctly joined together by a single comma.

• They must either be joined by

– Ending with proper sentence-ending punctuation.

– Joined together by using the combination of a comma with a coordinating conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)

– Joined together using a semicolon

• Saved Example:

– They need help; I must fly to the rescue.

• Evil Powers: Makes you run past your punctuation leaving you with extra long sentences that run on, and on, and on …

• Complete sentences should never just run-on into each other to form extended sentences. 

• Complete sentences either need to be ended or they need to be properly joined together with the use of punctuation. 

• Makes your first sentence run right past your punctuation and straight into the next sentence! 

• For Example:

• I cant fly my powers are gone.

• I can’t fly; my powers are gone.

• Gather the heroes together we’re going to attack in force.

• Gather the heroes together. We’re going to attack in force.

• Evil Powers: Makes your sentences crumble and fall apart, just like he does.

• Creates incomplete sentences.  A sentence needs both a subject and a predicate (verb) in order to be strong and complete. 

• If a sentence is missing either the subject or predicate, then it’s not really a sentence—it’s only a weak fragment.

• If you don't want your sentences to crumble and fall apart—never let The Fragment break up the team! 

• For Example:

– Eating up the entire city.

– Hipposaurus Rex is eating up the entire city.

THANK YOU TO SUPER

GRAMMARH T T P : / /W W W . S U P E R G R A M M A R . C O M / S E A R C H / L A B E L / S U P E R - T E A M S

C H E C K O U T T H E W E B S I T E F O R E V E N M O R E I N F O R M A T I O N T O H E L P Y O U I N Y O U R W R I T I N G !