grammar, punctuation, & other fairy tales (the …whitmore/courses/ensc803/materials/...the...

Punctuation & Grammar 1 of 28

Grammar, Punctuation,

& Other Fairy Tales

(The Brothers Grim)

© Steve Whitmore

June 2016

Learning Objectives

By the end of this lecture, you will have completed the following

tasks:

• Reviewed some basic terms in traditional grammar.

• Learned the 7 basic patterns of punctuation needed to

generally master punctuation.

• Recognized that punctuation marks represent cognitive

space.

• Learned about some special cases in punctuation that are

relevant to academia.

• Concluded that English is a very weird language.


Some Facts about Grammar

• Grammar is simply a way to describe how words and

phrases relate to each other.

• Traditional grammar is very poor at doing so (Linguistic

grammars are better descriptively, but are incomprehen-

sible to anyone but Linguists).

• Some studies indicate that university students (native

speakers of English) taught grammar become worse at

writing than those not taught.

• EAL/ESL speakers are usually better at grammar than

native speakers.


A Recap: Nouns & Pronouns

Nouns: Person, place, or thing

• Things: car, cat, soup

• People: doctor, professor, Mike

• Places: Vancouver, Stanley Park

• Abstractions: honesty, evil, beauty

Pronouns: Substitute for nouns

• he, she, they, it


A Recap: Verbs

Verbs: Describes action, state, or an occurrence

• Often called “action” words

• Core part of speech

• Often words become “verbed” with time

• A “trend” is now “to trend” and “trending” (and

becoming a very irritating cliche – see Global News)


A Recap: Adjectives

Adjectives: Modifies nouns

• Answers questions such as “How much?”, ”How

many?”, “Which?”

• Different kinds: articles, demonstrative, interrogative,

relative, possessive, indefinite, numerical, and

descriptive


A Recap: Adverbs

Adverbs: Modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, word-

groups

• A bit more tricky than adjectives

• Gently, quietly, then, there, fast, careful


A Recap: Prepositions & Articles

Prepositions: Link words together, shows relations

• into, over, under, by, around, on, to, of

Articles: Little words that drive people crazy

• Used with nouns

• A/an, the


A Recap: Conjunctions

Conjunctions: Words that join other words, phrases, or

clauses together

• Coordinating Conjunctions: and, but, for, nor, or, so,

yet

• Correlative Conjunctions: either…or, both…and, not

only… but also,

• Subordinating Conjunctions: after, although,

because, rather than, whereas


The Strange Case of UpIt is easy to understand up meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the

morning, why do we wake up? At a meeting, why does a topic come up? Why do we speak up and why are

the officers up for election and why is it up to the secretary to write up a report? We call up our friends. And

we use it to brighten up a room, polish up the silver; we warm up the leftovers and clean up the kitchen.

We lock up the house and some guys fix up the car.

At other times, the little word has real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line up for tickets, work

up an appetite, and think up excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed up is special. A drain

must be opened up because it is stopped up. We open up a store in the morning, but we close it up at

night.

We seem to be pretty mixed up about up!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of up, look the word up in the dictionary. In a desk-sized

dictionary, it takes up almost a quarter of the page and can add up to about thirty definitions. If you are up

to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways up is used. It will take up a lot of your time, but if you

don't give up, you may wind up with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding up. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing up. When

it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things up. When it doesn't rain, things dry up.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it up, because my time is up, so it is time to shut up! Now it is up to

you what you do with this information.

Up can act as a verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, or part of a compound noun.Punctuation & Grammar 10 of 28


Introduction to Punctuation

• Punctuation is used in English to show the relations

between parts of a sentence.

• Court cases have been won and lost on the basis of

the placement of a punctuation mark.

• Not an exact science – some usage is optional.

• Punctuation is boring to learn, but not that difficult if

you follow a few simple rules.


Dear John I want a man who knows what love is all

about you are generous kind thoughtful people who are

not like you admit to being useless and inferior you

have ruined me for other men I yearn for you I have no

feelings whatsoever when were apart I can be forever

happy will you let me be yours Gloria

Punctuation – The Ugly


Dear John:

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are

generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you

admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me

for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings

whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy --

will you let me be yours?

Gloria

Punctuation – The Good


Dear John:

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are

generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you.

Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined

me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings

whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy.

Will you let me be?

Yours,

Gloria

Punctuation – The Bad


Rules of Thumb for Punctuation

Large Thumb: Punctuating where you pause when

reading the sentence aloud (60-70% accurate).

Small Thumb: Punctuating according to the

grammatical rules (almost 100% accurate).

Medium Thumb: Punctuating according to

structural relationships (about 95% accurate).

Tom Thumb


S/V/O = Subject/Verb/Object

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Basic Sentence


S/V/O

After sighing loudly, the dog opened an eye and peered at the fox.

Irritated by the fox's obvious arrogance as well as his overt disdain for his much deserved sleep and general peace of mind, the dog slowly got to his feet.

However, the dog was not particularly concerned about the speed or agility of the fox.

Although exceptionally lazy and dreadfully slow, the dog possessed a range of other skills and tricks that the fox could never hope to match.

Persistence, intelligence, and experience -- these were areas where the dog excelled.

Intro

Introductions


S/V/O

The dog knew that he could use his motorcycle to catch the fox,

who was limited by the speed and endurance of his muscles.

The dog obviously had another advantage: better technology.

The fox had clearly underestimated the extent of the dog's technical

advantages -- a blunder which might well prove fatal.

EOLD

End of Line Distinctions


S or S/V

The dog's motorcycle, which had been modified last week, idled

under a nearby tree.

The ever-observant fox, recognizing his peril, raced toward the

idling bike.

The fox knew the motorcycle (i.e., a Yamaha 1200) possessed a top

speed of 200 mph.

The fox was afraid -- although he would never admit it -- that the

dog would use the bike to catch him.

Insert V/O or O

Insert


Punctuation As Cognitive Space

/ = █

- = ██

space = ███

, = ██████

() = ████████████

-- = ██████████████████

; = ████████████████████████

: = ██████████████████████████████

. = ██████████████████████████████

! = ████████████████████████████████████

? = ████████████████████████████████████

¶ = █████████████████████████████████████████


S/V/O

The fox was hoping that he could steal the bike and make his

getaway, but the wily dog had outsmarted him when he modified

the bike last week.

Only now did the dog's foresight become apparent: he pulled out

his remote control and turned off the bike.

The fox now realized he had misjudged the dog; however, he still

didn't recognize the full extent of his miscalculation.

The dog pulled out another remote; he pushed a button, and a net

fell from the tree.

S/V/O

Balance


S/V or S/V/O

The net helped the dog to trap, embarrass, and marinate the fox.

The fox tried to escape the trap in three ways: by crawling through

the mesh, by tearing apart the cords, and by pulling off the net.

All the fox's attempts were to no avail because the dog had planned

his trap in great detail: he purchased a net with an extremely fine

mesh; he reinforced the net with very strong cords; and he coated

the net with a gooey mixture of honey and oregano.

The dog had the utensils to sauté, braise, and roast the fox using a frypan, a pressure cooker and a dutch oven, and a spit, respectively.

Item Item Item

List/Parallel


Quotation

In his recipe book, Fox Gumbo, which was published a year later,

the dog noted that “a fox marinated in honey and oregano is one of

the world's finest gustatory experiences.”

In the same volume, he pointed out that speed and agility are not

the most important things when trying to catch a fox: “All that you

really need is a motorcycle, a remote control, a net, and, of course,

a really stupid fox.”

S/V/O

Short Quotation


S/V/O

However, as his memoirs indicate, he later changed his assessment

of fox intelligence:

As I reflect upon my success as the author

of canine cookbooks, there's one point I want

to clarify. Foxes aren't particularly stupid; it's

just that dogs are especially smart!

Quotation

Long Quotation


A Couple of Special Cases

e.g., (exempli gratia for example); i.e., (id est that is)

• Generally only used inside parentheses

• Use full term, “For example” or “that is”, at beginnings

of sentences

et al. (et alii and others) multiple authors in references

Hyphens vs. Dashes

• Use -- (double hyphens) or − (n-dash) or ─ (m-dash),

but not - (single hyphen)

• Autocorrect in MS Word can do this for you

Use a single space after the period (not two spaces)

• Two spaces is a holdover from typewriters made

unnecessary by proportionally spaced fonts

• APA is a few decades behind the times


A Couple More Special Cases it’s versus its:

• It’s is a contraction (it is), like don’t, can’t, etc.

• Its is a possessive pronoun (like his or hers)

• Never use contractions in formal prose, and you’ll

never get confused because you’ll only use its ;-)

“, which” problem:

• “Environmental groups, which have no respect for

industry, annoy her.” (non-restrictive clause)

• “Environmental groups which have no respect for

industry annoy her.” (restrictive clause)

• Test by substituting that

• MS Word always assumes non-restrictive usage

• Distinction is rapidly disappearing from common usage


Say What?

“Long about 2009, when -- make note -- Microsoft is

really supposed to have Windows 7, the Vista rev,

penciled in, its vaunted, if still unreleased, Hyper-V

hypervisor is supposed to cease being an add-on and

get sucked up into Windows Server.”

This sentence was found on the internet; grammatically

correct, it is cognitively incomprehensible:

Introductory phrase start dependent clause inserted phrase

continue dependent clause inserted phrase finish dependent

clause start independent clause inserted phrase finish

independent clause.


Conclusion

Reflections: Which of the punctuation patterns

outlined in this module cause problems in your writing?

grammar, punctuation, & other fairy tales (the …whitmore/courses/ensc803/materials/...the...

Documents