Important grammatical issues include fragments; fused sentences; comma splices; subject-verb agreement; verb form and tense; and pronoun case, reference and agreement. You can find out more about these and other grammar concerns by clicking below on the different links. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. Some grammar topics are also covered in this site's Resources section, such as links for the most common grammatical errors. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
These links on sentence grammar offer basic information on the parts of speech and how those parts fit together in sentences. The links to The Little Seagull Handbook offer interactive exercises, and to The Little, Brown Handbook offers many online worksheets to help improve students' writing. Big Dog's Grammar gives basic information on parts of speech, such as nouns and verbs, and The Purdue Owl link offers online exercises on common basic sentence grammar problems. You can find out more about basic sentence grammar by clicking below on the links. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
Nouns are mostly commonly defined as a person, place, thing, or idea. Pronouns, on the other hand, have antecedents, meaning that they refer back to a noun. Many students have problems making pronouns agree with their antecedent. You can find out more about nouns and pronouns by clicking below on the links. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
Verbs can be exceedingly difficult because so many kinds of verbs exist such as linking verbs, state of being verbs, or even action verbs. Beyond the different types of verbs, students can also become confused when dealing with irregular verb forms. The following links are intended to help you improve your knowledge and usage of verbs. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
A sentence fragment may lack a subject, verb, or even have added words that make it appear incomplete, like a subordinating conjunction. Whatever the cause may be, sentence fragments are generally considered major grammatical errors. The following links are intended to help you recognize and fix sentence fragments. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
A comma splice is when you separate two main clauses with only a comma. Reversely, a fused sentence is when you do not separate main clauses with anything. Both types of grammatical errors can be very confusing for students. The following links are intended to help you recognize and fix both comma splices and fused sentences. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
Shifts occur any time you change the person, number, or verb tense inside of one sentence. For example, you don't want to begin a sentence with present tense verbs and end it with past tense verbs. The following links are intended to help you recognize and fix shift problems in your writing. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
Misplaced and dangling modifiers deal with the order of words and word phrases. These kinds of errors confuse the reader because your meaning becomes unclear. The following links are intended to help you recognize and fix problems with misplaced and dangling modifiers. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
Simply stated, emphasis deals with getting your point across. Some students write such long and complicated sentences that readers lose the meaning before even finishing the sentence. Emphasis deals with focusing on subjects and verbs as well as how these elements are best put together. The following links are intended to help you by giving your information on emphasis. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
Coordination and subordination deal with the relationships between sentences. Coordination places equal importance between sentences while subordination shows that one sentence may be less or more important than other sentences. Both coordination and subordination can be achieved through signal words and phrases, such as subordinating and coordinating conjunctions. The following links are intended to help you by giving information on both coordination and subordination. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
Parallelism is matching the structure of sentences in order to create coordinating elements. The following links are intended to give you information on parallelism. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
Sentence variety comes from varying sentence length, structure, beginning, or ending. You can also achieve variety through coordination and subordination. Sentence variety is important because it keeps your reader interested by making your paper less repetitious in structure. These links are intended to give you ideas for adding variety to your writing and are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
Effective language is appropriate, meaning that it does not include slang, jargon, or sexist language. It is also exact, meaning that as a writer you choose the right word for your meaning. These links are intended to give you information on effective language. These links to interactive web sites are particularly beneficial for online, evening, and off-campus students who are unable to participate in face-to-face tutoring. You may also come to the writing lab to use print materials and seek additional help from the tutoring staff.
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