After yet another week of grammar class I am still learning things. This week we worked on House Style for different publications, anywhere from magazines to newspapers. For my part I worked on the publication of the Spokesman Review Newspaper. While looking at this specific publication it was my duty to see how they use certain punctuation and grammatical rules. For my part this was a learning experience in itself. I was ignorant of the fact that different writing publications actually used different rules, I thought such rules were more of a national thing. The Spokesman Review, for instance puts movie titles and television shows in quotes, as opposed to underlining them. I found many of little rules that were being used differently in this publication, all of which I never would have explored or noticed otherwise.
This week we also went over some basics of grammar. This lesson included knowledge such as the fundamentals of nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. Although this knowledge was not new to me, it has been a long time since I’ve been in contact with it. Sure I read a lot, but I don’t really contemplate the use of nouns and verbs in the sentence. In other words I don’t spend my time after reading a sentence dissecting the structure. We did this in class this week. Obviously it has been a long time since I have diagramed a sentence, but luckily I caught on rather quickly. It amazed me the things I had forgotten since grade school. The knowledge remained in the back of my mind, but was never really used until this moment in time. For instance I remembered that nouns are most easily identified as a person, place, or thing. However what I didn’t realize was that nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives are all considered part of ‘open class.’ This means that these parts of speech are constantly absorbing new words, an entire new vocabulary. Fascinating I thought.
Anyway it was nice to brush up on the four parts of speech that we use every day, without ever really considering it. As for my parting question I must ask why do you think that adverbs are used so rarely in speech or in print; especially if they are flexible and can be moved around in the sentence?
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
What I have learned thus far
So far in this class I have learned many new things. In my writing I often use ‘however,’ and apparently did not know how to punctuate it properly. I would usually put ‘however’ in the middle of a sentence with a comma or semi-colon before ‘however’ and a comma following it. There are many different ways to punctuate ‘however’ as I soon found out. Yet another grammatical rule that I have learned is how to use punctuation to completely change the meaning of a phrase. I have always known that adding punctuation changes how words are spoken and how the meaning is altered. I did not know that just a few comma’s or ending punctuation could really alter a sentence meaning that completely.
Learning about apostrophes added whole new concepts to my grammatical understanding. I realized that apostrophes were used for contractions, such as in ‘it’s’ to replace ‘it is.’ I also knew that apostrophes were used to express possession as shown in the phrase ‘Charlie’s camel.’ These are the kind of uses that I thought apostrophes served. I had never though much about how they accomplished the things they did, or how I knew where to place them besides a gut feeling. In class I found that my gut feeling can be right sometimes, and wrong at other times. I now know how to spot a misuse of an apostrophe, at least when used in possession or conjunctions. Another thing I learned about apostrophes is the fact that they actually replace letters, and even in some cases words. However I do find myself confused with when to use ‘es’ instead of ‘s. Also I don’t quite understand the concept of eliminating letters. Does this mean that a writer can eliminate any amount of letters and replace them with an apostrophe as long as they can justify it?
Learning about apostrophes added whole new concepts to my grammatical understanding. I realized that apostrophes were used for contractions, such as in ‘it’s’ to replace ‘it is.’ I also knew that apostrophes were used to express possession as shown in the phrase ‘Charlie’s camel.’ These are the kind of uses that I thought apostrophes served. I had never though much about how they accomplished the things they did, or how I knew where to place them besides a gut feeling. In class I found that my gut feeling can be right sometimes, and wrong at other times. I now know how to spot a misuse of an apostrophe, at least when used in possession or conjunctions. Another thing I learned about apostrophes is the fact that they actually replace letters, and even in some cases words. However I do find myself confused with when to use ‘es’ instead of ‘s. Also I don’t quite understand the concept of eliminating letters. Does this mean that a writer can eliminate any amount of letters and replace them with an apostrophe as long as they can justify it?
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Self-Assessment Blog
Writing is a fundamental piece of English. As a college English major I have to write many essays and responses. Being able to understand the material being analyzed is key; however articulation and grammar in the analysis is even more important. Understanding the material and being able to put your examination of material into words and essays creates an excellent writer. Personally I have a few problems in my grammar and mechanics when writing essays.
The first problem usually begins when I try to write a rushed essay. My grammar and ideas become sloppy. When ideas in an essay become unorganized it affects the grammatical portion of the paper. A sloppy idea causes the grammar and sentence structures to suffer. When I write a procrastinated paper I often find that my sentences do not help the main idea and often do not flow. This confuses the paper because each sentence seems to be written on its own without any relevance to the topic of the paper. Usually I can find such mistakes after I proof read my paper, but I think it would be nice not to make such errors in the first place.
Another mistake I tend to make in writing papers is word choice. For the most part I do not have much of a problem figuring out which words and tenses to use in my sentences. The words ‘choose’ and ‘chose’ however always confuse me. I can’t seem to grasp the difference and meanings between ‘choose’ and ‘chose.’ I find myself mixing these two words up constantly in my papers, or conversations.
Continuing on with problems I have as a writer I come to the conclusion that grammar confuses me. More often that not I follow my gut instinct and find that it is more or less correct. Although I must confess I have never yet used a colon in any essay I have ever written. I know that they are used for listing things, but other than that I try to steer clear of them. Also since looking at grammar at a sentence level I find that I may have been using semi-colons wrong for my entire college career. I also use the word ‘however’ extensively and don’t exactly know how to punctuate it properly with comma’s.
Essentially I steer clear of colons, am confused about semi-colons and comma’s around ‘however,’ and always mistake ‘choose’ for chose.’ These are just a few grammatical errors that I hope English 326 will enable me to fix. I hope to eventually feel confident in using colons, semi-colons, and comma’s in any essay that I might write. I would also like to be able to keep my sentence level structures to the key point, while using, properly, ‘choose’ or ‘chose.’ After this semester I would like to see my improvement in understanding grammar and sentence level structures.
The first problem usually begins when I try to write a rushed essay. My grammar and ideas become sloppy. When ideas in an essay become unorganized it affects the grammatical portion of the paper. A sloppy idea causes the grammar and sentence structures to suffer. When I write a procrastinated paper I often find that my sentences do not help the main idea and often do not flow. This confuses the paper because each sentence seems to be written on its own without any relevance to the topic of the paper. Usually I can find such mistakes after I proof read my paper, but I think it would be nice not to make such errors in the first place.
Another mistake I tend to make in writing papers is word choice. For the most part I do not have much of a problem figuring out which words and tenses to use in my sentences. The words ‘choose’ and ‘chose’ however always confuse me. I can’t seem to grasp the difference and meanings between ‘choose’ and ‘chose.’ I find myself mixing these two words up constantly in my papers, or conversations.
Continuing on with problems I have as a writer I come to the conclusion that grammar confuses me. More often that not I follow my gut instinct and find that it is more or less correct. Although I must confess I have never yet used a colon in any essay I have ever written. I know that they are used for listing things, but other than that I try to steer clear of them. Also since looking at grammar at a sentence level I find that I may have been using semi-colons wrong for my entire college career. I also use the word ‘however’ extensively and don’t exactly know how to punctuate it properly with comma’s.
Essentially I steer clear of colons, am confused about semi-colons and comma’s around ‘however,’ and always mistake ‘choose’ for chose.’ These are just a few grammatical errors that I hope English 326 will enable me to fix. I hope to eventually feel confident in using colons, semi-colons, and comma’s in any essay that I might write. I would also like to be able to keep my sentence level structures to the key point, while using, properly, ‘choose’ or ‘chose.’ After this semester I would like to see my improvement in understanding grammar and sentence level structures.
Monday, January 11, 2010
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