Lower Order Concerns
It is a valuable, useful punctuation that separates structural elements of sentences into manageable segments. Yet, it is commonly misused.
What is a comma?
The idea flow of a paper.
What is organization?
It contains a subject, a verb, and perhaps an object.
What is a sentence?
When a sentence is phrased so that the subject comes before the action, creating a direct correlation between them.
Example: The teacher encouraged the students.
What is active voice?
Purdue offers many majors in engineering. Such as electrical, chemical, and industrial engineering.
Purdue offers many majors in engineering, such as electrical, chemical, and industrial engineering.
A collection of related sentences dealing with a single topic.
What is a paragraph?
The readers or consumers of the paper.
What is the audience?
A group of words that contains both a subject and a verb that does not express a complete thought.
What is a dependent clause?
Choice of words used in the right situation to set the scene or mood in writing.
What is diction?
To improve his results, the experiment was done again.
He improved his results by doing the experiment again.
A sentence that is used to move from one paragraph to another by highlighting the connections between two paragraphs.
What is a transition?
A paper has good ___ when enough details, examples, and specifics are provided to clarify the idea.
What is development?
Two independent clauses combined with a semicolon or coordinating conjunction (and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet).
What is a compound sentence?
The personality expressed through writing.
What is voice?
Make Active: The brakes were slammed on by her as the car sped downhill.
She slammed on the brakes as the car sped downhill.
Fixing errors in a way that does not improve one's skill set.
What is correcting?
A statement that offers an explanation or summary of the paper.
What is a thesis statement?
Example: I didn't know which job I wanted I was too confused to decide.
What is a run-on sentence?
It allows for genuine human connection and helps inform the audience's attitudes and decisions.
What is pathos?
Make Active: A policy of whitewashing and cover-up has been pursued by the CIA director and his close advisors.
The CIA director and his close advisors have pursued a policy of whitewashing and cover-up.
To focus on the lower order concerns.
What is editing?
The voice/manner/attitude that the author uses when writing.
What is mode?
It can be removed without changing the meaning of the sentence or making it ungrammatical.
What is a non-essential clause?
Any communication used to modify the perspectives of others.
What is rhetoric?
Identify the types of clauses in this complex sentence: Doctors are concerned about the rising death rate from asthma because it is a common treatable illness.
Independent clause: Doctors are concerned about the rising death rate from asthma
Dependent marker/phrase: because
Dependent clause: it is a common treatable illness