– Learn to recognize and avoid common sentence-level problems
– Successfully identify and revise sentence-level problems in exercises
– Demonstrate competence in sentence quizzes
In addition to rules pertaining to punctuation, a few rules govern the proper construction of sentences. In this next section, we’ll review rules about writing complete sentences, avoiding dangling modifiers, ensuring that subjects and verbs agree, and maintaining parallelism in sentences. These rules are important mainly for clarity, but they can also affect our credibility with the reader.
Readers often think that if you use improper grammar and punctuation, you may be deficient in other areas of expertise and may not be a good source of information generally. We tend to judge the way a person speaks and writes as a reflection of their education, knowledge, and even their intelligence. Rightly or not, readers associate bad grammar with mediocre intelligence and poor education.
If we write:
Irregardless of the risks, we must not loose site of our principals.
instead of:
Regardless of the risks, we must not lose sight of our principles.
readers will likely be suspicious of our knowledge in all areas.
This means correct grammar, word usage, and punctuation are extremely important because they not only facilitate comprehension, but also enhance readers’ trust in what is written.
Although most decisions about the construction of sentences are stylistic choices, there are basic rules about sentences we must always observe. The five areas of sentence construction we will review in this section are:
– Fragments
– Run-on sentences
– Subject-verb agreement
– Dangling modifiers
– Parallel constructions.