Sunday, November 15, 2015

Prompt Writing Tips - Part II

These tips are repeats from the power point we used in class last month. Many of you have adapted your writing to complete the following items properly: appropriate apostrophe usage, appropriate punctuation with quoted evidence, and appropriate parenthetical citations. If you are still making these errors, you need to study the rules and links provided to improve your writing. The above items are complete distractions from your content. Once again, if you are struggling with these rules of writing, you need to ask, e-mail, or set up a tutoring session.

1. Apostrophes are for possessive nouns and contractions. Apostrophes are not used in verbs ("he see's") or ordinary plural nouns (the two bird's). If you do not use an apostrophe with a possessive wording (the nightingales vs. the nightingale's), you have created audience confusion. AP readers do not want to be confused or have to reread a sentence for clarity.  http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp
2. As you are transitioning words and phrases into your writing (in place of full sentences of dialogue), you still need to follow punctuation rules and not randomly add commas prior and/or following quoted material. "Shelly illustrates his bird to be a," blithe spirit," that has come down from Heaven." Imagine that sentence without the quoted evidence - would you put commas there? No, you would not. As with all rules, look at the individual sentence to figure out if you need a comma or not.  https://www.hamilton.edu/style/punctuation-of-quotations
3. Citations are at the end of the sentence -- even if you the quoted material is at the beginning or middle of your sentence. Read this OWL example and check out the very end to see how you should incorporate multiple citations from multiple authors at the end of the sentence.  https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/

Remember, the AP readers want clarity and not confusion. Lack of apostrophes, random punctuation, and improper citations distract from what you want the reader to notice: your incredible analysis, mature voice, and original presentation of ideas.

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