Tag: helps

Me, Myself, and I…No, REALLY.

1 Comment
[found on adulted.about.com]

Me and Tim, Tim and I

    • Wrong: Me and Tim are going to a movie tonight.
    • Right: Tim and I are going to a movie tonight.

Why?

    • If you take Tim out of the sentence, “you” are the subject.
    • You are going to a movie. When you’re going to a movie, what do you say?
      • “I am going to a movie.”
      • You wouldn’t say, “Me am going to a movie.”
    • When you add Tim, the sentence construction remains the same.
    • You’re simply adding Tim, and it’s correct to say the other person’s name first.
      • “Tim and I are going to a movie.”
[found on http://adulted.about.com/od/howtos/tp/fivegrammartips.htm]

If It’s Passive—Pass it…

Leave a comment
[found on hamilton.edu]
  • Passive voice produces a sentence in which the subject receives an action.
    • In contrast, active voice produces a sentence in which the subject performs an action.
  • Passive voice often produces unclear, wordy sentences,
    • whereas active voice produces generally clearer, more concise sentences.
  • To change a sentence from passive to active voice, determine who or what performs the action,
    • and use that person or thing as the subject of the sentence.
    • PASSIVE voice:
      • “On April 19, 1775, arms were seized at Concord, precipitating the American Revolution.”
    • ACTIVE voice:
      • “On April 19, 1775, British soldiers seized arms at Concord, precipitating the American Revolution.”
[found on http://www.hamilton.edu/tip#Writing%20for%20Clarity]

Pre – Positional Is Where a Preposition Lives

Leave a comment
[found on grammar.about.com]

“Like adjectives and adverbs, prepositional phrases add meaning to the nouns and verbs in our sentences. There are two prepositional phrases in the following sentence:

The steamy air in the kitchen reeked of stale food.

The first prepositional phrase–in the kitchen–modifies the noun air; the second–of stale food–modifies the verb reeked. The two phrases provide information that helps us understand the sentence.

The Two Parts of a Prepositional Phrase
A prepositional phrase has two basic parts: a prepositionplus a noun or a pronoun that serves as the object of the preposition. A preposition is a word that shows howa noun or a pronoun is related to another word in a sentence. The common prepositions are listed in the table at the bottom of this page.

Building Sentences with Prepositional Phrases
Prepositional phrases often do more than just add minor details to a sentence: they may be needed for a sentence to make sense. Consider the vagueness of this sentence without prepositional phrases:

The workers gather a rich variety and distribute it.

Now see how the sentence comes into focus when we add prepositional phrases:

From many sources, the workers at the Community Food Bank gather a rich variety of surplus and unsalable food and distribute it to soup kitchens, day-care centers, and homes for the elderly.

Notice how these added prepositional phrases give us more information about certain nouns and verbs in the sentence:

      • Which workers?
      • The workers at the Community Food Bank.
      • What did they gather?
      • A rich variety of surplus and unsalable food.
      • Where did they gather the food?
      • From many sources.
      • Who did they distribute it to?
      • To soup kitchens, day-care centers, and homes for the elderly.

Like the other simple modifiers, prepositional phrases are not merely ornaments; they add details that can help us understand a sentence.

PRACTICE: Building with Simple Modifiers
Use adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases to expand the sentence below. Add details that answer the questions in parentheses and make the sentence more interesting and informative.

Jenny stood, raised her shotgun, aimed, and fired.
(Where did Jenny stand? How did she aim? What did she fire at?)

There are, of course, no single correct answers to the questions in parentheses. Sentence-expanding exercises such as this one encourage you to use your imagination to build original sentences.”

Common Prepositions

Screen Shot 2013-06-16 at 6.58.48 PM

[found on: http://grammar.about.com/od/basicsentencegrammar/a/prepphrases.htm]

A dash of Em— A dash of En–

1 Comment
[found on makeuseof.com]
“Stop avoiding dashes in your writing just because you don’t know how to type them outside of word processors. Learn the proper keyboard shortcuts and you can type these essential parts of the English language in basic text editors, browsers and anywhere else you may need them.
 
The en dash (–) is my favorite piece of punctuation–it’s perfect for inserting points, like this one–but I’ve been neglecting it in my writing for a couple of years, for a really dumb reason. What’s my dumb reason? I’ve stopped using Word and Open/Libre Office. I know their shortcut for an em dash–type two dashes between two words and they will transform once you type a space after the second word.
 
I stopped using word processors when I started writing for the Internet, however, because they add a bunch of nonsense code to my writing. But outside programs with their own shortcut, I never got around to learning how to write em or en dashes. This means the text editors and browsers I now do my writing in are dashless wastelands. There are online tools for creating em dashes, and I’ve resorted to Googling “en dash” and copying the resulting punctuation, though
Not anymore. I’m going to stop restructuring sentences out of laziness, and I’m going to help you do so as well. Here’s how to make your favorite punctuation on your favorite operating system. Keep reading!

Create Em and En Dashes On A Mac!

First up: the easy one. Apple’s operating system OS X comes with a couple of keyboard shortcuts that make typing em and en dash a snap.
    • For an en dash (–), use “Option” and “-”.
    • For an em dash (—), use “Option”, “Shift” and “-”.

Create Em and En Dashes on Windows!

Windows users can easily make an em dash if they’re using Word: just type two dashes between two words, as I explained above. Outside of Word, however, the story is different: you need to use four digit alt codes. You’re going to need a keyboard with a number pad for this–the block of numbers to the right of the arrow keys:

Laptops without physical number pads can occasionally use the “Fn” key and some letter keys instead of a number keypad–search your keyboard for blue numbers. Lacking that, you may be out of luck.

    • To create you dash, first put your cursor where you’d like it and hold down the “Alt” button. Now you need to type a four digit code:
      • 0150 for the en dash (–)
      • 0151 for the em dash (—).”
[found on http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/type-em-en-dashes-word-processor]

Active / Passive Voice

Leave a comment
[found on plainlanguage.gov]

What is active/passive voice?

“To know whether you are writing in the active or passive voice, identify the subject of the sentence and decide whether the subject is doing the action or being acted upon.

  • Passive Voice: the subject is the receiver of the action.
    The tax return (subject) was completed (action) before the April 15 deadline by Mr. Doe.
  • Active Voice: the subject does an action to an object.
    Mr. Doe (subject) completed (action) the tax return (object) before the April 15 deadline.

When we write in the passive voice, we add some form of the helping verb “to be” (am, is, are, was, were, being, or been) to an otherwise strong verb that really did not need help.

  • Passive: Additional information (subject) can be obtained (action) by employees from our website.
  • Active: Employees (subject) can obtain (action) additional information (object) from our website.”
[found on http://www.plainlanguage.gov/howto/quickreference/dash/dashactive.cfm]