Run-On Sentences
A run-on sentence is sometimes called a fused sentence. The concept is simple. If your teacher marks fused sentence or run-on on your paper, it’s because you have put two complete thoughts or independent...
Category: Level 3 pages
Comma Splice
Comma splices live in the same neighborhood as run-on sentences. Often, when a writer attempts to break up a run-on sentence using only a comma, they end up creating a comma splice. A comma...
Pronoun Agreement
Pronoun agreement can be trickier than it might seem on the surface. The rule is that we must make sure our pronouns agree in number and gender with the nouns they are replacing. For...
Hyphens
Hyphens can be a little tricky, but they are important. For example, there is a world of difference between a dirty-movie theater and a dirty movie theater. You probably wouldn’t want to go to...
Sentence Fragment
Sentence fragments are very common and easy errors to make. Many of us write with our casual speaking voice in our head, and when we speak we often do not complete every thought to...
Adjectives
An adjective modifies (describes / distinguishes) nouns and pronouns. In other words, adjectives change nouns or pronouns in some way. So movie is a noun, and a scary movie has been changed by the...
Adverbs
Adverbs are words that modify or describe a verb, adjective, or another adverb. Just as an adjective changes a noun, an adverb changes a verb, adjective, or adverb. Adverbs are easily identified because they...
Prepositions
Perhaps you had to memorize every preposition (there are well over 100) when you were in junior high school, but have you ever thought about the importance of these “little” words? Prepositions are little...
Articles
Well, if you thought prepositions were “little” words, wait until we consider the part of speech called articles. Articles are similar to adjectives in that they modify nouns, but unlike adjectives, they don’t really...
Conjunctions
If words are the building blocks for our writing, then good transitions are the cement that holds them together. To make these transitions in our writing we need to turn to conjunctions. A conjunction is...
