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Punctuation & Grammar 1 of 28
Grammar, Punctuation,
& Other Fairy Tales
(The Brothers Grim)
© Steve Whitmore
June 2016
Learning Objectives
By the end of this lecture, you will have completed the following
tasks:
• Reviewed some basic terms in traditional grammar.
• Learned the 7 basic patterns of punctuation needed to
generally master punctuation.
• Recognized that punctuation marks represent cognitive
space.
• Learned about some special cases in punctuation that are
relevant to academia.
• Concluded that English is a very weird language.
Punctuation & Grammar 2 of 28
Some Facts about Grammar
• Grammar is simply a way to describe how words and
phrases relate to each other.
• Traditional grammar is very poor at doing so (Linguistic
grammars are better descriptively, but are incomprehen-
sible to anyone but Linguists).
• Some studies indicate that university students (native
speakers of English) taught grammar become worse at
writing than those not taught.
• EAL/ESL speakers are usually better at grammar than
native speakers.
Punctuation & Grammar 3 of 28
A Recap: Nouns & Pronouns
Nouns: Person, place, or thing
• Things: car, cat, soup
• People: doctor, professor, Mike
• Places: Vancouver, Stanley Park
• Abstractions: honesty, evil, beauty
Pronouns: Substitute for nouns
• he, she, they, it
Punctuation & Grammar 4 of 28
A Recap: Verbs
Verbs: Describes action, state, or an occurrence
• Often called “action” words
• Core part of speech
• Often words become “verbed” with time
• A “trend” is now “to trend” and “trending” (and
becoming a very irritating cliche – see Global News)
Punctuation & Grammar 5 of 28
A Recap: Adjectives
Adjectives: Modifies nouns
• Answers questions such as “How much?”, ”How
many?”, “Which?”
• Different kinds: articles, demonstrative, interrogative,
relative, possessive, indefinite, numerical, and
descriptive
Punctuation & Grammar 6 of 28
A Recap: Adverbs
Adverbs: Modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, word-
groups
• A bit more tricky than adjectives
• Gently, quietly, then, there, fast, careful
Punctuation & Grammar 7 of 28
A Recap: Prepositions & Articles
Prepositions: Link words together, shows relations
• into, over, under, by, around, on, to, of
Articles: Little words that drive people crazy
• Used with nouns
• A/an, the
Punctuation & Grammar 8 of 28
A Recap: Conjunctions
Conjunctions: Words that join other words, phrases, or
clauses together
• Coordinating Conjunctions: and, but, for, nor, or, so,
yet
• Correlative Conjunctions: either…or, both…and, not
only… but also,
• Subordinating Conjunctions: after, although,
because, rather than, whereas
Punctuation & Grammar 9 of 28
The Strange Case of UpIt is easy to understand up meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the
morning, why do we wake up? At a meeting, why does a topic come up? Why do we speak up and why are
the officers up for election and why is it up to the secretary to write up a report? We call up our friends. And
we use it to brighten up a room, polish up the silver; we warm up the leftovers and clean up the kitchen.
We lock up the house and some guys fix up the car.
At other times, the little word has real special meaning. People stir up trouble, line up for tickets, work
up an appetite, and think up excuses. To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed up is special. A drain
must be opened up because it is stopped up. We open up a store in the morning, but we close it up at
night.
We seem to be pretty mixed up about up!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of up, look the word up in the dictionary. In a desk-sized
dictionary, it takes up almost a quarter of the page and can add up to about thirty definitions. If you are up
to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways up is used. It will take up a lot of your time, but if you
don't give up, you may wind up with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding up. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing up. When
it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things up. When it doesn't rain, things dry up.
One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it up, because my time is up, so it is time to shut up! Now it is up to
you what you do with this information.
Up can act as a verb, adverb, adjective, preposition, or part of a compound noun.Punctuation & Grammar 10 of 28
Punctuation & Grammar 11 of 28
Introduction to Punctuation
• Punctuation is used in English to show the relations
between parts of a sentence.
• Court cases have been won and lost on the basis of
the placement of a punctuation mark.
• Not an exact science – some usage is optional.
• Punctuation is boring to learn, but not that difficult if
you follow a few simple rules.
Punctuation & Grammar 12 of 28
Dear John I want a man who knows what love is all
about you are generous kind thoughtful people who are
not like you admit to being useless and inferior you
have ruined me for other men I yearn for you I have no
feelings whatsoever when were apart I can be forever
happy will you let me be yours Gloria
Punctuation – The Ugly
Punctuation & Grammar 13 of 28
Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are
generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you
admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me
for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings
whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy --
will you let me be yours?
Gloria
Punctuation – The Good
Punctuation & Grammar 14 of 28
Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are
generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you.
Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined
me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings
whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy.
Will you let me be?
Yours,
Gloria
Punctuation – The Bad
Punctuation & Grammar 15 of 28
Rules of Thumb for Punctuation
Large Thumb: Punctuating where you pause when
reading the sentence aloud (60-70% accurate).
Small Thumb: Punctuating according to the
grammatical rules (almost 100% accurate).
Medium Thumb: Punctuating according to
structural relationships (about 95% accurate).
Tom Thumb
Punctuation & Grammar 16 of 28
S/V/O = Subject/Verb/Object
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Basic Sentence
Punctuation & Grammar 17 of 28
S/V/O
After sighing loudly, the dog opened an eye and peered at the fox.
Irritated by the fox's obvious arrogance as well as his overt disdain for his much deserved sleep and general peace of mind, the dog slowly got to his feet.
However, the dog was not particularly concerned about the speed or agility of the fox.
Although exceptionally lazy and dreadfully slow, the dog possessed a range of other skills and tricks that the fox could never hope to match.
Persistence, intelligence, and experience -- these were areas where the dog excelled.
Intro
Introductions
Punctuation & Grammar 18 of 28
S/V/O
The dog knew that he could use his motorcycle to catch the fox,
who was limited by the speed and endurance of his muscles.
The dog obviously had another advantage: better technology.
The fox had clearly underestimated the extent of the dog's technical
advantages -- a blunder which might well prove fatal.
EOLD
End of Line Distinctions
Punctuation & Grammar 19 of 28
S or S/V
The dog's motorcycle, which had been modified last week, idled
under a nearby tree.
The ever-observant fox, recognizing his peril, raced toward the
idling bike.
The fox knew the motorcycle (i.e., a Yamaha 1200) possessed a top
speed of 200 mph.
The fox was afraid -- although he would never admit it -- that the
dog would use the bike to catch him.
Insert V/O or O
Insert
Punctuation & Grammar 20 of 28
Punctuation As Cognitive Space
/ = █
- = ██
space = ███
, = ██████
() = ████████████
-- = ██████████████████
; = ████████████████████████
: = ██████████████████████████████
. = ██████████████████████████████
! = ████████████████████████████████████
? = ████████████████████████████████████
¶ = █████████████████████████████████████████
Punctuation & Grammar 21 of 28
S/V/O
The fox was hoping that he could steal the bike and make his
getaway, but the wily dog had outsmarted him when he modified
the bike last week.
Only now did the dog's foresight become apparent: he pulled out
his remote control and turned off the bike.
The fox now realized he had misjudged the dog; however, he still
didn't recognize the full extent of his miscalculation.
The dog pulled out another remote; he pushed a button, and a net
fell from the tree.
S/V/O
Balance
Punctuation & Grammar 22 of 28
S/V or S/V/O
The net helped the dog to trap, embarrass, and marinate the fox.
The fox tried to escape the trap in three ways: by crawling through
the mesh, by tearing apart the cords, and by pulling off the net.
All the fox's attempts were to no avail because the dog had planned
his trap in great detail: he purchased a net with an extremely fine
mesh; he reinforced the net with very strong cords; and he coated
the net with a gooey mixture of honey and oregano.
The dog had the utensils to sauté, braise, and roast the fox using a frypan, a pressure cooker and a dutch oven, and a spit, respectively.
Item Item Item
List/Parallel
Punctuation & Grammar 23 of 28
Quotation
In his recipe book, Fox Gumbo, which was published a year later,
the dog noted that “a fox marinated in honey and oregano is one of
the world's finest gustatory experiences.”
In the same volume, he pointed out that speed and agility are not
the most important things when trying to catch a fox: “All that you
really need is a motorcycle, a remote control, a net, and, of course,
a really stupid fox.”
S/V/O
Short Quotation
Punctuation & Grammar 24 of 28
S/V/O
However, as his memoirs indicate, he later changed his assessment
of fox intelligence:
As I reflect upon my success as the author
of canine cookbooks, there's one point I want
to clarify. Foxes aren't particularly stupid; it's
just that dogs are especially smart!
Quotation
Long Quotation
Punctuation & Grammar 25 of 28
A Couple of Special Cases
e.g., (exempli gratia for example); i.e., (id est that is)
• Generally only used inside parentheses
• Use full term, “For example” or “that is”, at beginnings
of sentences
et al. (et alii and others) multiple authors in references
Hyphens vs. Dashes
• Use -- (double hyphens) or − (n-dash) or ─ (m-dash),
but not - (single hyphen)
• Autocorrect in MS Word can do this for you
Use a single space after the period (not two spaces)
• Two spaces is a holdover from typewriters made
unnecessary by proportionally spaced fonts
• APA is a few decades behind the times
Punctuation & Grammar 26 of 28
A Couple More Special Cases it’s versus its:
• It’s is a contraction (it is), like don’t, can’t, etc.
• Its is a possessive pronoun (like his or hers)
• Never use contractions in formal prose, and you’ll
never get confused because you’ll only use its ;-)
“, which” problem:
• “Environmental groups, which have no respect for
industry, annoy her.” (non-restrictive clause)
• “Environmental groups which have no respect for
industry annoy her.” (restrictive clause)
• Test by substituting that
• MS Word always assumes non-restrictive usage
• Distinction is rapidly disappearing from common usage
Punctuation & Grammar 27 of 28
Say What?
“Long about 2009, when -- make note -- Microsoft is
really supposed to have Windows 7, the Vista rev,
penciled in, its vaunted, if still unreleased, Hyper-V
hypervisor is supposed to cease being an add-on and
get sucked up into Windows Server.”
This sentence was found on the internet; grammatically
correct, it is cognitively incomprehensible:
Introductory phrase start dependent clause inserted phrase
continue dependent clause inserted phrase finish dependent
clause start independent clause inserted phrase finish
independent clause.