This blog addresses problems in grammar, research, and style that I have frequently encountered in my students' and my own writing. I aim to explain these problems and provide resources for others who may encounter similar difficulties.
Epistrophe is a rhetorical and poetic effect where a word or phrase is repeated at the end of
successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or lines. Epistrophe can occur in prose or in verse. 1 Corinthians has a rather well-known example:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I away childish things. (1 Cor. 13:11)
The result is an emphasis on "(as) a child," which will then juxtapose sharply with "as a man."
Epistrophe occurs frequently in verse, as here three different times in Act 2, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's Richard III:
Children: Oh for our father, for our dear lord Clarence!
Duch. of York:Alas for both, both mine, Edward and Clarence!
Q. Eliz.:What stay had I but Edward? and he's gone.
Children: What stay had we but Clarence? and he's gone.
Duch. of York: What stays had I but they? and they are gone.
Q. Eliz.:Was never widow had so dear a loss!
Children: Were never orphans had so dear a loss!(2.2.72-78)
In this stichomythia, these line ends seem like lamenting refrains for the evil that Richard has visited upon these characters.
When should you spell numbers and when should you use
numerals? The answer depends on the
style guide that you use.
The Chicago Manual of Style calls for numbers between
one and one hundred to be spelled:
In nontechnical contexts, the following are spelled out:
whole numbers from one through one hundred, round numbers, and any number
beginning a sentence.For other numbers,
numerals are used. (9.3)
The MLA Handbook states that in pieces of writing
that infrequently use numbers (i.e. the Humanities), numbers that are either
one or two words should be spelled and numbers of three or more words should be
in numerals:
One, thirty-six, ninety-nine, one hundred, fifteen
hundred, two thousand, three million, but 2½, 101, 137, 1,275. (3.5.2)
In more scientifically based papers, MLA requires writers to
represent any number followed by a technical unit of measurement as a numeral:
“16 amperes, 5 millimeters” (3.5.2).
The general rule for APA is to use words for numbers zero to
ten, but numerals for numbers ten or greater: 11, 200, 5000 (4.30).
Works Cited
The Chicago Manual of Style.
15th ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003.
MLA
Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th ed.New
York: MLA, 2009.
Publication
Manual of the American Psychological Association. 6th ed.Washington,
DC: American Psychological
Association, 2009.
Interjections are small words or phrases that we use to convey emotion (e.g. "wow," "hey," "oh my," etc.). We usually punctuate them with a comma or an exclamation point:
Hey, get off of my foot.
Ouch, that hurt.
Crosby sure can skate, eh? Struth! I can't believe Liam married Bianca.
As you will note from the previous examples, they can be quite regional. (Note: "struth" is often used like an interjection but is a noun, "god's truth.")
There are two rather unique aspects of interjections:
First, when they are punctuated with with an exclamation point (an intonation mark often used for complete sentences), they can stand by themselves. That is, they do not need a verb.
Second, they are not grammatically related to other parts of a sentence. They do not need to agree in number, time, or person.
Articles are used to introduce nouns. There are three articles:
1) indefinite articles ("a" and "an"). We use these when:
a) the noun is not specific or we are mentioning the noun for the first time:
- e.g. "A woman is walking down the street." (I do not know who she is, and I am mentioning her for the first time)
- e.g. "I put anapple on the table." (It could be any apple, and I am mentioning this specific apple for the first time.)
b) the non-specific noun is singular and countable:
- e.g. "Agiraffe, anemu, and ahorse are in my front yard." (We can easily count each one of these animals, and I am mentioning for the first time that they are in my yard.)
2) definite article ("the"). We use these when:
a) the noun is specific:
- e.g. "Thehouse next to my house is red." (We know specifically the house about which we are talking.)
b) we have previously mentioned the noun:
- e.g. "Thegiraffe, theemu, and thehorse are still in my front yard." (I mentioned the giraffe, the emu, and the horse in example 1b; you have already heard about them.)
3) zero articles (i.e. we do not use "a," "an," or "the" and we make non-count nouns plural). We use these when:
Adjectives describe nouns. They help us identify or quantify an noun. As we can see in this section from Jack
Kerouac's On the Road, adjectives generally appear before the noun that they describe, but they can also appear after the noun, particularly with forms of the verb to be:
Her
hair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes were great big bluethings with
timidities inside. I wished I was on her
bus. A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who
was going the opposite direction in this too-bigworld.
Possessive adjectives (my, your, his, her, its, our, their) describe to whom an item belongs. If we look at that passage again, we can see that "her" describes "hair," the second "her" describes "eyes," the third "her" describes "bus," and "my" describes "heart":
Herhair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes were great big blue things with
timidities inside. I wished I was on herbus. A pain stabbed myheart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who
was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
Demonstrative adjectives (this, that, these, those) specify which object and how far away that object is. Again, if we look back to the Kerouac passage, we can see that "this" tells us which "world":
Her
hair was long and lustrous black; and her eyes were great big blue things with
timidities inside. I wished I was on her
bus. A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who
was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
As always, Schoolhouse Rock has a good video for adjectives:
Nouns are people (Wayne Gretzky, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Lawren Harris, the woman), places (Northlands Colosseum, Ottawa, Algonquin Park, the school), or things (a hockey puck, legislation, paint brushes, a desk).
Nouns can be concrete or abstract. Concrete nouns are available to the senses; we can touch, taste, see, smell, or hear them such as apples, sugar, a book, or the ocean. Abstract nouns are not available to the senses; they are ideas or concepts such as love, frustration, psychology, or happiness.
There are also proper nouns. Proper nouns are the name of an person, place, or thing and always begin with a capital letter: Anna, Canada, or Otago University.
Nouns sometimes can be very easy to identify in a sentence by their articles; nouns often follow "a," "an," (indefinite articles) or "the" (definite article). If you look at the following sentence, you can see that each word that follows a definite or indefinite article is a noun:
Thewoman walked to thestore and bought afreshcarrot and some oranges.
You can see that there are two exceptions here. First, though "fresh" follows "a," it is not the noun; rather, it describes the noun, "carrot." Sometimes there may be a describing word (an adjective) between the definite or indefinite article and the noun.
Second, you can also see that there is another noun ("oranges") that is not preceded by a definite or indefinite article. When nouns are plural (i.e. there is more than one of them--here "some oranges"), they do not follow "a," "an," or "the." Nouns can follow other words like possessive adjectives (myjacket, yourhat, herpants, or its colour) or another noun indicating possession (Michael'sfriend or the elephant'strunk).
