Music swells Siblings squabble Owls hoot I am Grammar is And just like that two words can become a SENTENCE The information in a short sentence can be expanded by adding more words that give vivid descriptions or specific reactions Where should those words be placed How does a writer know what PUNCTUATION to use What does all of that mean anyway Words fall into place more easily when one has an understanding of grammar a system of rules that gives writers the foun dation for producing acceptable formal expression It is that acceptable form that appropriate grammar which helps readers comprehend what has been written The whole point of understanding grammar is to gain the knowledge of how to write correctly and then apply it to your work Writers write readers read Believe it or not correct usage may keep writers from making embarrassing mistakes Learning the lessons of acceptable usage will not only improve your writing but it will also lead you to a better understanding of the structure behind it a system known as STANDARD WRITTEN ENGLISH SWE SWE has been agreed upon by most publishers colleges and standardized test 4
developers to be the most correct and the most understandable form of written English No matter what part of North America one may call home we all can take comfort in having a common system of written grammar and expression thanks to SWE Regardless of how a person’s speech sounds despite regional or social dif ferences in dialect the rules are the same While dialect makes a native of Boston Massachusetts’s speech sound different from that of a native of Dallas Texas their formal written English should look the same Grammar provides the backbone of language and learning it is a significant part of acquir ing any language from French and Span ish to Mandarin and Hindi Because correct expression is fundamental to communication classes in grammar and composition have been taught since the Middle Ages That means that for the past 500 to 1,500 years teachers have been trying to impress upon their students the importance of correct grammatical expression 5
HANGINGON DEAR LIFE R O F D espite our teachers best efforts some of us still get confused about grammar when we try to move from lists of rules to actual writing We may understand that adjectives MODIFY nouns and pronouns we can write examples that answer which how many and what kind of people places and things We can put these words into phrases and clauses and recognize them even when they look like verbs Then we try to write sentences and sometimes we end up with an unfortunate result such as this Flitting from flower to flower 6 the football player watched the bee The MAIN CLAUSE has a subject football player and a verb watched that’s fine Flit ting from flower to flower is an ing adjective phrase and is supposed to be describing a noun or pronoun which leads us to football player That’s a problem This common mis take is called a dangling participle because flitting is a participle a word formed from a verb that acts as an adjective and it has been left hanging with no logical noun or pronoun to modify We need to make some changes The football player clearly is not flitting from flower to flower so what is
