Quirks of English

--for those who speak English as their second language or who just want to improve their writing

(Text-only version of Quirks of English)

Rules for Writers

1. It's is a contraction for it is. Contractions are combinations of two words that are formed by leaving out certain letters. The missing letters are indicated by an apostrophe. Note: Never use an apostrophe with possessive pronouns (its, hers, his, theirs, yours, ours, whose). By definition, these words are already possessive.
2. Do not use a colon immediately after a verb.
3. Too many commas make writing choppy; too few create misunderstanding.
4. Dashes are attention-getters that can be effective when used judiciously. Reserve the dash for those instances when you want a sharper break in continuity than commas would provide or a more dramatic aside than you would achieve with parentheses.
5. Use a hyphen with certain prefixes and suffixes
   • To avoid doubling a vowel or tripling a consonant (e.g. semi-independent, shell-like)
     
   • If the root word begins with a capital letter (e.g., un-American, pre-Christmas)
     
   • Usually, with the prefixes all-, self-, ex-, and vice- (e.g., all-knowing, ex-husband)
     
   • To avoid awkward pronunciations or ambiguity (e.g., re-read, un-ionized).
6. The semicolon provides a stronger break than a comma, a weaker break than a period.
7. A run-on sentence continues on and on and seems to never end. Frequently, there is nothing grammatically wrong with a rambling sentence; it is simply too long, and it interferes with the reader's comprehension. Note the improvement in the second example given here.
   Run-on: At a recent forum, which was held to set the direction for future research, this probe was discussed and Drs. Smith (Stanford) and Jones (CWRU), the Conference Co-chairs, praised the work and indicated that this probe has advanced the technique to a new dimension--sentiments which were echoed by several conference participants.

   Better: The probe was discussed at a recent forum held to set the direction for future research. Conference Co-chairs Drs. Smith (Stanford) and Jones (CWRU) praised the work and indicated that this probe has advanced the technique to a new dimension. Their sentiments were echoed by several conference participants.

8. Use capitalization as a flexible instrument of style to show emphasis or to indicate proper nouns. In scientific and technical writing, capitalization is often more a matter of style than one of rules.
9. Contractions are common in conversations and in informal writing. Most technical and scientific work, however, calls for greater formality.
10. Use a dictionary or the NASA Thesaurus to check your spelling. Improve your spelling with our tips and mnemonics .
11. When parts of a sentence agree, there is a logical relationship between them. The most important kind of agreement is between the subject and the verb. The verb must agree with the subject in both number and person. That is, if the subject is singular, the verb must be singular; if the subject is plural, the verb must be plural. If the subject is in the third person, (he, she, it, one, they), the verb must also be in the third person.First identify the subject of the sentence.
    Watch out for intervening phrases, whole phrases and clauses that function as subjects, and inverted order (verb first, noun second).Then, determine the number.
    Watch out for compound subjects; collective nouns; indefinite pronouns; either . . . or / neither . . . nor constructions ; expressions of time, money, and quantity; and fractions.
12. Subjects and pronouns also should agree in number. A pronoun takes the place of a noun or a group of words that function as a noun. The antecedent--the word or words that the pronoun replaces--is usually used before the pronoun in the sentence or paragraph. If the antecedent is plural, the pronoun must be plural; if the antecedent if singular, the pronoun must also be singular. For example:
    Bob and Harry are writing their final reports.
    Bob is writing his final report.
13. Keep items in a list similar in content and form. This practice is known as parallelism .
14. Modifiers must have a noun to modify. A modifier " dangles " when the noun it modifies is missing or is misplaced in the sentence. This often results in an ambiguous, even humorous sentence.For example:
    At the age of five, his father died.
    [If the father died when he was five, he couldn't have been a father.]

    In thumbing through the journal, my eyes automatically noticed the article on high temperature materials.
    [Eyes cannot thumb through magazines.]

15. Don't let wordiness detract from the ideas that your writing is intended to convey. Instead, put your writing on our low-fat diet .For example, which of the following would you rather read?
    Our proposal follows the sequential itemization of points occurring elsewhere in your Request for Proposal, wherever possible, to facilitate your review.

    We have followed your outline.

16. Sentence A is in the active voice, and sentences B and C are in the passive voice:
    (A) Pressures and cold-wall heating rates are shown in figures 2 and 3.
    (B) Figures 2 and 3 show pressures and cold-wall heating rates.
    (C) See figures 2 and 3 for pressures and cold-wall heating rates.

    In the active voice, the subject acts instead of being acted upon. Although active voice is preferred, there are some situations when the passive voice is appropriate. These occur when

    • The actor is unimportant, not known, or not to be mentioned.
      
    • The receiver of the action needs to be emphasized.
      
    • The sentence is abrupt in active voice.
      
    • Variety is needed in an active voice passage.
      
    • A weak imperative is needed (e.g., The figures should be corrected quickly.)
17. A verb is regular when its past tense and past participle are formed by adding -ed or-d to the base form (e.g., love, loved, loved). A verb is irregular when it does not follow the -ed or -d pattern. You probably know most irregular verb forms intuitively, but you can find a list of common irregular verbs in almost any English handbook (e.g., slept, caught, ran, took, flew, bought, saw, did, was).
18. Proofread carefully. Spellcheckers will not catch all mistakes .

Test yourself.

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Last updated: 1/20/2009