ENGL000 Study Guide

Unit 4: Using Sentence-Level Skills to Proofread and Polish a Piece of Writing

4a. Describe how sentence skills fit into the writing process

  • Why are sentence-level skills the last step of the writing process?
  • What is the key to learning all the rules regarding word choice, grammar, punctuation, and spelling and ensuring that you follow them in your writing?

Effective writing should be error-free, use good word choices, and use correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling. That said, please think of sentence skills as the final step in the writing process – if it helps, think of them as a kind of polish you put on your writing. If you worry about sentence-level issues in the planning and drafting phases of writing, you will curtail your creativity. Worry about these issues only after you ensured that you have good topic sentences, that your ideas stay on topic, that you have clear main ideas and plenty of specific supporting examples, details, and explanations, and that you put ideas in a logical order and provide connections and transitions that show relationships between ideas. While there are a lot of sentence-level skills and rules to learn, the more you practice using them in your writing and looking for how they are used in what you read, the easier they will become.

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4b. Identify the structure of a complete sentence

  • What are the three things a sentence must have to be complete?
  • What kind of word indicates that the noun/s following it cannot be the subject?
  • What are the two types of verbs?
  • What are two types of verbs that do not function as verbs?

A sentence must have a subject, a verb, and a complete thought to be complete. Subjects are nouns (people, places, things, or ideas) that are "doing" verbs, but remember that not all nouns are subjects. When there is more than one noun in a sentence (which is often the case), the easiest way to find the subject/s is to ask who or what is doing something (the verb). You can also rule out nouns that are not the subject by finding nouns that are part of a prepositional phrase. A preposition is a word that shows a relationship between nouns (such as "from", "in", and "with"). Also, keep in mind that specific nouns called pronouns (such as "I", "he", "she", "it", and "they") can be subjects. Lastly, many sentences contain more than one subject.

Verbs are words that indicate an action or being. There are two types of verbs: verbs of action and verbs of being. Verbs of action are a bit more obvious and include words like "run", "study", "eat", and "hold". Verbs of being (sometimes called "linking verbs") are a little more difficult to identify because they don't imply any action. Verbs of being include "is", "was", "were", "are", "am", and "be". You can rule out two verb forms when looking for verbs in a sentence: verbs that end in "-ing" and verbs with "to" in front of them. Also, like subjects, a sentence can contain more than one verb. Lastly, there are a lot of words in the English language that can act as a noun or a verb, so it is important to identify how a word is being used.

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4c. Identify and correct fragments

  • What is the definition of a sentence fragment?
  • What are "red flags" that indicate that you might be looking at a fragment?
  • Once you have found a fragment, what are the two ways you might go about fixing it?

A fragment is an incomplete sentence that is missing one of the three components required of a complete sentence (subject, verb, and complete thought). Sentences that open with a dependent word (a word that shows a relationship between different parts of a sentence), such as "although", "because", or "when", must be looked at closely to make sure they are not fragments. Dependent words create what are called "dependent clauses" (clause simply means "word group"), which must be followed by a second clause that completes the thought. Other red flags that might indicate that a sentence is a fragment are sentences that open with "such as", "including", "especially", or "for example" and sentences that contain (particularly toward the beginning of the sentence) verbs that end in "ing" and verbs that have "to" in front of them. 

Once you have found a fragment, there are two ways to correct it. The first method is to attach the sentence to the sentence that comes before the fragment or the sentence that follows the fragment. This is the easiest method since fragments often happen when you accidentally place a period and capital letter where you didn't mean to. Read the fragment as part of the sentence before and the sentence after it to determine which way sounds best. Also, if you use this method, you do not need a comma if you attach the fragment to the sentence before it; however, if you attach it to the sentence after it, you do need a comma. The second method to fix a fragment is to plug in what is missing. This method will likely involve overhauling the sentence to ensure it has these three key parts a sentence needs to be complete.

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4d. Identify and correct run-ons

  • What is the definition of a run-on or a comma splice?
  • What are the four ways you can fix a run-on or comma splice once you find one?

A run-on is a sentence that contains two or more independent word groups (clauses) without the proper punctuation or connective language. A comma splice is a type of run-on in which a comma is placed between the independent word groups, but since a comma is not a strong enough punctuation to connect independent clauses, a comma splice is still a run-on (and an error). You can often identify a run-on or comma splice by reading the sentence aloud and listening for places where there seems to be a hard pause or where a new idea starts. 

The four ways to fix a run-on or comma splice are:

  1. use a period and a capital letter;
  2. use a semicolon (;);
  3. use coordination (a comma and a joining word such as for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so); or
  4. use subordination (add a dependent word to make one group of words need the other group to be complete)

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4e. Apply correct punctuation for an effective sentence

  • Why is punctuation important?
  • What are the seven comma rules?
  • How are semicolons, colons, and dashes used?
  • How are apostrophes used?

The rules for punctuation use establish a common set of expectations between writers and readers. Punctuation helps convey what the author intended to say. As a writer, you want to use punctuation appropriately to express your ideas as clearly as possible. 

There are seven rules about commas:

  1. put a comma before "and", "but", "for", "or", "nor", "yet", and "so" when they connect two independent clauses;
  2. put a comma between items in a series;
  3. put a comma after an introductory word, phrase, or dependent clause that doesn't flow smoothly into the sentence or before an afterthought added at the end;
  4. put commas around the name of a person being spoken to;
  5. put commas around interrupters – expressions that interrupt the flow of the sentence;
  6. put commas around defining or amplifying material – material that, if left out, will not affect the sense or main idea of the sentence; and
  7. use a comma between speech in quotation marks and the rest of the sentence.

Semicolons (;) are used to separate items in a list when some of those items already contain commas. They are also used to join two sentences (and can be used to correct a run-on sentence). Colons (:) are used to announce, introduce, or direct attention to a list, a noun or noun phrase, a quotation, or an example/explanation. Dashes are used to set off material for emphasis, indicate sentence introductions or conclusions, mark "bonus phrases", or break up dialogue.

Apostrophes (') have two uses: to show possessive form (such as "the dog's toy") or to form a contraction ("I'm" instead of "I am").

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4f. Evaluate a sentence for correct word use

  • What makes confused words tricky?
  • What are the two most common types of confused words?

Confused words are words that people commonly mix up and use incorrectly. They are tricky because spell check will not catch them. You have to train your eyes to see them so you can check them when you proofread the final draft of a piece of writing. There are two types of confused words. Homonyms are words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings (such as "their", "there", and "they're"). The second type of confused words are words that may appear or sound very different but which have similar meanings that are easily confused (such as "advice" and "advise" or "less" and "fewer").

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4g. Evaluate a sentence for consistency (parallelism, tense, and point of view)

  • Why is consistency important?
  • What does it mean to use parallel sentence construction?
  • What does it mean to be consistent with verb tense?
  • What does it mean to be consistent with your point of view?

To make the job of your readers easy, it is important to be consistent in your writing. Parallel sentence construction (also called "parallelism") means that words or phrases in a pair or series should be structured similarly. Parallelism problems will likely sound awkward when you read them aloud, and this can be a great way to catch this error in your writing. For example, in the sentence "I resolved to lose weight, to study more, and watching less TV", it is clear that the last item, "watching less TV", is different from the other two items in the series ("to lose…" or "to study…") and should be changed to match ("to watch…").

In addition to parallelism, you must be consistent with verb tense. Verb tense refers to when a verb is taking place, and you must use verbs that are consistent with when something happened. If you are describing something that happened in the past, you need to be sure to use all past tense verbs. 

Lastly, you need to be consistent with the point of view (as expressed through the pronouns used). Pronouns are non-specific nouns that refer to specific nouns and include words like "she", "you", "him", "they", "I", and "us" (to give a few examples). Pronouns are used to avoid repetition. For example, instead of saying "The dog chased the dog's toy", the repetition of the word "dog" can be avoided by using the pronoun "she" to refer to the dog.

There are basically three general points of view: first person, second person, and third person. First person is from the author's point of view, using pronouns like "I" and "me". Second person is a point of view that directly addresses the audience with pronouns like "you" (and is not typically used in academic or professional writing). Third person is sometimes called the objective point of view and is expressed with pronouns like "he" or "them".

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4h. Use diction to avoid awkward wording and create effective sentences

  • What does it mean to use effective diction, and why is it important?
  • What are some problems with wordiness, repetition, and non-active wording?

Diction means "word choice" and breaks down into many errors to avoid and concepts to consider in your writing. Writing that utilizes good word choices and avoids some of the diction problems discussed in this unit will be vivid and concise and will make the reader's job easy. 

The first of these issues is slang. Slang is informal language, such as what you might use with family and friends or in text messaging. In those less formal contexts and particularly in speech, there is nothing wrong with slang, but because it is generally specific to time and place, it is best to avoid slang in academic or professional writing. 

Another diction issue is avoiding wordiness and avoiding wordy phrases (such as "due to the fact that"). This does not mean avoiding complex ideas or descriptive language; it means avoiding using more words than are necessary to get across a point. Remember that words have the important job of getting across a message. Words that do not contribute to the meaning of your sentence take up space and make your writing more difficult to read and understand. 

A third diction issue is avoiding repetition. This means avoiding repeated words or phrases in a sentence and avoiding repeated ideas. The latter of these two repetition problems is much more difficult to identify because repeated ideas do not necessarily use the same words but do not add anything to the writing overall.

A final type of diction issue is non-active wording. The English language is very action-driven, so to have strong diction that makes your writing jump off the page, it is important to keep your sentences active. Non-active wording breaks down into a few different problems that should be avoided.

Passive voice means that the subject of a sentence is not doing the verb (such as saying "The ball was chased by the dog" instead of "The dog chased the ball"). Another form of non-active wording that can be problematic is the overuse of verbs of being (words such as "is", "was", "were", "are", "am", and "be"). Instead of saying "There are deer living…", say "Deer live…". The last non-active wording issue is nominalizations. Nominalizations are when verbs are changed into nouns (such as saying "make a payment" instead of just saying "pay"), and they can take away from the vividness or strength of your writing. 

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Unit 4 Vocabulary

This vocabulary list includes terms you will need to know to successfully complete the final exam.

  • clause
  • comma splice
  • coordination
  • dependent word
  • diction
  • fragment
  • homonym
  • nominalization
  • parallel sentence construction (parallelism)
  • passive voice
  • point of view
  • preposition
  • pronoun
  • run-on
  • slang
  • subject
  • subordination
  • verb
  • verbs of being
  • verb tense