by Donna | Oct 24, 2017
We had an interesting conversation in my high school creative writing class this week. One of the students started a sentence with and, and, of course, the more grammarly types thought that he should not.
Being the kind of teacher who does not like to let any potential lesson pass, I delved in. That is what I would like to “teach” here today–but first let’s go back to those earlier lessons on compound sentences and comma use–and, of course, what a coordinating conjunction is to begin with.
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by Donna | Oct 20, 2017
The semicolon gets a bad rap. Either people despise it—saying that it is not needed in writing at all. (George Orwell was once quoted as saying “I had decided about this time that the semicolon is an unnecessary stop and that I would write my next book without one.”) OR….possibly even worse, people use it incorrectly over and over and over and over and over (you get the idea!). The worst misuse (in my humble opinion) is when people use it as a comma—joining two parts of a sentence, rather than two complete sentence. Just random semicolon insertion here and there—whenever they believe that one of the sentence parts is too lengthy to use a comma there. (Sigh…)
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by Donna | May 3, 2017
By Zac Kieser and Donna Reish
Welcome to another Punctuation Puzzle! Yep… a puzzle that you solve by putting int he correct punctuation and words/usage fixes– along with explanations and answers about each error! Perfect for students and teachers alike!
Today’s Puzzle is about Compound Sentences… and it uses an interesting sentence from one of our Write-for-a-Month/Write On books.
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