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a Civil War battlefield on a rainy day, the speech composed by Abraham Lincoln (some say on the back of an envelope) is a masterpiece of style. Analyze its sentence structure, such as its use of parallelism, antithesis, and other kinds of repetition. Which features of Lincoln’s style seem most important in creating the overall effect of the piece? Or do this with any popular journalist whom you read regularly and who you think has an especially effective style. Or look for another inspirational speech and see if such occasional writing has anything in common. (You can download and print the Gettysburg Address from many sites on the web.)

6. Do a Full-fledged Stylistic Revision of a Paper. The best choice might well be an essay you already have revised, resubmitted, and had returned, because in that case, you will be less likely to get distracted by conceptual revision and so can concentrate on stylistic issues. As you revise, try to accomplish each of the following:

a. Sharpen the diction.

b. Blend concrete and abstract diction.

c. Experiment with the order of and relation among subordinate and coordinate clauses.

d. Choose more knowingly between active and passive voice.

e. Cut the fat, especially by eliminating unnecessary “to be” constructions.

f. Vary sentence length and shape.

g. Use parallelism.

h. Experiment with periodic and cumulative sentences.

i. Fine-tune the tone.

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Chapter 19

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Revising for Correctness: Grammar and Punctuation

THIS CHAPTER ADDRESSES THE ISSUE of grammatical correctness and offers ways of recognizing and fixing (or avoiding) the most important errors. Unlike editing for style, which involves you in making choices between more and less effective ways of phrasing, editing for correctness locates you in the domain of right or wrong. As you will see, there are usually a number of ways to correct an error, so you are still concerned with making choices, but leaving the error uncorrected is not a viable option.

There is more to thinking about grammar than the quest for error-free writing, as Chapter 18 on sentence style demonstrates, with its emphasis on how to analyze writers’ syntactical choices and how to think about the relationship between a writer’s style and his or her characteristic ways of thinking. Studying the grammar rules in this chapter will enable you to find your way around in a sentence more easily, and thus, to build better sentences.

The first part of this chapter makes the case for learning to recognize a pattern of error in your drafts and learning to prioritize the most serious problems, creating a hierarchy of error, rather than treating (and worrying about) all errors equally and all at the same time. Achieving grammatical correctness is a matter of both knowledge—how to recognize and avoid errors—and timing: when to narrow your focus to proofreading.

NINE BASIC WRITING ERRORS

Sentence fragments

Comma splices and fused (run-on) sentences

Errors in subject–verb agreement

Shifts in sentence structure (faulty predication)

Errors in pronoun reference

Misplaced modifiers and dangling participles

Errors in using possessive apostrophes

Comma errors

Spelling/diction errors that interfere with meaning

For each of these, the chapter offers a definition with examples and then talks you through how to fix it—with a little “test yourself ” section at the end.

At the end of the chapter, a brief Glossary of Grammatical Terms defines and illustrates many of the key terms used earlier in the chapter and throughout the book. Following this chapter, you will find an appendix that provides solutions to the various “Test Yourself ” examples that point up the chapter’s lessons.

A great many readers regard technical errors as an inattention to detail that also signals sloppiness at more important levels of thinking. If you produce writing that contains such errors, you risk not only distracting readers from your message but also undermining your authority to deliver the message in the first place.

THE CONCEPT OF BASIC