GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing

Ifeoma Okoye

Description

GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing shows you how to write gold-winning sentences, sentences that are error-free, clear, concise, varied, and mature. The book shows you, step-by-step, how to construct basic sentences, which form the backbone of all sentences, and how to expand basic sentences by modification, subordination, and coordination, thereby turning them into the kind of sentences that mature writers use in their writing.

Informations

• Publié par: The Rising People's Press
• Date de parution: 28 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912022564
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing
A Practical Self-Guide to Writing Gold-Winning Sentences
IFEOMA OKOYE
2016 Ifeoma Okoye
Ifeoma Okoye has asserted her rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in eBook format in 2016
ISBN: 9781912022564
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my students at Institute of Management and Technology, Enugu, and at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, both in Nigeria.
CONTENTS
Dedication
Chapter One
Introducing Gold-Winning Sentences
Chapter Two
Introducing Word Classes
Chapter Three
Identifying Nouns
Chapter Four
Identifying Verbs
Chapter Five
Identifying Adjectives
Chapter Six
Identifying Adverbs
Chapter Seven
Basic Sentences: The Noun Phrase
Chapter Eight
Basic Sentences: The Predicate 1
Chapter Nine
Basic Sentences: The Predicate 2
Chapter Ten
Basic Sentence Patterns
Chapter Eleven
Non-Basic Sentences: Questions
Chapter Twelve
Passives
Chapter Thirteen
The Relative Clause
Chapter Fourteen
Combining Sentences with Relative Clauses
Chapter Fifteen
Combining Sentences with Reduced Relative Clauses: Participial Clauses
Chapter Sixteen
Combining Sentences with Reduced Relative Clauses: Prepositional Phrases and Adverbs of Place
Chapter Seventeen
Combining Sentences with Reduced Relative Clauses: Adjective Phrases
Chapter Eighteen
Combining Sentences with Sentence Modifiers: Participial Clauses and Adjective Phrases
Chapter Nineteen
Combining Sentences with Sentence Modifiers: Appositives
Chapter Twenty
Combining Sentences with Noun Clauses
Chapter Twenty-One
Combining Sentences with Adverb Clauses
Chapter Twenty-Two
Combining Sentences with Coordinating Conjunctions
Chapter Twenty-Three
Combining Sentences Using Multiple Methods
Chapter Twenty-Four
Writing Error-Free Sentences: Using Nouns Correctly
Chapter Twenty-Five
Writing Error-Free Sentences: Using Verbs Correctly 1
Chapter Twenty-Six
Writing Error-Free Sentences: Using Verbs Correctly 2
GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing
About GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing
Author s Acknowledgements
Chapter One
INTRODUCING GOLD-WINNING SENTENCES
And we cannot be effective writers without writing effective sentences.
Brooks Landon, Building Great Sentences
INTRODUCTION
Do you write essays, reports, theses, and term papers in your course of study? Do you write book reviews, articles, editorials, academic papers, business letters, or technical reports in your job? If you write one or more of these pieces, then GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing has been written specially for you.
The major objective of GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing is to show you, step by step, how to write what I choose to call gold-winning sentences . Gold-winning sentences are well constructed sentences that contribute immensely to raising the quality of your writing and to taking your reader where you want them to go. The ability to write such sentences will help to make you a better writer and achieve your writing goals.
After studying this chapter you ll be able to:
describe the main features of gold-winning sentences,
give reasons why sentences are important in whatever we write,
state briefly what sentence combining is all about, and
list the ways you can make the most of this book.
The main features of gold-winning sentences
Gold-winning sentences have the following features among others:
1. They are error-free.
2. They are clear.
3. They are concise.
4. They are varied.
Let us now look at these features in some detail.
Gold-winning sentences are error-free
Gold-winning sentences are free of errors. Errors in our writing are of two major types: errors in the content, and errors in the construction of sentences. Errors in the construction of sentences are of two major types. These are grammatical errors and mechanical errors. Grammatical errors occur, for instance, when we use the wrong word, or a wrong form of a word, or when we put a word or a group of words in the wrong position. Grammatical errors occur also when we combine words or groups of words that do not go together.
Mechanical errors, on the other hand, occur when we fail to use expected punctuation marks, or when we use the wrong ones, or when we make spelling mistakes in our sentences. Mechanical errors occur also when we use numbers and things like italics and abbreviations incorrectly.
Grammatical and mechanical errors will obscure the meaning of your sentences and your writing as a whole. They will adversely affect your style. They will harm your image as a writer.
Gold-winning sentences are clear .
Gold-winning sentences are clear. Your reader wants to understand you, and when a sentence is clear, it gets its point across to the reader quickly and leaves no room for ambiguity, guesswork, or misunderstanding. In other words, when a sentence is clear, the reader gets the meaning intended by the writer and this is what we all want to achieve when we write. If your writing has clarity, it says exactly what you want to say.
Gold-winning sentences are concise and contain no unnecessary words .
Gold-winning sentences contain no unnecessary words or inessential repetition. A sentence, writes William Strunk Jr. in The Elements of Style , should contain no unnecessary words...for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts .
Wordy sentences are annoying and frustrating because they make readers spend more time than necessary reading them. Wordiness , writes Robert Hartwell Fiske in The Dictionary of Concise Writing , is arguably the biggest obstacle to clear writing and speaking , and according to Thomas Jefferson, The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words where one will do .
Gold-winning sentences are varied.
Gold-winning sentences have different structures and different lengths. Some begin with noun phrases and some begin with clauses, for instance. Some are long and some are short. Some break out of the normal order of words in a sentence and some omit words or groups of words that readers can easily figure out by themselves. All these variations in sentence construction help to make our writing interesting and a pleasure to read, and to showcase you as a crafty writer. Besides, nobody wants to read something monotonous.
The importance of sentences in our writing
Sentences are important in writing for many reasons. The first reason is that most of the things we write consist of sentences. For instance, letters, essays, reviews, reports, articles, and academic papers all consist of sentences. When we write any of these pieces, we make two important choices. First, we choose what to say, and next, we choose how to say it, and how to say it involves writing sentences. In our writing we use sentences to convey facts, feelings, thoughts, intentions, and opinions. We use sentences to describe people, actions, events and situations. We use sentences to ask questions, to give commands, to persuade, to give directions. We use sentences to make requests, offers, promises and suggestions.
Another reason why sentences are important in writing is that they contribute to the overall quality of what we write. Put in another way, well-written sentences help in raising the overall quality of our writing. The style of sentences, many writers believe, contributes in making the difference between outstanding writing and low-quality writing. If your essay is clear to your reader, for instance, it is not only because your ideas, thoughts, arguments and opinions are clear in your head, but also because the sentences you use to express these ideas, thoughts, etc., are clear to your readers. On the other hand, if your sentences are badly written, they will pollute your writing, reduce its quality, cause your reader to miss the points you are making, and render your writing ineffective.
To summarise, your sentences can raise or reduce the quality of your writing, and acquiring the skill of writing gold-winning sentences is an important step in producing great pieces of writing. In any field, the person who can deliver a clear and readable document quickly has an invaluable skill , states Joseph M. Williams in his book Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace . This invaluable skill, in my opinion, includes writing gold-winning sentences .
The sentence combining approach
GO FOR GOLD With Your Writing uses the sentence combining approach to help you write gold-winning sentences.
Sentence combining, simply defined, is the technique of combining two or more short sentences to form one sentence, usually a longer and more complex or complicated one. This technique involves using embedding, deletion, subordination and coordination.
The main reason for using the sentence combining approach is that researchers have found it more effective than the traditional grammar method in teaching people how to write mature and effective sentences. I use maturity here to refer to the ability to write sentences that compare favourably to those written by experienced writers