Unit 18 · Grammar for Writers

Read this sentence: The tall kid in the red hoodie has been waiting by the door since lunch. Only two words carry the skeleton: kid and waiting. Everything else is packed into groups. A phrase is a group of words that acts as a single unit inside a sentence but does not contain both a subject and its own verb. The tall kid in the red hoodie names one person. Has been waiting is one action stretched over time. By the door and since lunch each answer a question about that action: where, and since when.

A noun phrase is a noun plus everything that hangs on it. In the sentence above, the tall kid in the red hoodie is a noun phrase, and kid is its head, the word the whole group is really about. A noun phrase can be short (a dog) or long (the last dog anyone in that shelter expected to get adopted). Whatever its length, the sentence treats it as one thing. It can be the subject, the object, or the thing after a preposition.

A verb phrase is the main verb plus its helping verbs: has been waiting, will have finished, might be sleeping. The helping verbs set the time and the mood; the main verb carries the action. A prepositional phrase begins with a preposition (in, on, by, since, under, without) and ends with a noun phrase, its object: by the door, since lunch, without a single complaint. Prepositional phrases are the most common phrases in English. A good writer knows where they are, because a sentence with too many of them in a row starts to sag: the box of the parts of the engine of the car of my uncle.

A phrase can do the job of an adjective or an adverb. Look: The girl with the green backpack laughed. With the green backpack is a prepositional phrase, but its job is to describe girl, so it is working as an adjectival phrase. Now look: She laughed until the bell rang. Until the bell rang tells when she laughed, so it works as an adverbial phrase. The label depends on the job, not the shape. Ask what the phrase is describing: a noun means adjectival, a verb or the whole sentence means adverbial.

One of the most useful describing phrases is built from a participle, a verb form used as a describing word. Present participles end in -ing (running, hoping); past participles usually end in -ed or -en (exhausted, broken). A participial phrase is a participle plus the words attached to it: Exhausted by the double shift, the nurse fell asleep on the train. Running the last block at full speed, Jamal caught the bus. The phrase paints a picture of the noun right next to it: the nurse, Jamal.

That closeness is the rule. A participial phrase attaches itself to the nearest noun, whether you meant it to or not. Exhausted by the double shift, the train pulled out of the station. Now the train is exhausted. Readers will laugh, or worse, they will stop trusting you. When you open a sentence with a participial phrase, the very next noun must be the one doing the participle’s action. Writers use these openers because they let a sentence carry two ideas at once, action and description, without a second clause. Just keep the picture attached to the right person.

Read these two sentences. The runners waited at the line, their hands shaking. The storm passed, its last thunder rolling east. Each sentence ends with a small picture that seems to hang off the side: their hands shaking, its last thunder rolling east. Those pictures are absolute phrases. An absolute phrase is a noun or pronoun plus a participle (and sometimes a few more words), and it describes the whole sentence at once instead of one word in it. It has a subject of its own, hands, thunder, but no full verb, so it is still a phrase, not a clause.

The easiest way to recognize an absolute is to notice what is missing. Their hands shaking is one word away from a full sentence: their hands were shaking. Take out the were and you get the absolute. That missing verb is the secret. The phrase cannot stand alone, so it leans on the main sentence and adds a detail of the scene: what the hands were doing while the runners waited. Writers of fiction and sports reporting use absolutes constantly because they add a close-up without stopping the action.

You can place an absolute at the start, the middle or the end, and it is always set off with commas: Her voice steady, the witness answered every question. The witness, her voice steady, answered every question. The witness answered every question, her voice steady. Beginning writers rarely use this structure, which is exactly why it makes writing sound mature. Use one where a reader needs to see a detail of a person or a place at the same moment something else is happening. Do not use three in one paragraph; like any strong spice, one is plenty.

A clause has a subject and a verb. That is what separates it from a phrase. But not every clause can be a sentence. She left is an independent clause: it makes a complete statement and could end with a period. Because she left has the same subject and verb, yet it cannot stand alone. That word because turns it into a dependent clause, a clause that leans on another one to finish its thought. The reader waits: because she left, what happened? The dependent clause is a door held open; the independent clause is the room.

Dependent clauses come in three kinds, named for the jobs they do. An adverb clause tells when, why, how or under what condition: Because she left, the meeting ended early. It usually starts with a word like because, although, when, if, until or since. An adjective clause describes a noun and usually starts with who, which or that: The coach who left early missed the vote. A noun clause acts as a noun, often the subject or object of the sentence: What she said surprised everyone. Whoever finishes first can leave.

Once you can see clauses, you can see sentence types. One independent clause is a simple sentence. Two independent clauses joined by a comma plus and, but, or, so (or by a semicolon) make a compound sentence. An independent clause plus at least one dependent clause makes a complex sentence. Errors live at the seams. A dependent clause standing alone is a fragment: Because she left. Two independent clauses jammed together with only a comma is a comma splice: She left, the meeting ended. Fix the fragment by attaching it; fix the splice with a period, a semicolon, or a comma and a joining word.

Dev’s slogan failed for one reason. Its three items did the same job, promising something, but they did not have the same shape. Parallel structure means giving matching form to parts of a sentence that do matching work. Nouns line up with nouns, verbs with verbs, clauses with clauses. She likes swimming, hiking and to bike is not parallel: two -ing words and one to-verb. She likes swimming, hiking and biking is parallel. So is She likes to swim, to hike and to bike. Either shape works; mixing them does not.

Parallelism matters because readers feel structure before they understand meaning. When the parts match, the sentence feels balanced and each item gets equal weight. When they do not, the reader trips, even if the reader cannot say why. Lincoln’s phrase government of the people, by the people, for the people works because three prepositional phrases carry the same noun in the same rhythm. Change the last one to and which serves the people and the music dies. Parallel form also makes long sentences easier to hold in your head, because the pattern tells you what is coming.

To test for parallelism, find the list or the pair and read each item on its own after the words that introduce it. The job requires patience, focus and being on time. Read: requires patience, requires focus, requires being on time. The third item is a different shape. Fix it by matching: patience, focus and punctuality. Check pairs joined by and, or, but, and comparisons made with than or as: He would rather study than watching videos should be than watch videos. Every list you write, from a lab report to a text to a friend, is a chance to make the shapes match.

Some connectors come in pairs: not only ... but also, either ... or, neither ... nor, both ... and. They are called correlative conjunctions, and they are strict. Whatever kind of word follows the first half must follow the second half. She not only won the race but also the long jump puts a verb (won) after not only and a noun (the long jump) after but also. Fix it by moving the first half: She won not only the race but also the long jump. Now a noun follows each half. The rule is simple to check: cover the words between the two halves and read what comes right after each.

Comparisons need the same care. Driving to Springfield is faster than the train compares an activity (driving) to an object (the train). Match them: Driving to Springfield is faster than taking the train. Watch also for comparisons that leave something out. Her cooking is better than her brother compares food to a person. Add the missing piece: better than her brother’s. These slips are common because we talk this way and listeners fill in the gaps. Readers cannot ask, so the sentence must carry the whole comparison.

In a numbered or bulleted list, parallelism is the difference between a list that reads cleanly and one that looks like a pile. Look at a set of instructions: 1. Preheat the oven. 2. The pan should be greased. 3. Mixing the batter. Three items, three shapes: a command, a statement, a fragment. Make them all commands: Preheat the oven. Grease the pan. Mix the batter. The same rule holds in a resume, a slide, a lab procedure and an essay outline. Pick one shape for the items, then hold to it.

Read this paragraph. The alarm rang. I got up. I brushed my teeth. I ate cereal. I missed the bus. Every sentence is the same length and starts the same way, subject then verb. The meaning is fine; the sound is a metronome. Now read: The alarm rang, and I got up, brushed my teeth, and ate cereal, and then, standing at the corner with my bag half zipped, I watched the bus pull away. One long sentence has swallowed the whole morning. That is not better; it is just different. Sentence variety means choosing lengths and shapes on purpose, so the sound of a paragraph matches what it is saying.

The most useful tool is contrast. A short sentence after several long ones lands like a punch. A long, winding sentence after a string of short ones feels like a held breath. Reporters and novelists use this constantly: build with three medium sentences, then hit with four words. Vary the openings too. Start one sentence with a participial phrase (Standing at the corner, I ...), one with an adverb clause (When the bus pulled away, I ...), one with the subject. A paragraph where every sentence begins with I or The reads like a list.

Vary by sentence type as well. A simple sentence states. A compound sentence balances two ideas: the alarm rang, but I stayed still. A complex sentence ranks them: because the alarm rang late, I missed the bus. Ask which of your two ideas matters more, and put that one in the independent clause. The best way to hear your own rhythm is to read a draft aloud and mark where you get bored or where you run out of breath. Bored means too many sentences of one shape. Out of breath means one sentence needs a period.

Everyone knows the basic rule: a singular subject takes a singular verb, a plural subject takes a plural verb. The dog barks; the dogs bark. Trouble starts when words get in between. The box of old photos were in the attic. It sounds fine because photos sits right before the verb. But the subject is box, one thing. The box of old photos was in the attic. This is the most common agreement error in student writing: matching the verb to the nearest noun instead of the head of the subject. Find the head. Cross out the prepositional phrases in your mind, and the answer appears.

Some subjects are singular by their nature even when they sound plural. Each, either, neither, everyone, everybody, nobody, someone take singular verbs: Each of the players has a locker. Everyone is here. Words like team, class, family, committee are collective nouns; in American usage they usually take a singular verb when the group acts as one: The team is winning. Compound subjects joined by and are plural: Rice and beans are on the menu. But subjects joined by or or nor agree with the nearer subject: Neither the coach nor the players were ready. Neither the players nor the coach was ready.

Two more traps. When a sentence begins with there or here, the subject comes after the verb: There are three reasons, not there is three reasons. Look past the there to find what the sentence is really about. And phrases like along with, as well as and together with do not make a subject plural: The captain, along with two teammates, was late. Only and does that. If a sentence still sounds wrong after you fix it, that is your ear reacting to the nearby noun. Trust the grammar, and if the sentence still bothers you, rewrite it so the head and the verb sit closer together.

When Maya told Jess that she had been picked for the solo, she cried. Who was picked, and who cried? The sentence has two women and two she’s, and a reader cannot sort them out. A pronoun is a stand-in for a noun, and the noun it stands for is its antecedent. If the antecedent is unclear, the pronoun fails, no matter how correct the rest of the sentence is. Fix it by repeating a name or rebuilding the sentence: Maya cried when she told Jess that Jess had been picked for the solo.

A second problem is the vague this, that, it or which that points at a whole idea instead of a noun. The team lost its best player and the bus broke down, which was a disaster. Which one was the disaster, the loss, the breakdown, or the whole day? Give the pronoun a noun to hold: The team lost its best player and the bus broke down. That combination was a disaster. Also watch for a pronoun with no antecedent at all. In the article, it says the bridge is safe. Who is it? Say it: The article says the bridge is safe.

Pronouns also have to agree in number with their antecedents. Every student should bring their permission slip is now widely accepted in American usage, including by many style guides, because their has served as a singular pronoun for centuries when the person’s gender is unknown or does not matter. Some teachers and editors still prefer his or her, and some prefer rewriting: All students should bring their permission slips. Know which rule your reader follows. Case matters too: Me and Tyler went is nonstandard; Tyler and I went is standard. Test by dropping the other person: I went. Between you and me is right, because me is the object of between.

A modifier is any word or phrase that describes another word: an adjective, an adverb, a participial phrase, a prepositional phrase. Modifiers are lazy in one way: they attach to whatever is closest. She almost ate the whole pizza means she came close to eating but did not. She ate almost the whole pizza means she ate most of it. One word moved, and the story changed. Small modifiers like only, almost, just, nearly and even are the usual culprits. Only I told her the truth, I only told her the truth, I told only her the truth, and I told her the only truth are four different sentences.

A misplaced modifier is a describing phrase that sits next to the wrong word. We saw a deer driving home from the game. The deer was driving. The fix is to move the modifier: Driving home from the game, we saw a deer. The waiter brought a steak to the man that was rare. Move the clause: The waiter brought the man a steak that was rare. When you spot one of these in your own draft, do not delete it; slide it over until it touches the word it describes.

A dangling modifier is worse: the word it should describe is not in the sentence at all. Having finished the exam, the pencils were put away. Who finished the exam? Not the pencils. The person is missing. Supply the person: Having finished the exam, the students put their pencils away. Or turn the phrase into a clause: After the students finished the exam, they put their pencils away. Danglers hide in opening phrases, so check every sentence that begins with an -ing word, a past participle, or to plus a verb. Ask: who is doing this? That noun must come next.

A convention is a shared habit that readers expect, not a law of nature. Who versus whom, fewer versus less, the rule against ending a sentence with a preposition: these are agreements, and some are stronger than others. Fewer for things you count and less for things you measure (fewer coins, less money) is a real distinction most careful readers notice. Whom is fading; in speech, almost no one says whom did you see, and in writing it survives mostly after prepositions: to whom it may concern. Knowing which conventions are strong and which are weak is part of being a writer.

Some so-called rules were never rules. Ending a sentence with a preposition is fine: That is the friend I told you about. Beginning a sentence with And or But is fine, and writers have done it for centuries. Splitting an infinitive (to boldly go) is fine when the adverb sounds best there. What matters is the reader. A college application reader, a hiring manager, a science journal editor each expects standard formal usage, and breaking their expectations costs you. A friend reading a text, a poem, a story told in a character’s voice: these allow, even demand, other choices.

So the working rule is this. Learn the conventions well enough to follow them without thinking. Then, when you break one, break it on purpose and make sure the reader can tell it was on purpose. A fragment used for punch. Like this. A run-on sentence that mimics a panicked mind racing from one thought to the next without stopping because it cannot stop. Dialogue in which a character says ain’t because that is how the character talks. A broken rule that looks like a mistake is a mistake. A broken rule that clearly serves the sentence is style, and readers respect it.

Here is the opening of a real student draft, lightly changed. Having studied the data, the results was surprising to me and my partner, we found that the plants with less hours of light grew taller, which was not what we expected and it goes against what the textbook says, also our control group died. The ideas are good. The sentence is a pileup. Nobody can fix everything in it at once, and that is the first lesson of editing: you do it in passes, one problem at a time, after the thinking is done. Trying to edit while you draft slows both jobs.

Pass one: sentences. Find where each complete thought ends and give it a period. Having studied the data, the results was surprising ... is also a dangler, since the results did not study anything. Pass two: agreement and case. The results were, not was; my partner and I, not me and my partner. Pass three: reference. Which was not what we expected points at a whole idea; name it. Pass four: usage. Fewer hours, not less hours. Pass five: read it aloud and listen for rhythm. The revised opening might run: After studying the data, my partner and I were surprised. The plants that got fewer hours of light grew taller. That result goes against what the textbook says. Our control group also died.

Build a personal checklist from your own habits. Every writer has two or three errors that come back like weeds; find yours from marked-up papers and put them at the top. A typical list: fragments and comma splices, subject-verb agreement, pronoun reference, modifier placement, parallel lists, fewer/less and who/whom. Read one pass for each item. Reading backward, sentence by sentence from the end, keeps you from skimming, because the story cannot carry you along. Editing is not a sign that the draft was bad. It is the last thing every good writer does, every time.

Read these two versions. The storm knocked out the power. We ate dinner by candlelight. Now: The storm knocked out the power; we ate dinner by candlelight. The period says these are two separate facts. The semicolon says they are two halves of one thought, the second following from the first. A semicolon can join two independent clauses only, two groups of words that could each stand alone as a sentence. That is the whole test. If either side could not be a sentence on its own, the semicolon is wrong.

The semicolon is stronger than a comma and weaker than a period. Writers use it when the ideas are so close that a period would feel like slamming a door. It also fixes a comma splice without adding a word: The bus was late, I missed the quiz becomes The bus was late; I missed the quiz. When the second clause begins with a connecting word like however, therefore, meanwhile or for example, the semicolon goes before that word and a comma after it: The bus was late; however, the teacher let me take the quiz after school. A comma alone before however is a splice.

The semicolon has a second job that has nothing to do with clauses. In a list where the items themselves contain commas, use semicolons to separate the items, so the reader can see where each one ends: The trip stops in Springfield, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; and Memphis, Tennessee. Without the semicolons that list looks like six places. One caution: a semicolon is not a fancy colon. It does not introduce a list or an explanation. Use it to join equals or to organize a crowded list, and nowhere else.

A colon is a pointer. It says: here it comes. She packed three things: a flashlight, a map and a sandwich. The words before the colon make a complete sentence, She packed three things, and the words after it deliver what that sentence promised. That is the one rule most writers get wrong. The part before the colon must be able to stand alone. She packed: a flashlight, a map and a sandwich is incorrect, because She packed is not a finished thought. If you would not put a period there, do not put a colon there either.

A colon can introduce a list, but it can also introduce a single word or a whole explanation. There was only one thing she wanted: sleep. The plan failed for a simple reason: nobody had checked the weather. In the second sentence, the words after the colon are a full clause that explains the words before it. This is where a colon does something a semicolon cannot. A semicolon joins two equals; a colon makes the second part answer the first. Read the sentence and ask whether the second half explains, lists or names what the first half set up. If yes, the colon fits.

Colons also introduce a longer quotation in an essay, after a complete sentence: Douglass describes the moment plainly: and then the quotation follows. And they have small mechanical jobs: between hours and minutes (7:45), after the greeting in a formal letter (Dear Dr. Ortiz:), and between a title and subtitle. Whether to capitalize the first word after a colon is a matter of style; the usual rule is to capitalize only if what follows is a complete sentence and your style guide asks for it. MLA does not require it. Pick one practice and keep to it.

There are two kinds of dash and one hyphen, and they look almost alike. The hyphen is short and joins words (well-known). The em dash is long, about the width of the letter m, and it breaks a sentence: She opened the box and found the one thing she had not expected, a letter from her father. Replace that comma with an em dash and the letter arrives with a jolt. A dash creates a pause with drama in it. One dash sets off something at the end of a sentence. Two dashes set off something in the middle, like a louder pair of commas: The dog, a huge, muddy, joyful animal, knocked over the lamp.

Because dashes shout, they lose their power if you use them everywhere. A page with a dash in every sentence sounds breathless. Use one where a comma feels too soft and a colon feels too formal: a sharp turn, a surprise, a summing up. Parentheses do the opposite job. They lower the voice. The meeting (which nobody wanted) ran two hours. The words inside the parentheses are an aside the reader could skip. If the aside matters, use dashes or commas instead. Punctuation belonging to the main sentence goes outside the closing parenthesis, unless the whole sentence is inside.

The shorter en dash, about the width of an n, shows a range: pages 12–15, the 2024–25 season, the Chicago–Milwaukee train. Many people type a hyphen there and no reader minds. On a phone or a keyboard the em dash is often typed as two hyphens, and most word processors convert them. The more important skill is choosing. Commas, dashes and parentheses can all set off the same words; which one you pick tells the reader how much to care. Commas are neutral, dashes point, parentheses whisper.

Read these two sentences. My brother who lives in Peoria is a nurse. My brother, who lives in Peoria, is a nurse. In the first sentence, I have more than one brother, and who lives in Peoria tells you which one I mean. In the second, I have one brother, and the clause between the commas is extra information about him. Two commas, and the size of my family changed. A clause that identifies which one is called restrictive: it restricts, or narrows, the noun, and it takes no commas. A clause that adds information about a noun already identified is nonrestrictive, and it is set off by commas.

Here is the test. Cover the clause and read the sentence without it. If the sentence still points to the same person or thing, the clause was extra: use commas. If the sentence now points to the wrong person, or to no one in particular, the clause was needed: no commas. Students who cheat will fail. Cover the clause: Students will fail. That is not what the writer meant, so the clause is restrictive. Chicago, which sits on Lake Michigan, is cold in January. Cover the clause: Chicago is cold in January. Still the same city, so the clause is nonrestrictive and the commas are right.

American editors mostly follow one more habit: that introduces restrictive clauses and which, with commas, introduces nonrestrictive ones. The car that hit the pole was red (the one that hit the pole, as opposed to others). The car, which hit the pole, was red (one car; the crash is extra). Not everyone keeps this rule, and British writers often use which for both, so a reader will forgive a slip. But the commas are not optional. They change what the sentence claims. The same logic applies to appositives, nouns that rename other nouns: My friend Luis (I have several friends) versus My best friend, Luis, (I have one best friend).

Let’s eat Grandma. Let’s eat, Grandma. The comma of direct address separates the person being spoken to from the rest of the sentence, and without it Grandma becomes dinner. The joke is old because the rule matters. Any time a sentence speaks to someone by name or title, put a comma on either side of the name: I know, Coach, that we lost. The same comma appears after yes and no (Yes, I finished) and around small interruptions (The answer, of course, is no).

In a list of three or more, commas separate the items: eggs, flour and milk. Whether to put a comma before the and is the most argued point in American punctuation. That final comma is called the serial comma (or Oxford comma). Newspapers usually skip it; books and MLA usually use it. Both are correct, but there are sentences where leaving it out creates a mix-up: I thanked my parents, Beyonce and the mayor reads as if my parents are Beyonce and the mayor. With the serial comma, I thanked my parents, Beyonce, and the mayor, there are four people. Pick one practice, stay consistent, and add the comma whenever it prevents confusion.

A comma follows an introductory phrase or clause: After the game, we ate. Because the bus was late, I missed the quiz. It is often skipped after a very short opener (Then we ate), but never skip it if the sentence could be misread: Before eating, the dog needs a walk versus Before eating the dog, needs a walk. Use a comma between two independent clauses joined by and, but, or, so, yet: The rain stopped, and we went outside. Do not use one when and joins only two verbs with one subject: The rain stopped and gave way to sun. Commas are not breaths. They are signals about structure, and a reader follows them.

A small dog trainer and a small-dog trainer are different people. The first is a trainer who is small; the second trains small dogs. The hyphen glues small to dog so the reader knows they form one description. This is the hyphen’s main job: joining a compound modifier, two or more words that together describe the noun that follows. A well-known author. A five-year-old cousin. A last-minute change. Take away the hyphen and the reader has to guess how the words group.

The hyphen appears when the compound comes before the noun and usually disappears when it comes after. A well-known author, but the author is well known. A part-time job, but she works part time. One exception: do not hyphenate after an -ly adverb, because the -ly already shows the words belong together: a highly rated show, a badly written note. Hyphens also join numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine, fractions used as adjectives (a two-thirds majority), and some prefixes, especially before a capital letter or a repeated vowel: pre-Civil War, anti-inflammatory, re-enter.

Some compounds are always written as one word (notebook, everyday as an adjective), some as two (ice cream), and some with a hyphen (mother-in-law). These change over time; e-mail became email within a couple of decades. When you are unsure, check a current dictionary, which is what editors do. But the compound modifier rule you can apply on your own. Ask: do these words describe the noun together, as one idea? If yes, and they come before the noun, join them. A little-used road is one few people drive on; a little used road is a small road that has been used.

Here is a line of dialogue done right: "I am not going back in there," Lena said, "until someone finds the snake." Three rules are working. First, the quotation marks surround only the spoken words. Second, the speaker tag, Lena said, is attached with a comma, not a period. The tag and the speech form one sentence. Third, when the tag interrupts a single sentence of speech, the second half opens with a lowercase letter, since it continues the sentence that began before the tag.

In American style, commas and periods go inside the closing quotation mark, always, even when it looks odd: She called it "a disaster." Question marks and exclamation points go inside if they belong to the quoted words and outside if they belong to the whole sentence. "Are you serious?" he asked. Did she really say "never"? When the quoted words are a question, no extra comma is added: "Where is it?" she asked, not "Where is it?," she asked.

Start a new paragraph each time the speaker changes, even if the line is one word. That paragraph break is itself punctuation. It tells the reader a different voice is speaking. A writer can sometimes drop the speaker tags and let the back-and-forth carry itself. Do not put quotation marks around indirect speech, which reports what someone said without the exact words: Lena said she was not going back in. No marks, no comma, and the pronoun shifts from I to she. Notice, too, that said is nearly invisible to readers; it does not need replacing with exclaimed or uttered every time.

Sometimes a speaker quotes someone else. "My mother always told me, ’Finish what you start,’" Dev said. The outer speech uses double quotation marks; the quotation inside it uses single quotation marks. Notice the ending: the single closing mark, then the comma, then the double closing mark, all together. It looks crowded, but each mark closes something that was opened. This is American practice. British books often reverse it, single outside and double inside. That is why a novel from London looks different from one printed in Chicago.

The same rule holds in an essay when you quote a text that itself contains a quotation. A passage from a story might read: The old man said, "Nobody ever leaves this town." If you quote that whole passage, the old man’s words shift to single marks: The narrator reports that the old man said, ’Nobody ever leaves this town.’ Any quotation marks that were in the original become single marks inside your double ones. If you quote only the old man’s words directly, they go back in ordinary double marks, because now they are the outer quotation.

One rule stands over all the others: what is inside quotation marks must be exactly what the source said, letter for letter. You may not fix a speaker’s grammar, cut a word silently, or change a tense to fit your sentence. If the quote does not fit, quote less of it or rebuild your sentence around it. Titles of short works, such as poems, songs and articles, take double quotation marks ("The Raven"). Titles of long works, such as books and films, are italicized. Quotation marks are a promise, and readers trust the promise.

A source is long and you need one sentence of it. Cut words, but show the cut. An ellipsis is three spaced periods ( . . . ) that mark where words were removed from a quotation. Original: The bridge, which had stood for ninety years without a single repair, finally closed in March. Quoted: The bridge . . . finally closed in March. The reader knows something is missing and can go look. Never use an ellipsis to remove words that change the meaning. Cutting not from She did not agree and quoting She . . . agreed is not quoting; it is lying.

Brackets, the square marks [ ], show a word you added or changed inside a quotation. Original: He said it was the best game of his life. Quoted: He said it was "the best game of [his] life" needs no bracket, since his is in the original. But if the original said the best game of my life and your sentence needs his, write "the best game of [his] life." Brackets also explain a word the reader could not otherwise understand: "She [the principal] refused to comment." And the Latin word sic in brackets, [sic], marks an error that was in the original so the reader does not blame you: "We was [sic] ready."

Two habits finish the job. Do not put an ellipsis at the start of a quotation to show that words came before; readers assume that. And if you cut across the end of a sentence, keep the sentence’s period plus the three dots, making four. In MLA style, an ellipsis is written as three periods with spaces between and around them; a keyboard’s single ellipsis character is accepted by many teachers, but check. Ellipses and brackets look fussy, but they exist for one reason: to let you shape a quotation to fit your sentence while telling the reader exactly what you did.

Capital letters mark starts and names. Every sentence starts with one. So does every proper noun, the name of a particular person, place or thing: Lake Michigan, the Eisenhower Expressway, Ms. Duarte, the Chicago Bears, Illinois. The common noun stays lowercase: a lake, a highway, a teacher, a team, a state. The trouble comes with words that can be either. Capitalize mom, dad, coach and professor when they stand in for a name (I asked Mom; Thanks, Coach) but not after my, the or a (I asked my mom; the coach). Capitalize a title right before a name (Governor Pritzker) but not on its own (the governor).

Seasons are lowercase (fall, winter), but days, months and holidays are capitalized (Tuesday, October, Thanksgiving). Directions are lowercase (drive north), but regions are capitalized (the South Side, the Midwest). Languages, nationalities and religions are capitalized (Spanish, Polish, Muslim). School subjects are lowercase (history, biology) unless they are languages or specific course titles (English, Biology 101). The rule under all of these: is this the name of one particular thing, or a general word? Names get capitals.

Title case means capitalizing the first and last words of a title and every main word between, while leaving small words lowercase: articles (a, an, the), short prepositions (of, in, to) and joining words (and, but, or). The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A Raisin in the Sun. Then show what kind of work it is. Long works that stand on their own are italicized: books, plays, films, albums, newspapers, TV series. Short works that live inside something bigger take quotation marks: poems, short stories, articles, songs, single episodes. When you handwrite, underlining stands in for italics.

Autocorrect and spell-check catch words that are not words. They do not catch words that are real but wrong. Their, there and they’re are all in the dictionary, so a phone will happily let you write Their going to be late. So will its and it’s, your and you’re, then and than, affect and effect, lose and loose, to, too and two. These homophones, words that sound the same but differ in spelling and meaning, cause most of the spelling errors readers actually notice. No software reads for meaning the way a reader does. That job is still yours.

Learn the handful of pairs that trip you, and give each one a test. It’s is always it is or it has; if you cannot swap in it is, use its. You’re is you are. They’re is they are; there points to a place or starts a sentence; their shows ownership. Than compares; then tells when. Affect is usually the verb (the news affected her), effect usually the noun (the effect was clear). Lose is what happens to your keys; loose is what a shoelace gets. Ten minutes with these pairs saves years of small embarrassments.

Autocorrect brings its own errors, too: it changes an unusual name to a common word, swaps a slang word for a wrong formal one, or turns a correct word into a different one because you hit a key next to it. So proofread, which means reading a finished draft only for surface errors. Read it slowly, in a different font or on paper if you can, and read each word as it is, not as you meant it. Keep a personal list of your own repeat offenders. When you are truly stuck on a word, use the dictionary, not a guess and not the first suggestion your phone offers.

When you use another writer’s words or ideas, readers need to be able to find them. MLA style, the set of rules published by the Modern Language Association, is the one most English classes use. It has two parts that work together. The in-text citation is a short note in parentheses at the end of the sentence, usually the author’s last name and the page number: Douglass describes learning to read in secret (Douglass 40). If you have already named the author in the sentence, give only the page: Douglass describes learning to read in secret (40). The period goes after the parentheses.

The second part is the Works Cited page, a list at the end of the paper, alphabetized by the authors’ last names, giving the full information for every source you cited in the text. A basic book entry looks like this: Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Publisher, year. The book title is italicized. An article or web page puts its own title in quotation marks, followed by the italicized name of the website or magazine, the date, and the address. Every in-text citation must match one entry on this page, and every entry must be cited somewhere in the text.

MLA also sets the look of the paper: double spacing throughout, one-inch margins, a readable 12-point font, your last name and the page number in the top right corner of every page, and a four-line heading in the top left (your name, teacher, course, date) followed by a centered title. None of this is decoration. A format everyone shares lets the reader stop noticing the format and pay attention to the argument. When in doubt about a source type, consult the current MLA Handbook or your school library’s guide rather than copying a citation you found online.