At EME, one of the problems that our editors encounter rather frequently in all genres of writing is confusion over the use of hyphens vis-à-vis dashes. I’d venture a guess that most writers aren’t even aware that there is a distinction between these two kinds of punctuation marks, so it’s a mistake we find ourselves correcting quite often. And if that distinction doesn’t cause enough confusion by itself, there’s also a further distinction that has to be made—between two kinds of dashes: the em-dash and the en-dash. (Minus signs, negative signs, figure dashes, 2-em dashes, and 3-em dashes all complicate the matter further, but they are of lesser importance and will be mentioned briefly, below). Since the uses of the hyphen, the en-dash, and the em-dash are clearly distinguishable, my hope is to clear up some of the confusion here.

Hyphens [-]

The hyphen really has three main uses:

• To separate digits (and letters) in telephone numbers, Social Security Numbers, etc. (although this can also be done by the figure dash, discussed later in this article)
• To separate syllables (usually when space requires splitting a word at the end of a line of type)
• To join two or more words together into a compound

With regard to this latter category of uses for the hyphen, it is worth noting that the current trend is toward non-hyphenation (i.e., closed compounds) wherever possible. The Chicago Manual of Style, 15^th edition, §7.90 provides an extensive hyphenation guide; so does the APA Manual, 5^th edition, §3.11; and so does the OWL at Purdue University. Because of evolutions in usage, a current dictionary often provides the best guide for deciding when compounds should be hyphenated, when they should be written as separate words (i.e., open compounds), and when they should be written as one word (i.e., closed compounds).

SOME EXAMPLES OF HYPHENATED COMPOUNDS:

one-on-one coaching

seventh-grade class

low-resolution photograph

En-dashes [–]

Longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em-dash, the en-dash is used principally in two ways:

• In place of the word “to,” such as with ranges of dates and page numbers

EXAMPLES:

1962–1965

pages 12–16

Genesis 1:1–2:4a

the London–Brussels train

• To join words of equal weight (i.e., where one does not modify the other) in a compound adjective

EXAMPLES:

medical–surgical procedure

the Mason–Dixon line

the New York–New Jersey border

a quasi-legislative–quasi-political decision

Although there are style sheets that direct the use of spaces before and after the en-dash, typically there are no spaces surrounding the en-dash; this allows the en-dash to be easily distinguishable from the minus sign.

Em-dashes [—]

There are a number of uses for the em-dash, but ordinarily it represents a break in thought. Like commas and parentheses, em-dashes can be used to set off a word or phrase. There is, however, an important difference: while commas and parentheses de-emphasize the material they enclose, em-dashes emphasize the material they enclose. The em-dash may also be used to separate a subject (or set of subjects) from a pronoun, or to indicate a sudden break, an aside, or an explanatory phrase.

EXAMPLES:

The way that Lisa understood it—if, indeed, she understood it at all—it was a good thing.

And that was to be the end of it—for the moment.

Be careful, however: overuse of em-dashes becomes very tedious for the reader. This is true, in part, because they involve breaks in thought; too many of them gives the reader a sense of literary hiccups as he or she tries to plough through the sentence, perhaps even losing track of what the original subject was. In part, the tediousness of overused dashes comes from the emphasis that they convey. Overemphasis functions much like using a highlighter in a book to highlight every word on the page: when everything is highlighted, nothing stands out. The em-dash is an effective tool, but should be used sparingly.

As with en-dashes, there are some style guides that suggest using spaces before and after the em-dash, but typically the em-dash is typed with no spaces before or after it (as in the examples given above).

Minus signs, negative signs, figure dashes, 2-em dashes, and 3-em dashes.

Beyond hyphens, en-dashes, and em-dashes, there are related marks that occur in limited circumstances and appear less frequently. Without getting into much detail, they are presented here for the sake of completeness:

• Minus signs are typically used in equations, and are most often typed as a hyphen with a space before it and a space after it (e.g., 3 – 2 = 1). Word processing software may provide a slightly raised symbol for this purpose as well.
• Negative signs also occur principally in equations and are typed as a hyphen with a space before the negative sign but not after it (e.g., -3 + 3 = 0).
• Figure dashes are sometimes used in place of a hyphen between digits in numbers and codes like Social Security Numbers and telephone numbers.
• 2-em dashes are used to indicate missing material, such as a redacted name or an expletive (e.g., Mrs. —— and Dr. —— were both opposed to the measure.). Many word processing programs merge the two em-dashes in this symbol so that it appears with no breaks.
• 3-em dashes are used in bibliographies and reference lists to indicate that the author name is the same as in the previous entry (e.g., ———. Angels & Demons. New York: Washington Square Press, 2000). Many word processing programs merge the three em-dashes in this symbol so that it appears with no breaks.

Have questions or thoughts about this topic? Leave us a COMMENT.

ALBERT—Read more about this editor

Is it “red, white, and blue,” or is it “red, white and blue”?

Most professional writers will tell you that’s a matter of style. And they’re right. You may choose to place a comma after the next-to-last element in a series (hence the name serial comma) or you may choose to leave it out; neither practice is wrong. What you shouldn’t do is use the serial comma haphazardly or allow your choice to give rise to confusion in your text.

Even if you choose, as a rule, to avoid the serial comma, there may be instances in which it must still be used. Consider, for instance,

John, a teacher and a lawyer

Does this refer to three people (i.e., John and a teacher and a lawyer)? Or is it one person (i.e., John, who is both a teacher and a lawyer)? If the former, the serial comma would make that clear:

John, a teacher, and a lawyer

The serial comma’s use is commonplace in American English usage, though less common in English of the British variety.

Since, in our editing, we try to bring consistency to the use (or nonuse) of the serial comma to the extent possible without causing confusion, I often get asked about the pros and cons of its use. The biggest advantage to the use of the serial comma is clarity: when all of the elements in a series are separated by commas, there is less chance of ambiguity in the list. For example, if I am listing the kinds of sandwiches I’m making for lunch, only the serial comma ensures that it’s clear what I’m actually serving. Consider:

Ham, peanut butter and banana and jelly

Without the serial comma, this may mean:

• Ham
• Peanut butter and banana
• Jelly

Or it may mean:

• Ham
• Peanut butter
• Banana and jelly

In fact, though I wouldn’t want to try it, without the serial comma it could even mean just two kinds of sandwiches:

• Ham, peanut butter, and banana
• Jelly

With the serial comma, the ambiguity is removed:

Ham, peanut butter and banana, and jelly

The strongest reason for ordinarily omitting the serial comma is to conserve space. In fact, it is from the world of newspaper writing that the practice seems to have taken its root in the United States. Among others, the practice of avoiding the serial comma is advocated by the Associated Press Stylebook and the New York Times, along with a number of leading British and Australian stylebooks. In favor of using the serial comma are, among others, the Chicago Manual of Style, the APA Manual, the AMA Manual of Style, the U.S. Government Printing Office, and Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style.

All things being equal, I’m inclined to recommend the serial comma’s use. However, rest assured that—as long as your intended meaning is clear—neither its use nor its nonuse is wrong.

Have thoughts or questions about this topic? Leave us a COMMENT to share.

ALBERT—Read more about this editor

In much of the editing that comes my way, run-on sentences are a problem. Sometimes people are surprised when they find me commenting on their run-on sentences, because the sentences aren’t that long. But here’s the thing: “run-on” doesn’t necessarily imply LONG; it has to do with STRUCTURE. And one of the most common run-un sentence problems I find myself correcting is the comma splice: a run-on sentence that is the result of putting together two independent clauses joined only by a comma. While there are some circumstances in which a comma splice may be considered acceptable, in most cases it is a grammatical error.

 SOME EXAMPLES:

I didn’t have to get up in the morning, I still set my alarm for seven.

He wanted to vacation at the beach, she preferred the idea of a cruise.

She didn’t complete her dissertation on time, her defense had to be postponed until spring.

 Faced with this error, there are really only three options:

• 1. Join the two clauses together;
• 2. Separate them; or
• 3. Change one of the independent clauses into a dependent clause.

 Joining the independent clauses together is done with a coordinating conjunction. These are:

• and
• but
• or
• nor
• for
• yet
• so

THOSE EXAMPLES AGAIN, THIS TIME WITH CONJUNCTIONS ADDED:

I didn’t have to get up in the morning, yet I still set my alarm for seven.

 He wanted to vacation at the beach, but she preferred the idea of a cruise.

She didn’t complete her dissertation on time, so her defense had to be  postponed until spring.

Separating the clauses is done by the use of one of four types of punctuation:

• the period [.]
• the question mark [?]
• the exclamation point [!]
• the semicolon [;]

NOTE that the comma [,] will not accomplish this purpose.

THOSE EXAMPLES AGAIN, THIS TIME SEPARATED BY PUNCTUATION MARKS:

I didn’t have to get up in the morning; I still set my alarm for seven.

He wanted to vacation at the beach. She preferred the idea of a cruise.

She didn’t complete her dissertation on time? Her defense had to be  postponed until spring.

Changing one of the clauses into a dependent clause creates one complex sentence that is not a run-on sentence. Remember that sentences are considered “run-on” not because of the number of words, but because of their structure. In these cases, run-on sentences are corrected by adding words:

 THOSE EXAMPLES AGAIN, THIS TIME WITH ONE CLAUSE MADE DEPENDENT:

Though I didn’t have to get up in the morning, I still set my alarm for seven.

He wanted to vacation at the beach, although she preferred the idea of a cruise.

 Since she didn’t complete her dissertation on time, her defense had to be postponed until spring.

With any of these three solutions, the problem of the comma splice is solved and the sentence is no longer a “run-on.”

Have thoughts or questions about this topic? Leave us a COMMENT to share.

ALBERT—Read more about this editor

At lunch recently, my friend was going to the counter to pick up our order. As she left the table and headed toward the counter, I shouted, “Take some napkins.” She couldn’t pass up the opportunity to correct my English: “Don’t you mean bring some napkins?” she asked. Hmmm … good question. Which is it: take or bring?

In truth, that’s a trick question. It’s really a matter of perspective. No, really—that’s not an attempt to be wishy-washy about the answer. The key to understanding the use of bring and take is perspective. Take is used when you are moving away from something, and bring is used when you are moving toward something. Simply put: You take when you are going, and you bring when you are coming.

Please BRING that book over here so that I may look at it.

Would you remember to TAKE this plate with you when you leave?

OK—so who was right at lunch? Was I correct in telling my friend to take some napkins, or should I have asked her to bring them? In fact, in this case (and in many like it), both options are possible. From a perspective that focused on the counter (i.e., the way I saw it), I was asking her to take the napkins with her when she was leaving the counter—i.e., when she was going away from the counter. From a perspective that focused on our table (i.e., the way my friend saw it), she was saying she should bring the napkins with her as she was coming toward the table. Depending upon the perspective, her action could be viewed either as a going away from (the counter) or as a coming toward (the table). And as I noted above, we take when we are going, and we bring when we are coming.

In common, spoken American English, the terms are used almost interchangeably. But in formal, written English, it can be more important to be grammatically precise. If that’s the goal, remember that it’s take when you are going and bring when you are coming. Take that simple rule with you, and you should be fine. Or is it bring that simple rule with you? That, too, depends upon your perspective.

Have thoughts or questions about this topic? Leave us a COMMENT to share.

ALBERT—Read more about this editor

The very word “thesis” seems to suggest that you’ve got something to prove—an idea you want to advance. So I suppose it’s no wonder that most of my thesis directing projects began in the same way: with a student appearing at my office to propose the study topic, invariably saying, “I’d like to prove . . .” They always seemed startled when I would respond by asking in return, “Why study the issue if you already know the outcome?”

Thesis and Hypothesis

Of course, every thesis and dissertation is built on some kind of insight—some theory that will be proven or disproven in the course of the study. That is to say, every academic thesis begins with some hypothesis. But if the truth of the hypothesis were clear before the study was even begun, then it would hardly seem worthy of the time, the effort, and the trees that are bound to be sacrificed to the project.  No, if a thesis or dissertation is worth writing, then its outcome has to be an open question—a question no one has yet answered in the way it is being posed in this work.

Willing to be Proven Wrong?

“What is your hypothesis?” After startling my would-be directee with the question about why the thesis should be written at all, my next question was usually about the theory that had inspired the work. And the very next question after that was always as startling as the first: “Are you willing to be proven wrong?” It’s a question worth asking because it gets to the heart of one of the greatest threats to any academic work: BIAS.

We all know the righteous indignation we feel when we discover that the outcome of a legislative process has been designed to benefit a powerful political lobby—that’s bias. We would be horrified to learn that the outcome of a drug’s clinical trial had been bought and paid for by a drug company—that’s bias. But the same is true of the studies that go on in every area of academia. They are intended to be in the service of people’s search for truth—not anyone’s pet idea or fragile ego. We can never divorce ourselves from the perspectives we bring to our work, of course, but those perspectives don’t have to determine the outcome of our research; if an academic is going to make any kind of real contribution to thought, his or her work has to be free of bias. And that means beginning any serious study with the willingness to be proven wrong. The interesting thing is this: a dissertation or thesis project that disproves the author’s hypothesis is every bit as valuable to the academic community as one that proves the author right. And it is just as worthy of the degree—maybe moreso, since that kind of conclusion makes it pretty clear that the author didn’t rig the results.

Sometimes a topic is just too close to the author’s heart to be given the objective study it deserves. What do you do if you find you care about something so much that you couldn’t imagine having your ideas about it proven wrong? Simple: write about something else! Seriously. Odd as it seems, the things we care most about are often the worst topics for our academic study—because academic study requires objectivity. And where we care too much, our study is likely not to be objective. Those may be the topics we have to leave to someone else.

What Is the Point?

All lofty ideas aside, there is a very practical reason why master’s and doctoral students are expected to write theses and dissertations: to learn (and prove that they have learned) the methods and theories involved in conducting serious research in their disciplines. The thesis is a kind of test, proving that one has mastered the skills required to carry on serious research in this field without supervision. The harsh truth is this: if you cut corners and force results when a committee of professors is going to examine your work, the hopes are fairly dim for honest, rigorous research when your only critics are your own students. In short, careful, unbiased research in the thesis develops a habit that is likely to live on in your professional life—and so does its opposite.

OK. Let’s not leave all lofty ideas aside. This one seems worthy of mention here: a rigorously researched dissertation or thesis might just make a contribution to future thought in your field. I suppose we all begin our studies thinking that our brilliant ideas are going to be striking new edifices of thought rising above everything built before us. Then we get bogged down in the tedious details of the research and begin to wonder if we can build anything of value at all. In reality, your master’s or doctoral work will probably not become a skyscraper of its own in the academic city. But it can be the next floor you build on top of someone else’s work. And if you build it carefully—so that it is solid and unshakeable—it may prove to be a good foundation for the work of someone else yet to come. In the world of academia, that kind of collaboration is how really great ideas get built. And isn’t that reason enough to do our work as honestly and carefully—and that means as objectively—as it deserves to be done?

Have some experience with academic writing? Some thoughts on bias in thesis-writing? A question about this topic? Leave us a COMMENT to share.

ALBERT—Read more about this editor

Finding Your Voice 

As a professor of composition and rhetoric, I’ve read countless college essays. I’ve read students’ thoughts about everything from justice in Plato’s Republic to salsa dancing at the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. What I’ve discovered in these essays is that while students often struggle with choosing a topic and sticking to it, their biggest difficulty in writing is finding their voice. By “voice” I mean the expression of their thoughts in a mode that fits both the assignment and its intended audience. Conquering this much-dreaded hurdle, however, requires only three simple things: thought, a clear grasp of the assignment, and an awareness of the reader.

First Requirement: Thought

Whether you’re texting a friend or composing the next great novel, what is made visible in the act of writing is a unique mind, specifically your unique mind. Writing, of whatever sort, is a deeply personal act. And that is no less true when you’re grappling with a European history paper or a chemistry lab report. Even when you’re given a topic you find boring, the more you make an effort to engage thoughtfully with it, the clearer your writing will be.

Second Requirement: A Clear Grasp of the Assignment

The second requirement for finding your voice is to have a clear grasp of the assignment. This is important! If you’re confused or the assignment is very general, catch your professor or TA after class or shoot them a brief e-mail and ask for clarification. This is not brown-nosing; it’s commonsense. You don’t want to waste time or valuable fractions of your GPA by writing an essay that misses the mark.

Third Requirement: An Awareness of the Reader

Developing an awareness of your reader is the final component of finding your voice. For most college essays, your professor is where the proverbial buck stops, meaning you need to maintain an appropriately formal tone and use proper diction in your writing. Texting shorthand is not permissible, nor is slang. And unless the assignment specifically allows first- and second-person references, refrain from using them. A word of caution about vocabulary: six-syllable words dragged out of a thesaurus should not be mistaken for a formal tone. Formality in writing involves using terminology that most clearly expresses your thoughts. The goal in writing is always clarity of expression, and that isn’t guaranteed by the length of the words used.

The Key is You

In brief, the work of writing a college essay involves thinking carefully about a specific assignment and articulating your thoughts in an appropriate manner. The key to this is you—your thoughts. One of the most disheartening things for me as a teacher, besides reading papers where “u” has been substituted for “you,” is when students are completely disengaged from their writing, when their “voice” is absent. Whether you’re summarizing the findings of an interminably long journal article or writing a narrative essay about your career plans, be present to the (clearly grasped) task. This will give you a firm foundation for the (appropriately expressed) accomplishment of it.

Have some questions about your college essay writing? Or some thoughts or experiences you’d like to share? Leave us a COMMENT.

CLARE—Read more about this editor

There is a vast difference between how users with a high-literacy level read Web pages when compared with low-literacy users.

In my last post, titled Writing Web Content: Scanning Not Spamming, we discussed how the high-literacy user scans Web pages, reading out a sentence here and there—seeking relevance, headings, links, bolded text and calls-to-action. They effectively scan and read only 20–28% of the text on a page.

We tend to make a concentrated effort to cater to the high-literacy user when writing content for the Web.

According to the US National Center for Educational Statistics, 30 million Americans (14%) have below basic literacy skills, and 63 million (20%) have just basic literacy skills. That means that approximately 43% of US residents have a low level of literacy. Do we assume that this figure is also representative of the number of low-literacy users utilizing the Internet? Even considering that this sector may have a lower disposable income and limited access to the technology, this is still a huge number of people who are largely not catered to when we write or build Web pages.

Have you ever watched a person with low literacy reading? They read one word at a time, moving slowly line by line, frequently agonizing over multisyllabic words. I should note here that low literacy does not mean illiterate. If something becomes too hard, they move on rather than become too bogged down-potentially missing important information. 

This can also apply to people with certain disabilities and users who have English as a second language.

These users do not scan pages.

Tips for writing Web pages for low-literacy users:

• Place important information at the top of the page. It is more likely to be read word for word than if it were further down the page.
• Avoid long pages of text. This is too time-consuming and difficult for the low-literacy user.
• Keep writing simple and easy-to-read. Do not use big words or uncommon words.
• Scrolling can be difficult, as low-literacy users cannot scan to find where they were on the page. Keep this in mind when writing and designing a Web page.
• Don’t expect these users to be able to use a search box successfully to find what they are looking for. They may not be able to spell what they are seeking and may not be able to interpret the search results. Often they will simply choose the top option.
• As well as prioritizing information and keeping information simple, it is important to keep the user focused on the goal. As low-literacy users tend to move from page to page when things get difficult, it is easy for them to get lost or disorientated.

If your Web visitors are a combination of people from all literacy levels, place all important information and calls-to-action at the top of the page, and background detail further down for those who wish to read more.

References

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050314.html

http://www.accessvt.atc.vt.edu/standards/animation.html

http://jabba.edb.utexas.edu/minliu/usability.pdf

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

Have some experience of effective Web writing? Or some questions or ideas about this topic? Leave us a COMMENT to share your thoughts.

LISA—Read more about this editor

Got a Story to Tell?

Has anyone ever said you should write a book? Maybe you have some interesting characters in your family or a story or two worth telling. Perhaps you were involved in a defining moment in history. Or maybe you would like to keep your children and grandchildren aware of the family’s roots. Writing a memoir can help preserve history as experienced through your personal perspective. Whether or not you feel the reading public at-large would be interested in your story, there can be other reasons for composing it.

Memoir writing not only recounts history; it helps put the events of your life in order. Writing can help establish a fresh perspective and open new avenues of self-discovery. Digging through your memory banks can produce answers to questions that may have bothered you. It may help you locate lost relatives or clarify family events that have previously been a hazy memory. The reasons for writing a memoir are as varied as we are, but the steps needed to put words to paper are the same—no matter what our personal goals. The real challenge, however, is how to get started.

Getting Started

Like most nonfiction writing, a memoir can best be accomplished by starting with an outline. The outline should be chronological and contain the specific people or events you are most interested in writing about, along with the specific timeframe you would like to cover. To start out by trying to cover your entire life is probably not the best way to go, since it will dilute your story and make the task seem onerous right from the start. Once you have a basic working frame, you can begin to gather information to fill in the blanks around the story. Then, if you feel there is more to be added to the story, you can always add to your outline. Think of each outline entry as a possible chapter in your memoir.

Besides keeping the chapters chronological, it is helpful to put them in a natural linking order. For example, perhaps you have decided to write about moving to the United States from a foreign country when you were five years old. Your initial outline might look like this:

I.                   Living in the USA

A.     The physical move

1.       where you came from

2.      how you traveled

3.      when you moved

4.      who came with you

5.      what you brought

6.      why you moved here

 Note: Try to write as much as you can about each of these points-not just one sentence. Make notes of the people you need to talk to who can provide more information, i.e. those who traveled with you or those who stayed behind. Try to give reasons for what you brought, why you left your homeland, or why you chose a certain geographic area. When you have exhausted all these topics, move on to the next part of your outline, which might be:

 B. Your American neighborhood

 Note: Use the who, what, when, why and where approach again to form the initial structure for your memoir.

The hunt for information will probably be both the most fascinating and the most arduous part of your memoir. First, gather all the material you have at hand: scrapbooks, old photographs and family albums, letters, newspaper clippings, magazines and so forth. Separate them according to their relevance to your outline. Next, note living family members who can provide or share more information with you, or make a list of items you would like to research in the library or online. Most of all, have fun on your hunt for buried family treasure!

Have some experience with memoir-writing? Or questions or ideas about this topic? Leave us a COMMENT to share your thoughts.

IRENE—Read more about this editor

People form impressions of us based on the language we use, whether written or spoken. Our language choices tell people where we are from, whether we are educated or not, or professional business people or not. This is a universal truth with all languages, not only English.

In our last ESL blog, we talked about “Correct English” and how there are some people (Descriptivists) who believe in the educated speaker rule—namely, if an educated native speaker says it, that reflects Standard Language Usage. Others (Prescriptivists) believe that language should be spoken according to a set of rules (generally from Latin or Greek), regardless of how the current language actually functions.

There is yet another set of rules, and that is the way the language actually works. These are rules that native speakers of any language internalize as they acquire their language from childhood. In English, for example we say, She likes bananas. Most native speakers haven’t analyzed that and they cannot state the rule of the “3^rd person s” (likes) in simple, active declarative sentences. However, they know it and they use it. Non-native speakers haven’t internalized these rules and they need to learn them, either for social reasons or professional business reasons.

We can easily hear an accent in spoken English. Accents usually reflect pronunciation, but they can also reflect non-English word order, or non-English word formations. People are generally more forgiving about these issues in spoken English. However, in written English, especially in Academic English or in Business English, these issues become more of a problem.

In written form, non-native English is more easily seen. Sometimes we can identify a person’s native language by the types of errors he or she makes.

Russians and Slovaks, for example, tend to leave off the article before nouns. (I like show. We go to movies.).

Spanish speakers will tend to write or say I have cold instead of I am cold. Or I have 23 years instead of I am 23 years old. This is because in Spanish, the verb tener (to have) is used in these instances, rather than the verb, to be, as we use it in English.

Sometimes an English word is similar to a word in another language, but it really is not the same. For example, the English word embarrassed seems like the Spanish word embarazada, which actually means pregnant. It is no wonder that Spanish speakers will confuse the two, both in meaning and spelling. That woud be fairly embarrassing!

Sometimes certain errors are universal. By this I mean that, because English is unique in one or more aspects, non-native speakers from various language backgrounds will falter and show their accents in written English.

Third person s:  He like cars, instead of He likes cars.

Word order and third person s:   She fight all the time her brother, instead of She fights her brother all the time.

Plural nouns: They have two dog, iInstead of They have two dogs.

The above are only a few examples of accent in written English. There are many more. Usually, the correct forms can be learned in a course or from a book. Often, being aware of the native-speaker rules, will help.

So, what can you do? Check yourself on the above structures, or have someone edit your writing for you. Do you make these types of errors? Record yourself talking about a situation or a person. Then write the same story as a paragraph. Do you notice any differences?

Do you notice any of the problems we just illustrated above? If you do, just practice writing a few sentences using the native-speaker models above for these. The first step is being aware of how you speak and write.

Have some experience with this topic? Or perhaps a question? Leave us a COMMENT to share your thoughts.

MARILYN—Read more about this editor