Juan Claudio S. Castro
Grammar plays a significant role in written communications. It governs the formation and arrangement of words, phrases, and clauses. It sets uniformity of written language elements across different writing styles with the end of clear and accurate conveyance of the writer’s intended meaning. By considering several measures, you can generally ensure the grammatical correctness of your write-up while keeping in mind the timeliness of submission.
Check your sentences. Except in cases where journalistic parlance is used, in which case fragments are as acceptable as whole sentences, make sure that every sentence conforms to the prescriptive requirements of sentence construction, wherein a sentence must contain at least a subject and a verb. The subject is the doer of the action, which may be a noun or pronoun. Meanwhile, the predicate, usually represented by the verb, tells an action or helps describe the subject. The combination of the subject and the verb must express a complete thought: that is, it does not rely on any unmentioned words to stand alone.
Watch out for any personal pronouns used as predicate nominatives. These pronouns must exist in a nominative case like “she” instead of object form “her” in “The author is she” (not “The author is her”).
Consider the subject-verb agreement. To do this, first, locate all verbs in every sentence. Then check whether each verb adheres to the number of its subject. After which, verify the form of the main verbs following the nine central modals “can,” “could,” “will,” “would,” “may,” “might,” “shall,” “should,” and “must.” Main verbs appearing after these auxiliary verbs are in base form like “will cherish” and “must write.”
Be mindful of commas. Commas are used to present items within a series; to separate independent clauses in compound sentences whose conjunctions connect said clauses in equal rank, in which case, the comma is placed before such conjunctions; and to separate a dependent clause situated at the very beginning of the sentence from the following independent clause.
Follow proper capitalization. Specific names must be capitalized. As regards to designations in organizations, capitalize only the actual positions of persons written before their names like “Captain Courtney Sullivan.” Descriptive designations must be written in the lower case as in “operations chief Ashley Krashen.”
Check the order of your adjectives. Whenever you used two or more adjectives to describe something, make sure they are written in this sequence: quantity, perception, size, shape, age, color, nationality, material used to create the object, and purpose which said object caters to.
Proximity of modifiers. Finally, inspect the proximity of adjective phrases and adverb phrases to the word being modified: these phrases must be placed near the described word. This proximity rules out any possibility of misplaced modifiers in your sentences.
By observing these post-writing steps, you could avoid common grammatical errors and confusion of ideas on your written outputs. These will generally ensure that your write-up conforms to school grammar, be it for a class requirement or workplace submission.
