English X
Punctuation and Grammar Mistakes
Commonly Made in Essays
1. Incorrect introduction of quoted material.
The Knight in the Canterbury Tales prologue is described as: (a)
He had done nobly on his sovereign’s wars
And ridden into battle, no man more
As well in Christian as in heathen places,
And ever honoured for his noble grace (Canterbury Tales 4). (b)
(c) The Knight is portrayed as tough, masculine, and honorable.
Problems:
a. The sentence introducing the quote does not grammatically lead into the quote; it should say something like this: The Knight described in the prologue to the Canterbury Tales is a brave and hard-fighting man:
b. Parenthetical notation, when applied to an indented quote, should be punctuated exactly as in the original text; the parenthetical reference should be placed on the next line. Hence:
And ever honoured for his noble grace.
(Canterbury Tales 4)
c. While the indented quote may be single-spaced (it can also be double-spaced), you must make sure that you maintain double-spacing before and after the quote.
1. Make sure you double-space all the text (exclusive of indented quotes) of your essay.
2. Never, after a quote, say “from this quotation,” or “As we see in this quote,” etc. Example:
(a) “There was a knight who was a lusty liver.
One day as he came riding from the river
He saw a maiden walking all forlorn
Ahead of him, alone as she was born.
And of that maiden, in spite of all she said,
By very force he took her maidenhead.” (b)
From this quotation it is apparent that the knight was a very violent man. (c)
(a): Quotes longer than 4 lines must be indented (and may be single spaced or double-spaced). Never use quotation marks to surround indented quotations; they should appear on your paper exactly as they do in the original text (of course, if there are quotes in the original, there should be in your version, too).
(b): Remember to include parenthetical reference on the next line (CT 282)
(c): Never say “from this quotation”; rather, in this case, say something such as “this knight’s brutal and violent nature is apparent here and is emphasized by the narrator’s simple and straightforward way of telling about the event.” Also, make sure you use the historical present when referring to events as they occur in the text (e.g., the knight “IS” a very violent man, not “WAS” a very violent man.
3. Incorrect use of “however”: However should never begin a sentence unless you are using it as an adverbial modifier (“However fast the boy ran, he couldn’t catch the fleeing robber” is correct). “However” should be set off with commas (, however, ) or, if it is connecting two complete sentences, a semi-colon and a comma (; however,).
Example: “The knight readily makes a promise to the old woman in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” however when faced with the consequences he tries to get out of the situation.”
This is a run-on sentence. It should be punctuated in the following way:
“The knight readily makes a promise to the old woman in the “Wife of Bath’s Tale”; however, when faced with the consequences, he tries to get out of the situation.”
4. Never use contractions in formal writing; write out the words in full (“is not” not isn’t”).
5. Do not confuse “effects” with “affects”: effect is a noun (think of “sound effects”) except under unusual conditions; affect is the verb (“Drinking affects one’s ability to drive a car.”)
6. Never say “the fact that”; this is a wordy and utterly unnecessary construction.
7. Never begin a body paragraph with a quotation; the first sentence should be transitional and/or the topic sentence for the paragraph. The quote should come after the topic sentence and after it has been introduced.
Example:
(a) . “. . . a fair and gentle knight. . with face like bread of whitest grain. His lips were red as rose, And his complexion like a stain Of Scarlet red, and I maintain He had a seemly nose” (Pages 177-178) (b) Both the stereotypical view, and broadened view of a knight is a very macho, and manly, and definitely as opposite as possible from a woman.
This sentence (if it may be called a sentence) should have been reworked to read something like this:
In Chaucer, the view is advanced that a knight should possess masculine characteristics. The Knight who accompanies the pilgrims is described in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales as a brave and fierce warrior, one “. . . Who from the day on which he first began / To ride abroad had followed chivalry, / Truth, honour, generousness, and courtesy” (CT 4). In “The Tale of Sir Topaz,” however, Chaucer can be seen burlesquing the idea of noble chivalry when he describes his hero in very different terms:
Sir Topaz grew a doughty swain,
With face like bread of whitest grain.
His lips were red as rose,
And his complexion like a stain
Of scarlet red, and I maintain
He had a seemly nose.
(CT 178)
The face of a hard-fighting crusader, whose life has been spent out of doors under conditions of hardship, is hardly likely to resemble “white bread”; and “rose red” lips and seemly noses seem to describe a “fair damosel” far more appropriately than a “doughty” warrior.
8. An ellipsis consists of three dots (. . .) with spaces between and around all of them; if it includes end punctuation of any sort, it is written as four dots of which the first immediately follows the previous word (like a normal period) and the rest are again separated by spaces.
[Example: Captain McGlue was often heard to remark in the presence of his sister that “he never had met a man his wife had not wished to marry. . . .”]
9. Never use personal pronouns in your argument (i.e., never say “I feel . . . I think . . . I wish to say . . . etc.). Do not say “we” or “me”either.
Instead of saying, “I believe Chaucer is using the Pardoner to express his disgust with the corruption of the Church,” say instead: “by making the Pardoner both an immoral man and a hypocrite, Chaucer is indicating his disgust with the Church.”
10. Use a colon before a quote.
Example:
Chaucer depicts Sir Topaz as epicene by using inappropriately feminine descriptive terms:
Sir Topaz grew a doughty swain
With face like bread of whitest grain. . . .
11. Do not say “due to” when you mean “through,” “owing to,” or “because of”; correctly used, “due to” is synonymous with attributable to.
Examples:
Correct: “The accident was due to bad weather”
“Murgatroyd’s losses in the stock market were due to his appalling stupidity.”
Incorrect: “Peterkin lost his job at the Quicky-Burger due to his slovenly habits and heroin addiction.”
Correct: “Peterkin lost his job at the Quicky-Burger because of his slovenly work habits and heroin addiction.”
12. Periods and commas go inside quotation marks; colons and semi-colons go outside. With parenthetical notation, all end punctuation marks except for exclamation points and question marks go OUTSIDE the parentheses.
“The dog says “bow-wow.”
“The cat, which says ‘meow,’ is very fat and stupid.”
Jeff says, “This canary cannot sing”; he is wrong, though. It merely refuses to sing for him.
“Accept my word in truth for all it’s worth” (Canterbury Tales 416).
13. A dash (--) is composed of two hyphens (-). Hence: “And if there’s anything else-some little task that I can do for you-well only ask” is incorrect.
It should read: “And if there’s anything else--some little task that I can do for you--well only ask”
14. A). Shall and Will: “Will” is used as the future marker for all second and third person future tense conjugations EXCEPT when extreme emphasis is intended.
Examples: Normal: “The pardoner will usually try to cheat and steal from his audience.”
With emphasis: “The pardoner shall refrain from cheating today, as it is Halloween,” said the presiding judge.
15. B). With the first person future, the above principle is reversed:
Examples: Normal: “I shall cheat everybody equally,” said the pardoner.
With emphasis: “I will cheat you, you enormous fool,” said the pardoner to Sir Oliphant.
16. “One another” refers to three or more persons. “Each other” refers to exactly two.
Examples:
“Both characters are trying to uncover each other’s true identity”
“All the husbands of the Wife of Bath were jealous of one another”
17. Farther versus further.
“farther” is used specifically for physical distance: “Boston is farther from Greenwich than New York is.”
“further” is used to imply metaphoric distance: “Kant takes ideas from Jean-Jacques Rosseau and further develops them.” “Further along in the story, the knight weds the old hag.”
18. Subjunctive with “if” clauses. Whenever you construct an “if” clause, the verb form must be in the subjunctive mood (note: this really only applies to the verb “to be,” since the subjunctive mood barely exists in English). Basically, after “if” use “were” in place of “was.”
Example:
“If I were a rich man, I would buy you an apartment in Trump Tower for your poodle Fifi.”