The Writing Dead: How to Bring Your Grammar Back to Life

The Writing Dead: How to Bring Your Grammar Back to Life

If you’re anything like me, the return of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” has you preparing for the imminent zombie apocalypse. While the prospect of battling walkers for survival is both exciting and terrifying, there is another danger lurking about Auburn to prepare for: writing assignments. Here are a few tips for dealing with the scariest grammar issues.

1. The Comma Splice

This may seem like a daunting term, but it is really quite simple. A comma splice occurs when you use a comma to separate two statements that could stand on their own. Let’s look at an example.

“Rick didn’t reinforce the fence soon enough, walkers pushed it down.”

Much like the fence, a comma simply isn’t strong enough to separate these statements. There are a few ways to solve this problem. You can replace the comma with a period or a semi-colon, or you can add a conjunction. For example:

“Rick didn’t reinforce the fence soon enough, so walkers pushed it down.”

Or

“Since Rick didn’t reinforce the fence soon enough, walkers pushed it down.”

If you feel you are in danger of using a comma splice, try looking at the statements on each side of the comma; if they can function as full sentences on their own, a comma is not enough to separate them.

2. The Dangling Modifier

From “The Walking Dead,” we know that dangling arms, jaws, and legs can be horrifying and gross. So can dangling modifiers. A dangling modifier occurs when you use a word or phrase to describe something, but do not name the subject you are describing. For example,

“Having killed all the walkers with her sword, the building could be entered.”

The problem here is that we don’t know who killed the walkers. In fact, the way this sentence is set up we would think that the building killed the walkers, and that makes no sense. How can we fix this? We need to name the subject that did the action. So, we can say,

“Having killed all the walkers with her sword, Michonne could enter the building”

Or

“After Michonne killed all the walkers with her sword, the building could be entered.”

The important thing to remember is that any time an action is performed, the sentence needs to clearly indicate who or what is doing that action.

3. The Misunderstood Semicolon

Just like Rick is often afraid to let his son Carl do anything useful, many writers avoid using semicolons for fear that they will do more harm than good. Even if your semicolons have a history of wandering off into places they don’t belong, you may find that with a few guidelines they are actually quite useful. So what are semicolons good for? As mentioned above, they can be used to fix comma splices. They are particularly helpful when you have two sentences that are closely related, but could stand on their own. For example,

“Carl is no longer a child; he is strong enough to fight.”

While these two statements could be written as separate sentences, using a semicolon shows their relationship to each other. This can be a good way to vary your sentence structure.

Another way to use a semicolon is to separate lists that have commas in the individual list items. So you could write,

“The groups after the prison’s destruction are Rick, Carl, and Michonne; Beth and Daryl; Sasha, Bob, and Maggie; and Tyreese, Lizzie, Mika, and Judith.”

Now that you are armed with these grammar tips, you should feel prepared to take on even the grittiest of writing assignments. Still need help? Come see us at the Miller Writing Center!

- Molly

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The Simple, the Profound, the Comma

“When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”

-Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146

19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was a master of being obscurely profound. Though this makes his writing rich in interpretation, it makes his thought difficult to understand. So how do we understand what appears to be so profound? Start with what’s simple: the comma. In this post, we’ll look at three ways this little wonder can combine and separate clauses, giving you the power to manipulate the meaning of sentences and best express what you want to say.

 

1. Between a dependent and independent clause:

 

We see this use of the comma in Nietzsche’s quote:

Ex.) “When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”

The comma separates the dependent clause, “when you look into an abyss,” from the independent clause, “the abyss also looks into you.”

An independent clause can stand as a sentence on its own, having at least a subject and an intransitive verb (an action and something doing that action) but often having a subject, verb, and object (an action, something doing that action, and something to which that action is done).

A dependent clause cannot stand on its own and requires something to complete it.

2. Between independent clauses

 

Two independent clauses separated by only a comma is called a comma splice.

Here is an example of what NOT to do with two independent clauses:

Ex.) “I found a wild Thesis Essayus in RBD today, I obliterated the awful thing.”

The best way to use a comma between two independent clauses requires a coordinating conjunction. Each of these conjunctions is signified in the acronym FANBOY (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet). If your first independent clause precedes a comma and a conjunction, then you can slap your second independent clause on the end without suffering the slightest grammatical qualm. Just make sure the independent clauses aren’t too unrelated, such as:

Ex.) “I found a wild Thesis Essayus in RBD today, and the abyss also looks into you.”

*Commaless Bonus Tip: You can use a coordinating conjunction to combine an independent clause with a dependent clause without a comma.

Ex.) “I looked into an abyss and felt like it was judging me.”

Just make sure this doesn’t create confusion or skew obscure the sentence’s meaning.

3. With nonrestrictive clauses

 

Nonrestrictive clauses are clauses that, if removed, would not change the meaning of the sentence.

Ex.) “Friedrich looked into an abyss, which was wonderfully beautiful, and was scared.”

In this example, “which was wonderfully beautiful” is a nonrestrictive clause. It does not specify into which abyss Friedrich looked, and neither the subject nor object change if we remove it. Nonrestrictive clauses, as we see above, are set off by commas, one on each side.

If we were to say:

Ex.) “Friedrich looked into an abyss that was wonderfully beautiful and was scared.”

“That was wonderfully beautiful” is a restrictive clause, specifying into which abyss Friedrich looked. If we removed this clause, the meaning of the sentence would change, for then we would not know that Friedrich looked into the wonderfully beautiful abyss. There could be several abysses, and, without the specifying quality of the restrictive clause, Friedrich could have looked into any one of them.

We’ve covered three important ways that commas function with clauses, independent, dependent, restrictive, and nonrestrictive. The little marvel-mark has given us a base for discovering the profound by exhibiting some of its own power, but what do we do to further understand Nietzsche’s quote, his writings, and all of German Philosophy? Unless you want to dive head first into the abyss, I advise moving on to another simple mark: the period.

Sincerely,
Carson

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