Grammar and punctuation, are always things that have confused me yet are a crucial part in the way that we write. I haven’t had a real lesson in grammar or punctuation lesson since the sixth grade. We would watch the Schoolhouse Rock videos and that was realistically the extent of the grammar lessons that I received in grade school. I was only given a very brief lesson on punctuation as well. Punctuation I think some teachers through grade school didn’t really think to teach because there are so many tools within apps like Microsoft word that could help us with that. The level of understanding grammar, punctuation and usage that I am expected to be at is not where I am. We are already expected to know all these things before we even get to college. Therefore, there are no formal lessons on grammar or punctuation at the higher levels.
It has always been something that I struggled with because I haven’t had much experience with it. Whenever I would get papers back, there wouldn’t be many comments about grammar and punctuation, but I would still get a 4/5 on the rubric for that section without even knowing what I did wrong. I understand that it’s a lot to focus on but it’s something that I need to know how to do. Dr. McCoy commented on my previous blog post about my specific punctuation she mentions my excessive use of commas, the use of semicolons that weren’t particularly correct and certain homonyms that were used incorrectly. The homonyms were more of a lack of proofreading rather than a lack of knowledge. However, with the punctuation, I have no idea what I’m doing. She also posed the question of “Are these things a matter of needing to acquire/deepen skills? A matter of proofreading? Of needing a mini-lesson on punctuation and spelling?…These are little things—why am I picking on them now?” To answer her question, she is picking on these little things now because I have evolved with the structure of my writing and have improved immensely (or at least I think so) on the solidification of my ideas. Now that I have grown more confident in those things with my writing, this is the next thing that I need to focus on. Coincidentally, when Dr. McCoy made the comment about this pattern in my writing, I have reached the modules of INTD starting to focus on grammar, usage and punctuation.
After completing these three modules, I learned things that I should have learned way before these modules. Like the noun (or phrase) that a pronoun is replacing is called an antecedent. Also, some ways that I use grammar are incorrect and I had no idea. For example, I know that I change the tense that I write in a lot, but I can never seem to catch it when I’m proofreading. There is also an order with adjectives that I had no idea about. The module tells us that the order is, “Determiner, opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, and purpose.” When using adjectives of the same category, they should be separated by a comma. I liked the comparison that was made for starting sentences with conjunctions: the sentence or sentence fragment that starts with the conjunction is the ladder and a ladder can’t stand on its own therefore, it needs a tree to lean on. This tree is another sentence fragment.
The punctuation module is the more important one for me. I have more knowledge with grammar than I do with punctuation. I understand that punctuation is difficult as well as grammar, but like I mentioned before, I do not have a lot of knowledge on punctuation. I think the reason that punctuation is so hard for me is that because when people talk, you don’t hear punctuation. In her comments, Dr. McCoy mentioned what is called a comma splice? Before completing the module, I didn’t know what that was. She also mentioned that I did not use semicolons properly. Honestly, I don’t know how to use them. I just used it because I’ve seen other people use them.
During the modules I found things with punctuation that I didn’t know: 1. If you are not starting a new sentence and using a transition word, you must use a semicolon before that word. 2. There is such thing as a serial comma…a serial comma is a comma that comes before the word and when listing things that consists of three or more things. 3. Commas are also not supposed to be (between the subject and verb of a sentence, after any number, before and preposition, and before any conjunction). 4. Semicolons and colons are not interchangeable. Semicolons can be used when separating things in a list when those items already have commas. Whereas colons are used after complete sentences and to formulate lists.
Although I completed these modules, my confidence with grammar and punctuation is still very low. We’ve talked about old habits and previous training that has come back to haunt us in our writing but with punctuation and grammar, I have very little previous training which has left me with no bad habits to break. But my ignorance is what has set me back.