Grammar: Grammatical Number and Subject / Verb Agreement Essay

Submitted By rainebow
Words: 438
Pages: 2

Semi – Colon fault. A semi – colon should be used ONLY to 1) Separate two complete clauses or 2) to separate the elements of complete list.

Literary present – Stick to the present tense when talking about literature.

Tense Shift - Verb tenses should be consistent throughout your writing in order to make it clear when an action takes place. You will confuse your reader by switching from one tense to another within the same sentence or paragraph. When discussing literature or a published source document of some kind, readers expect you to use the present form, even though the source you are writing may have been written many years ago. When writing an essay about historical events, however, readers generally expect that you use the past tense.

(P/A) Pronoun/ Antecedent Agreement – A pronoun is usually refers to something earlier in the text. The thing to which it is refers is known as the pronoun’s antecedent. A pronoun and its antecedent must match in number; a singular noun must be used when referring to a singular noun and a plural pronoun must be used when referring to a plural noun.

(S/V) Subject/ Verb Agreement – Subject and verbs should match in number and person. Singular subjects require singular verbs; plural subjects require plural verbs.

(C/S) A sentence must have both a subject and a main verb in order to be complete, but it cannot have more than one subject or main verb. A comma splice is a variety of run-on sentence that occurs when two complete sentences, each with its own subject and verb, are joined mistakenly by a comma. There are generally three methods of correcting this problem 1) Replace the