I have worked under or alongside many different English instructors in a variety of capacities, and something that has always bothered me about the teachings of a select few writing instructors is the promotion of the idea that plagiarism is more about correctness than ethics. Not all instructors teach this, but there are certainly a…
Sentence Parts and Parts of Speech Part 3: What are Subjects, Predicates, Objects, Complements, and Modifiers?
What are the separate parts that make up individual sentences? You might not know all the answers to this question, but you also might not know the point of learning sentence parts. Here’s the thing: understanding the separate parts of a sentence can help you learn how those parts function together, how they are initially…
8 Tips for Proofreading Your Own Work: Improving Your Grammar and Tricking Your Brain to See Your Writing Anew
Everyone needs a proofreader, even the best creative writers and content creators. The truth is that even if we possess the skills to produce error-free writing, we can still write errors into our own work, and proofreading efforts can result in overlooked errors. These overlooked errors can often be the exact same kinds of errors…
Can You Use Wikipedia as a Source? One Time-Saving Research Hack that Uses Wikipedia to Quickly Locate Other Quality Sources
Can you use Wikipedia as a reference in college? If you’re taking a college course, you might find yourself wondering this: can I use Wikipedia for a research paper? The answer you will usually receive is a resounding no. This “no” exists for a good reason: Wikipedia is what we call an “open source” encyclopedia….
Sentence Parts and Parts of Speech Part 2: What Are the Nine Parts of Speech?
Having a basic grasp of English grammar terminology can help you to understand each of the separate parts of a sentence, how those parts function together, how they are constructed and strung together, and how this structure impacts the meaning of the sentence. Furthermore, understanding this lingo will give serious writers a stronger grasp of…
Sentence Parts and Parts of Speech Part 1: What are Words, Phrases, and Clauses?
Understanding English grammar terminology can help you to understand what the separate parts of a sentence are, how those parts function together, how they are constructed and strung together, and how the overall structure impacts the meaning of the sentence. Furthermore, understanding grammar lingo will give serious writers a stronger comprehension of writing advice that…
Playing With Sentence Subjects: Three Creative Writing Tips for Improving Sentence Variety
A lot of creative writers—even intermediate and advanced writers—struggle to create engaging sentences. Issues with variety in sentences can make writing feel dull and colorless, despite how exciting the story might be. Take a look at this sample prose: Risha prepared herself to cast a spell. She looked down at her wand, which was usually…
What is Ethos? Nine Ways Authors Use Ethos in Writing (and Other Mediums of Persuasion)
In many college English classes, students are asked to use ethos in their writing and/or to analyze another author’s use of ethos through a rhetorical analysis. Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher who studied the art of effective communication (also called “rhetoric”), found that effective persuasion comes down to the use of three specific rhetorical appeals:…
How to Use Apostrophes: How Do Apostrophes Work?
The apostrophe is an extremely useful punctuation mark, but many writers don’t understand how to use apostrophes correctly. This blog post will go over the basics of apostrophe use, specific apostrophe rules, and common apostrophe errors. Apostrophes have two primary functions: 1) to form contractions / to show the omission of letters or numbers, and…