OFFLIMITS PRONOUNS I me mine myself ourselves us

OFF-LIMITS PRONOUNS!!! I me mine myself ourselves us we yourself yourselves It is never okay to use these in formal essay writing! Memorize them!

Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement Common error: If one wants to succeed in corporate life, they have to know the rules of the game. � The pronouns are bold and underlined � “One” is a singular pronoun � “They” is a plural pronoun; therefore, it does not agree with its antecedent (“one”) So how do you fix it? � If one wants to succeed in corporate life, he or she has to know the rules of the game.

Parallelism Common error: The master carpenter showed us how to countersink the nails, how to varnish the wood, and getting a smooth surface was also demonstrated. � The series (list) does not have a similar grammatical structure � Parallelism puts the content of a sentence into a regonizable pattern So how do you fix it? � The master carpenter showed us how to countersink the nails, varnish the wood, and get a smooth surface.

Run-on Sentences The sun is high, put on some sunblock. � It is important to realize that the length of a sentence really has nothing to do with whether a sentence is a run-on or not. � When two independent clauses are connected by only a comma, they constitute a run-on sentence that is called a comma-splice. Mr. Nguyen has sent his four children to Ivy League colleges, however, he has sacrificed his health working day and night in that dusty bakery. � Where that first comma appears, we could have used either a period — and started a new sentence — or a semicolon.

Fragments A SENTENCE FRAGMENT fails to be a sentence in the sense that it cannot stand by itself. It does not contain even one independent clause. Working far into the night in an effort to salvage her little boat. In Japan, during the last war and just before the armistice. Some of the students working in Professor Espinoza's laboratory last semester. Even though he had the better arguments and was by far the more powerful speaker.