Frederick Douglass Skills and Explanations

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Frederick Douglass Skills and Explanations
Day 1
Dangling Modifiers Modifiers give additional
information. They need to be close to the word
or words that they modify. A dangling modifier
is a modifier that does not seem to modify
anything. To correct this error, the sentence in
which it appears needs to be rearranged or
rewritten entirely.
Use of a Colon between Complete Sentences If you
have two complete sentences on either side of a
colon, capitalize the first word of the second
sentence. I wonder if Sally is happy Sally had
always found happiness elusive.
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Day 2
Intensive Pronouns Intensive pronouns are used to
emphasize a subject by replacing the antecedent
to avoid repeating the noun. The intensive
pronouns in English are the following myself,
yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves,
yourselves, and themselves. (Hisself and
theirself and theirselves are incorrect.)
The Conjunction Like versus As if The phrase as
if is preferred in formal writing rather than the
word like which is common in everyday speech.
The verb after as if is usually subjunctive. The
golem looked like it was going to attack my
mother-in-law. Incorrect The golem looked as if
it were going to attack my mother-in-law. Correct
Compound Sentence A compound sentence is a
sentence comprised of two complete independent
clauses joined with a comma and a coordinating
conjunction.
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Day 3
Punctuating titles Put quotations marks around
the titles of essays, short stories, poems,
one-act plays, songs, newspaper articles and
magazine articles. Underline or italicize the
titles of book-length works, book-length poems,
full-length plays, television shows, album or CD
titles, titles of movies and names of newspapers
and magazines.
Unclear Antecedent An antecedent is the noun to
which a pronoun refers. If the antecedent is
unclear-difficult to decide the noun to which the
pronoun refers-correct the pronoun by using a
specific noun in its place. If the pronouns you
and they are used, make sure that there is
actually an antecedent identifiable in the
passage. Be careful not to use the same
propsition twice to refer to two different
antecedents. At times, a sentence can be
rewritten to bring the pronoun closer to its
antecedent and thus make the antecedent
clear. Tim asked him if he knew him. To whom do
the him's refer? Tim asked Marcus if Marcus knew
Michael.
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Forming the Past Participle The past participle
of regular verbs is formed by adding -d or -ed to
the base form of the verb. Some past participles
are irregular (do not follow the above formation
rule). A few of these are the following beat
beaten speak spoken begin begun eat
eaten become become fly flown leave
left fall fallen feel felt make
made drive driven give given
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Day 4
Participles A participle is a word created from a
verb that is used as an adjective. There are two
types of participles--the present participle that
end in -ing and past participles that end in -ed,
-en, -d, -t or -n. Present participle singing
as in "the singing nun" walking as in "the
walking dude" Past participle squandered as in
"the squandered money" eaten as in "the eaten
soup"
Participial Phrase A participial phrase is a
phrase made up from a participle plus
modifier(s)/nouns/pronoun(s)/or noun phrase(s).
It needs to be near whatever it is modifying.
Hypen with Prefix Ex- When using the prefix ex-,
put a hyphen after ex- and before the root word.
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Day 5
Comma after Introductory Phrases Use a comma
after a phrase that introduces a sentence.
Sequence of Verb Tenses In a sentence with two
clauses, the verbs must show simultaneous
occurance (the events occured at the same time)
or sequence of occurance (one event occured
before or after the other event). If one verb is
in the past tense and another verb occured before
it, the verb that occured first needs to be in
the pluperfect or past perfect tense (using the
helping verbs had, has etcetera). If one verb is
in the past tense and another verb that occured
at the same time is in the present, you must
change the second verb so that both verbs are in
the same tense. Because she murdered him,
Myron did not come to Sally's party.
Incorrect Because she had murdered him, Myron did
not come to Sally's party.Correct We went to the
party and play many games. Incorrect We went to
the party and played many games. Correct
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Structure of an Outline 1. In order to number or
letter a section, you must have at least two
topics you cannot have just an A section
without a B or a 1 without a 2 and so forth. 2.
You begin with capitalized Roman numerals (I, II,
III, IV, V, VI). 3. Under each Roman numeral,
you use capitalized letters of the alphabet. 4.
Under each capitalized letter, you use
numerals. 5. Under each numeral, you use
lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii, iv, v, vi).