Image Grammar

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Image Grammar

• Painting with Words

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How is the writer like an artist?

• Writers paint images of life using techniques
  similar to an artists brush strokes on a canvas.

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What are the brush strokes that writers use?

• Brush strokes are fundamental artistic elements
  of grammar that bring depth, flow, tone, and
  rhythm to a piece of writing. They allow a reader
  to experience.

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Paint pictures with words.

• Compare 1 - It was winter. Everything was
  frozen and white with snow. Snow had fallen from
  the sky for days. The weather was horrible.

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Paint pictures with words.

• 2 Mossflower lay deep in the grip of midwinter
  beneath a sky of leaden gray that showed tinges
  of scarlet and orange on the horizon. A cold
  mantle of snow draped the landscape, covering the
  flatlands to the west. Snow was everywhere,
  filling the ditches, drifting high against the
  hedgerows, making paths invisible, smoothing the
  contours of earth in its white embrace. Author
  Brian Jacques

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What are the five basic brush strokes?

• -Participles -Absolutes
• -Appositives -Action Verbs
• -Adjectives Shifted out of order

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Painting with Participles

• One form of the PARTICIPLE is a
• ing verb tagged on the beginning or end of a
  sentence.

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A writer/artist might describe the scene

• Original sentence The diamond-scaled snakes
  attacked their prey.
• OR
• Revised sentence with a few participles
  Hissing, slithering, and coiling, the
  diamond-scaled snakes attacked their prey.

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Participial Phrase

• Another revised sentence with participles
  phrases
• Hissing their forked red tongues and coiling
  their cold bodies, the diamond-scaled snakes
  attacked their prey.

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PARTICIPLES evoke action!

• Using single participles creates rapid movement.
• Hissing, slithering, and coiling
• Using expanded phrases add detail at a slower but
  equally intense pace.
• Hissing their forked red tongues and coiling
  their cold bodies

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Participles can also end with ed.

• Examples
• Preoccupied, distracted and unfocused, Jane
  swerved as she drove along the slippery road.
• Trapped in the pouring rain and distracted by
  its intensity, Jane swerved as she drove along
  the slippery road.

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Participles Painted by Hemingway

• Shifting the weight of the line to his left
  shoulder and kneeling carefully, he washed his
  hand in the ocean and held it there, submerged,
  for more than a minute, watching the blood trail
  away and the steady movement of the water against
  his hand as the boat moved.
• --- Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

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PARTICIPLES are not VERBS

• A participle is a form of a verb that can act as
  an adjective.
• They are verbs that have been changed by adding
  an ed or ing ending BUT they are used to
  describe the subject of the sentence.

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Participles and participial phrases are extra
descriptions

• The sentence without them must be complete
• They must be offset by commas
• Verbs that end in ing or ed (called
  participles) only work if they are extra
  descriptions for the subject, not when they are
  normal verbs
• They are not adverbs, which are verbs often
  ending in ly

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Student Example

• Base Sentence/Independent Clause
• The Olympic long jumper thrust the weight of is
  whole body forward.
• Flying through the air on the wings of a dream,
  the Olympic long jumper thrust the weight of his
  whole body forward.
• --- Cathleen Conry

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Student Example

• Base Sentence/Independent Clause
• The rhino looked for freedom.
• The rhino, trapped in the tangled rope, looked
  for freedom.
• --- Erika Schreckengost

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Remember

• Single participles rapid movement
• Participial phrases slower, but equally intense
  pace

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i-Try

• Add participles or participial phrases to the
  following base sentences
• 1 The cats pounced on the ball of yarn.
• 2 The dancer flew across the stage.
• 3 The enraged dog attacked the intruder.

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Check out these two common mistakes and see if
you can find the error and fix them

• My lab assistant Skippy twittered with
  craziness.
• The sink is leaking like a babys diaper.
• Susan, energetically like a dog who is happy to
  see its master, couldnt contain her excitement.