Style and Grammar Reminders for the AP (and life)

  1. The essay never uses dead/overused metaphors, similes, or other figures of speech.
  2. The essay never uses long words or phrases where short ones will do.

Revise: Ilya Korovin and also Taylor Abernathy, at the time that the presentation happened, felt like their skills were being utilized poorly, and they felt cheated and without a voice.

Revise: Menali’s life centers around jamming to eighties punk rock bands like the sex pistols.

  1. The essay avoids imprecise diction.

Abbie and Lisa may not be the most pompous members of the class but they often have clever insights when you speak with them.

Consider the word pompous. Is it the best word for the sentence? Cross out and revise if needed.

  1. The essay avoids vague words where more specific ones will do (thing, stuff, good, bad).
  2. The essay avoids unnecessary enhancers such as very, really, a lot.
  3. The essay avoids redundancy (unintentional repetition) both of words and ideas.
  4. The essay avoids the passive voice when appropriate.

Revise? A noxious gas was released.

Revise? The room was left in utter disarray by Katie Mansfield: desks overturned, shredded papers littering the floor, and a ransom notice for the Jelly Bean tub sprawled across the board in red marker.

  1. The essay avoids mismatching within sentences: misplaced/dangling modifiers, subject/verb agreement, subject/pronoun agreement

Revise the misplaced modifier: Alex and Sharon almost wrecked their carsipping on 7-up slurpees and eating hot dogs dripping with mustard.

Revise the misplaced modifier: Megan and Julia store all of the crocheted sweaters for dogs they made in a chest in Erica’s basement.

Revise the dangling modifier: When riding her bike through CreveCoeurPark, a black bear ran across the trail in front of Alexis Eacret.

Revise the subject/verb disagreement: Michael’s use of modifiers amplify the sentence variety in his essay.

Revise the subject/verb/pronoun disagreement: Seventh block were awarded a party for crushing fourth and fifth block in their Words of the Week.

Write your own mismatching sentence, committing one or more of the offenses above:

  1. The essay avoids ‘naked pronouns’—this, that, it, him, her— and instead renames the subject every so often.
  2. The essay places punctuation inside quotation marks, except for colons and semicolons.

Create your own sentence with a properly formatted quotation, either dialogue, or a research source.

  1. Cuts out ‘that’ where it is unneeded. Compare: I have a dog that is five. I have a five-year-old dog.
  2. The essay cites sources properly wherever the idea is not the author’s own.

Which of the following is most standard for in-text citation?

i. (Mitchell)

ii. (Mitchell 3)

iii. (“The Art of Knitting”)

iv. (The Art of Knitting)

  1. Modifiers, especially introductory or mid-sentences ones, are separated by comma(s).

exception: ‘That’ clauses get no comma; ‘Which’ clauses get comma.

Create a sentence with 3 modifiers and use commas properly. See earlier exercise on modifiers for rules.

  1. Semicolons are used to join two INDEPENDENT clausesOR to separate long items in a list that contain their own commas.

Seniorswill graduate soon; we will remain in school to learn.

Lauren celebrated her birthday, dancing about the room; Maggie celebrated 26 days of school left, fist-pumping silently; Andrew celebrated the coming weekend, ripping off his white T-shirt and twirling it above his head like a rally flag.

  1. Colons are used to indicate that an example of the previous statement is to follow, or a list is to follow.