Saving Media from Shameful Mistakes: Problems of Standard Usage! -By Ismail Misbahu

“There are no misunderstandings; there are only failures to communicate.” ~ Senegalese proverb ~

This failure does not discriminate between the simple, intermediate and experienced articulates who prefer writing as their powerful tool for thinking. In all, the cardinal objective of writing is to share, through information messenger, what’s already been understood. Yet poor communication obfuscates meaning. Writing however, helped in organizing thoughts, exploring ideas and defining relationships, bringing ideas together and showing how they differ, identifying causes and effect etcetera. Writing helped in building clarity of details, proper construction of facts and ideas, connecting in new information collected, examining assumptions and logically questioning and analyzing a given state of mind.

This contribution is an extract from The St. Martin’s Guide to Writing. Tt’s the 4th edition published by the St. Martin Press, California State University, New York, 1994. I decided to publish it here for the benefit of our young and amateur writers; and this writer is not an exception.

The article is divided into subsections: Problems of Standard Usage; Problems of Style; Punctuation; and Mechanics.

Before submitting your article for publication, make sure you run editorial corrections. They include proofreading—whether dependently or independently. Here, you’ll see obvious problems (misspelling, a missing comma, unstructured sentences, too much use of passive and obvious statements, vagueness etc) that can be corrected quickly. Here again, the combining task of writing and editing is highly recommendable. It’s a well known fact that writers and researchers often pay much attention and energy on generating ideas not correcting errors, and so far this leads to misguided information. It also exposed the utter vulnerability of the intellectual nerve center of print media: columns/opinions in many newspapers are prone to this vulnerability.

The following guides are therefore manageable helpful:

Problems of Standard Usage

1. End-stop Error. While editing your article, always ask: are any independent clauses fused or run together without proper punctuation or a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or)? Are any independent clauses joined merely with a comma or a conjunctive adverb (however, therefore, thus)? If sentences are run together without proper punctuation or improperly spliced together with a comma, should the sentences be joined with proper punctuation or should they be broken into separate sentences?

2. Sentence Fragments. While editing, always check whether there’s any grammatically incomplete sentences, lacking either a subject or verb or beginning with a subordinate conjunction like although? If so, should they be integrated into adjoining sentences or should they be revised as complete, separate sentences? If any of these fragments are international, are they effective?

3. Mixed Constructions. Does each sentence begin and end with the same structural pattern?

4. Faulty Predication. As you take a review of your article, check whether there’s any logical match between the subject and predicate in each clause or sentence. Examine each sentence separately to see that the subjects and predicates make sense together.

5. Unclear Pronoun Reference. Do all pronouns refer unambiguously to specific antecedents? Check that each pronoun has a clear antecedent.

6. Incomplete Comparison. Are all comparisons complete? Are they all meaningful?

7. Dangling or Misplaced Modifiers. Are all modifying words or phrases placed appropriately in relation to the words they modify?

8. Subject-Verb Agreement. Do all the subjects and verbs agree in number? Be certain that singular subjects have singular verbs, plural subjects have plural verbs. Pay special attention to collective nouns and to sentences with or, either …. or neither … nor.

9. Pronoun-Antecedent-Agreement. Do all pronouns agree with their antecedents in person, number or gender? Pay special attention to indefinite pronouns.

10. Inconsistencies in Verb Tense. Are there any unnecessary shifts in verb tense from one sentence to the next? From one clause to the next?

11. Confusion of Adjective and Adverb. Has an adverb been used to modify a noun or pronoun, particularly when used as a subject complement? Has an adjective been used to modify a verb, adjective, or adverb?

12. Faulty Parallelism. Do all sentence elements in a series have the same grammatical form?

13. Nonstandard Verb Form. Has an incorrect verb form been used? In particular, has an incorrect past participle of an irregular verb been used?

14. Wrong Words or Phrases. While editing your work, take a look at each sentence word by word. Do your chosen words suit your meaning? Are any of the words or phrases you have used acceptable in conversation or informal writing, but not a college assignment? Are there any homophones (words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings) that should be double-checked? Have any final consonants been dropped (‘use to’ for ‘used to’, for example)? Look especially at verb idioms—are there positions used properly?

Problems of Style

1. Strings of Prepositional Phrases. While undertaking your review, check if there’s an excess of prepositional phrases. Circle all prepositions, and if you find three or more prepositional phrases within a single sentence, you may want to revise the sentence.

2. Overuse of Be. Always check if there are too many main verbs that are forms of be (is, are, am, was, were). Circle all main ‘be’ verbs, then look at each line and try to replace it with another, more active verb.

3. Over-nominalization. Are the actions expressed in norms rather than the verbs? Examine each sentence looking for ~ion-Nouns (completion, explanation) and ‘be’ or ‘has’ main verbs. Revise the sentences as necessary to move the action to a verb (complete, explain).

4. Compound-noun Phrase. Are there noun phrases with so many nouns strung together that the phrase requires unravelling? Consider your readers; if they would have trouble understanding any such phrases, rewrite to simplify.

5. Overuse of Passive Voice. Always check if there’s excessive use of passive voice. Is it unclear who the subject doing the action is? Read over your writing for passive constructions and then try rewriting each one in the active voice. Which is better?

6. Wordiness. Why can’t you check your use of words and see whether if every word is necessary? Examine each prepositional phrase—can any be reduced to single wards? (Wordy) Are any words redundant? Read each sentence slowly while looking for unnecessary words. Are there any unnecessary intensifiers (very, really) or hedges (sort of, perhaps)?

7. Vagueness or Obvious Statements. Have you stated things most readers already know, statements that are unlikely to be interesting or new and that may lead readers to question your expertise? Consider in particular the first sentence in each paragraph—is it so general that it can simply be deleted?

8. Inappropriate Words or Phrases. Have you used words or phrases that are too colloquial or informal for college writing, or that seem unnecessarily formal given the writing situation? Are the images you have invented suitable and unstrained, and have you avoided mixed metaphors that make comparisons that do not go together? Have you avoided ‘trite clichés’?

Punctuation

1. Periods. While undertaking your review, make sure you have periods wherever necessary. Are they included with the appropriate abbreviations, at the ends of all sentences, at the ends of indirect questions?

2. Question Marks. Is every direct question (but not indirect question) followed by a question mark?

3. Exclamation Points. Have you used exclamation points as necessary to show unusual emotion or strong emphasis?

Examine each exclamation point in your work to be sure the sentence would not be better without it.

4. Ellipses. Have you used them properly—three in the middle of a sentence and four at the end of a sentence?

5. Commas. Are they used properly and well? Have you inserted commas before coordinating conjunctions, between items in a series, between coordinate adjectives, around parenthetical expressions? When necessary, have you put commas after transitional or introductory phrases and clauses? Are all nonrestrictive clauses and phrases set off with commas? Are all final absolute phrases and contrast phrases set off with a comma? Commas pose so many difficulties that it is probably worth your time to examine each one carefully—just to be sure it belongs.

6. Semicolons. Have you used semicolons correctly and wisely? If you have used this punctuation mark, examine each use to see whether a period, colon, or dash might be better.

7. Colons. Have you used your colons incorrectly following phrases like such as? Are there places where colon might effectively substitute for other punctuation?

8. Dashes. Have you used dashes to set off any material from the rest of a sentence? If so, do they produce the direct effect? Or do they cast too much attention on the material? (Would parenthesis be more subtle?) Are they overused? Be sure that you have not used dashes where other punctuation marks might be more appropriate or less intrusive. For each use, it might be helpful to ask yourself whether there’s any good reason to use a dash instead of a comma.

9. Parenthesis. If you have used parentheses, are you sure they’re the best way to punctuate the sentence? Look at the material they enclose—should it be integrated more closely in the sentence, perhaps with commas or dashes? Look also for any material that seems at all tangential to the discussions—should it be parenthesized? Within any parenthetical material, check to make sure that all other punctuation is correct.

10. Brackets. Have any necessary editorial notes been enclosed in brackets? Has any parenthetical material within parentheses been enclosed in brackets?

11. Apostrophes. While taking your review, check all contractions and possessives to see that apostrophes are used correctly. For situations where you have a choice of using apostrophe with or without an additional s, have you done so consistently?

12. Underlining. Have you underscored all unusual foreign terms and words used as words? Have you correctly underlined all titles of books, newspapers, movies, paintings, and so forth.

13. Quotation Marks. Have you used quotation marks where necessary to indicate direct quotations (but not indirect quotations)? Is your capitalization and punctuation within the quotation marks correct? Have you used quotation marks to punctuate titles of short written works?

14. Abbreviations. Have you used abbreviations? If so, are they appropriate and understandable by your readers? Are they spelled and punctuated as they are in the dictionary? Do they have to be defined on the first use?

15. Capitalization. Examine all capitalization to be sure is proper and consistent. Have you capitalized proper names, all necessary words in titles, any historical events or periods that are commonly capitalized?

16. Hyphenation. Have you broken words properly at the end of a line? Have you inserted hyphens where necessary in compound words? If you are unsure about whether to hyphenate, close up, or treat a word as separate multiple words, check a dictionary. If you have a word that is not shown in the dictionary, decide for yourself and follow your usage consistently. Take a special look at all compound adjectives that precede nouns: Would hyphenating them help the reader?

17. Numbers. Have you used numerals and words consistently?

18. Spelling. Is anything misspelled? Never hesitate or reach for the dictionary, and be on the lookout for words that give everyone troubled—homophones, words with prefixes or suffixes, plurals.

Until I read this article, I couldn’t believe myself making all these mistakes! So to you my humble writers, mates and elderly!

Ismail Misbahu wrote via
ismailmusbahu15@gmail.com.