Assignment: Choose two essays-one should be the personal essay since every
student needs to revise that one anyway-do the following and mark your revisions
in the margin:
1. Combine two sets of three sentences each into one using subordination.
2. Find your longest sentence. What is the length of the sentence before it? After? If that long sentence is not either preceded or followed by a short sentence, change one of them to a short sentence.
3. Count your parallel constructions. If there are fewer than three in the paper, recast three sentence so they contain parallel elements, phrases or longer.
4. In an essay other than the personal essay, find three sentences that use "to be" verbs which would work better with action verbs. Recast these sentences using action verbs.
5. Recast four sentences which begin with the subject (of the sentence) to begin with a prepositional phrases, subordinate clause, a verbal form or an infinitive.
6. Check you comma use by applying these four rules:
a. Use a comma before and, but, for, or, nor, so, yet, and still when those
words join independent clauses.
b. Use a comma between all terms in a series.
c. Use a comma to set off parenthetical openers and after-thoughts.
d. Use two commas to enclose parenthetical insertions and appositives.
7. Have you used any dashes? If not, find a sentence that would improve with a dash and recast it.
8. Have you inverted any sentence? If not, recast one.
9. Have you used any semicolons? If not, find a sentence or pair of sentences that would be better punctuated with a semicolon and recast.
10. Find all which clauses and recast half of them to eliminate "which."
