Style: not what you write, but how you write it. Your ideas may be brilliant, but if your conventions and style are weak, your ideas don’t have the chance to be perceived as brilliant.

Diction Diction is directly tied to word choice. A strong writer chooses specific words to invoke certain pictures or emotions/attitude. Word choice is dependent on not just the denotative meaning of a word, but also the connotative meaning. This is why just randomly choosing a word from the thesaurus doesn’t always work.

Conventions You are expected to demonstrate an understanding of conventions at your grade level, not just the easy ones you learned in elementary school. Accurate conventions will keep your ideas from being misinterpreted or disregarded. “Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.” ― Lynne Truss

Conventions- Basic errors: potential for a level 1 score if inaccurate. its/it ’ s, there/their/they ’ re, where/wear, are/our (WOD) Capitalization. Beginning of sentence, proper names (including novel titles), and “ I ” Don’t capitalize words that shouldn’t be: “In the Novel.” Put a period at the end of a sentence. A question mark at the end of a question.

Underline/Italicize or Use quotation marks? Underline/italicize Movies Books Anthologies Text books Television show titles Magazine titles Play titles Quotation Marks “ “ Song titles Short stories Magazine/newspaper article Chapter title Television episode title Poem titles

Commas- this convention can change your meaning., A comma goes between two sentences connected with an “and, but, or, either, because (conjunctions)”. A comma goes between each piece of a list longer than 2. Red, white, and blue. A comma goes after an introductory clause: Like all 10 year olds, my son likes to play outside. A comma goes before a quotation: He said, “I want it to snow!” A comma separates a word/clause/sentence segment that is inserted for detail but not part of main sentence (an interrupter): The game, the final one of the season, began at 2 o’clock.

It can go terribly, terribly wrong… We all know the example: “He eats, shoots, and leaves” But what about this one? 

Apostrophe ‘ The apostrophe is used in two situations: to show a possession and to combine two words (contractions). WORD TO THE LEARNER: in an academic paper, don’t use contractions, that way you will only have apostrophes to show possession. Possession: That is Brian ’ s book. You do not use an apostrophe for possessive pronouns. Contraction: “ I ’ ll ” for “ I will ”, “ Can ’ t ” for “ can not ”, “ Aren ’ t ” for “ are not ”, “ It ’ s ” for “ it is ”, etc

But if an apostrophe shows possession… Then why wouldn’t I use an apostrophe when I want to say that something belongs to “it” It’s place on the shelf. It is place on the shelf? “It” is a possessive pronoun, so it doesn’t need an additional possession apostrophe. Putting an apostrophe with the it is like using an apostrophe in the following way: His’s book.Their’s book. Her’s book.Our’s book.

Semicolons/Semi-colon ; A semi-colon can be complicated, but if you remember one BIG rule, you should be able to correctly use them. A semi-colon can be replaced by a period. A semi-colon connects two complete sentences in order to make the connection between them stronger. A semi- colon is not followed by a conjunction. This morning it was raining cats and dogs; it made the commute into work very difficult. I like dogs; however, the little yappy dog next door makes me rethink my desire for one.

Colon : A colon is used to highlight a piece of text: its job is to bring attention to the next piece of information. There is usually a complete sentence leading to a colon. I have three favorite vacation spots in the United States: Florida, Virginia, and Vermont.

Parallel Structure- we will work on this later as well. When you are writing a complex sentence, sometimes you make parallel errors: errors that make a sentence incorrect. Incorrect: “With the medal counts and flag ceremonies, today's Olympians sometimes seem to be proving their countries' superiority more than to demonstrate individual talent.” Correct: “With the medal counts and flag ceremonies, today’s Olympians sometimes seem to be proving their countries’ superiority rather than demonstrating individual talent”

Citing sources In text If you refer to the title and author you don’t have to put the author’s name in the parenthesis, just the page number. If you don’t refer to the author or source, then you need to put the author’s last name followed by a page number. If it is an online article, you do not list page numbers. Works Cited Page The last page should include a works cited page. Put in every source you cite in the text. Use an online citation builder to create the citation. *There are so many rules, and changes to the rules that it’s better to just use that than to memorize the format of so many different types of sources.

Are conventions really such a big deal?

As you work on revisions for your paragraphs… I expect you to revise your paragraphs to make them indicative of your level of skill when the full writing process is used.

Documentary Charles Kernaghan “Ship Breaking in Bangladesh” Organization: Unite the Union Uploaded December 8, Ht0